Hi everyone, so long story short, my ex has positioned herself as Primary Carer (against my wishes) and basically dictates the childcare schedule. It's been every other weekend and every other Monday evening into Tuesday morning for me for a couple of years. During that time I have paid half of everything when required (i.e. nursery fees, dentist charges, and now after school club fees etc...) as well as, obviously paying for everything when our daughter is with me, buying her new clothes, a bed, school uniform, hair products, days out etc etc etc..
A couple of months ago my ex told me I need to start paying maintenance and claimed she's let me off so far because I was going 50/50 on nursery fees.
I reluctantly agreed and offered what I could afford within my means. Bear in mind she earns way more than me, goes away at least once a month for between five days to a week (during which time I have our daughter), she inhereted her mum's house when she died at the end of 2022 and shares the place with her sister, so has way less outgoings than me and a much higher income.
I recently said I want more time with our daughter - an extra weekday evening into the next morning and to extend my weekend from Sunday evening into Monday morning. She agreed to the extra evening but not to extending my weekend.
Now she's chasing for maintenance payments and I'm on the verge of stopping them and taking this to mediation. It's like she'd rather have me paying money than our daughter spend more time with me and I cannot allow this to happen. It's just wrong.
At a loss as to how to respond.
Mate, it’s horrible. Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s all too common and it’s destroying a lot of men… As you say, it needs for everyone to get together and make a real stand because too many men are being under pressure while also being denied equal time with their children for no other reason than spite. It’s disgusting and needs to change.
To be honest with you mate this is a massive issue that nobody seems to want to tackle or talk about, I’ve asked and searched for advice on a similar situation with regards to unfair maintenance payments for my son and hit a brick wall every time, I’ve had the overnight stays taken away for the mothers financial gain and to spite me into having to pay more, men are being pushed to pay the ridiculous calculations from cms without their circumstances being taken into account and when you provide all the information to prove your earnings they bring out a historic income clause where they can continue to take what they think you should pay based on one year of high earnings for 6 years regardless of the fact your income has dropped, no wonder men are committing suicide as the financial burden gets to much with no way out, people like “michelle stevenson” who work for this corrupt system should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to carry on, after countless phone calls with these people I’ve come to the conclusion that unless all men in this awful situation stand together then nothing will change, how many more men and children are going to have to go through this form of parental alienation, the system needs to change!
I honestly can’t imagine a toxic woman to care about mediation if she knows she can get more money with the corrupt system working in her favour, as if you stop the payments, she will just see them building up and probably see it as a savings account that she will get eventually when legal action eventually gets taken against you, my incorrect payments are crippling with masses of incorrect arrears and I’ve had major depression for the last 2 years, even mentioning that to cms doesn’t change nothing, I could end it all and I’d just be another statistic that gets swept under the carpet unfortunately.