Child support , what does it cover ?

Hi all, Got mediation soon & I just got a few Qs so i have some understanding of whats going to be said there. According to the CSA calc I should pay £60 pw for my 2 kids. This I have no probs with whatsoever , but after chatting with the ex (we are still friends, just)She says on top of that she wants half childminder fees, half clothing fees, half kids saving plan fees & half activity fees. So my Question is what is the CM for then ?? I,d love to be able to agree to this, if I had the spare cash I would but the black & white senario is after rent , bills etc I just dont have the cash. Its just not there, I,m basicly living on the breadline right now. If i had it she could have it, the last thing I want is for my 2 kids to go without.

Since she is now unsure wether or not she can buy me out the FMH, it looks like a mesher order may spring into play. Again I,m ok with this (now)aslong as i get a bigger than 20% cut in 15 or so years time wen the youngest leaves FTE. Since my child maint is roughly half our morgage payment , Would I have to pay anymore towards the kids. Dont get me wrong I,m not trying to get out of paying for them , I want to be a big part of thier lives now & will provide for them at every opportunity. & as i said wen I,ve got it they can have it. But living in this part of the country it is furiously expensive to live & I just dont have the cash, this broadband is my ONLY luxury. Sorry for waffling on but since I can only afford to see a solicitor probally every 2 or 3 months, I dont really have anyone to turn too. She,ll be earning alot more than me soon & on paper is worth an extremley huge amount more than me. Is it right for her to ask for so much.

V worried Dobbs.

not sure about the correct answer, all i know is my ex husband just pays the csa ammount of £52 a week for children. when i asked him politely for a contribution to my daughter's school trip ( this cost £200) he didn't want to know. i will be interested to see what other people reply to this one. from a mother's point of view i think some husbands get off lightly, i know that £52 is a drop in the ocean whan i look at the ammount of money that i pay out in school trips, clothes, activities, christmas, birthdays etc, my husband seems to ignore the fact that all the money that he earns is just for him, while mine has to be stretched for 3 of us 9 .He doesn't make any contribution towards mortgage or pay any spousal maintenance and has 2 jobs, one of which he lies about to the csa. If I tried to earn more money I would get less tax credit and have to pay more in child care ( i only get 1/2 of this back)so really it's a vicious circle. I'm sure you want to do the best for your children, my husband obviously doesn't!!

Hi Dobber and Sallyanne.

When i divorced my 1st husband, our arrangement was....

£60 per week for two kids. We didnt go through the CSA. It was an agreement between ourselves. That was 5/6 years ago and its never changed. He now gives me £30 per week as one of our kids turned 18 and left full time education. He also paid half our daughters dancing fees which were £75 each per month. He never paid any SM or anything else. But if i ask him for half of whatever he does pay it. (but then we are friends and always have been.) The thing was i bought him out of the FMH, he kept all the endownments, his pension and i gave him some money. I had to find a job as i had been a stay at home mum (but i did always work part time night work) anyway i found a job for 15/16 hours a week and i got WFTC, i found myself in a situation i'd never been in before and that was well off for the first time in years. No debts (only the mortgage) and i even managed to go out at weekends and live a good life. Had time with my kids, when we were all going through a rough time, had a job where i met different people daily and could still afford to go out and make a new life.
What i am trying to say to you both is , this all works if you can stay friendly.
Dobber there is a guy on here called Downbutnotout, he has been ordered to pay 60% of his weekly income, to former wife and kids, it barely leaves him with enough to live on, so inevitably he gets in debt. I think if you show your Wife and are upfront with all your bills, wages ect, ect, she could see from that that what she is asking for is impossible. You can always say with all the other things she wants above the csa payments that you will help her out if and when you can. I dont beleive you will have to pay anything more than the CSA payments for your kids, but as a dad, it seems you dont want them to miss out on the things in life that will inevitably come along...i.e. school trips ect. I dont think your wife is being unreasonable in her requests, she must be a bit worried at the moment wondering where and how shes gonna pay for all these things. But as a friendly couple you can work through these things together, after all if you were still both married you find the money from somewhere. For clothes and things you can always both work out a plan of spending say...£200 per child every six moneths or so. £100 from you and £100 from her. Sit and talk to her, say you will try and save so much a week for the extras. At the end of the day mediation, divorce ect ect will only work for all concerned if you are both reasonable and all you both want is to see your kids are ok and not losing out. But sometimes we have to say NO to them, it seems most kids today have never heard the word! lol My daughter especially.
I also know from a friend of mine, he paid for his FMH for 10 years even after the mortgage was paid off, he still continued to pay his ex wife money every month, when his kids were 25 years old, (his son still lived with his mum) he then asked his ex to sell the house, she had never worked in all that time. She wouldnt and he went to court to order either half the profit she pay him from the FMH or sell it! It was ordered that she give him £14k from a house worth £80k at the time, and that his former wife hadnt paid a penny too, this was some 7 years ago.
Sallyanne
I also understand from your point of view, i have another friend whos ex partner doesnt pay a rotten penny even when hes been ordered too, she has been awarded various things from the court... ie. cash lump sum, SM ect ect, not one penny has she had, no CS, he thinks its really funny, Yeah really is, isnt it? The only thing she can do apparentely is go back to court, but she has now run out of money and cant afford it. I tell her to self represent but shes had enough at the mo and feels to weak to fight anymore. Some men are unbelievable when it comes to their kids, seemed they were perfect fathers once, but they get at the kids to hurt the woman.
Crazy huh?
Anyway sorry to have rambled on.
take care all
Cya soon
Louise.

Thanx for your replies , Louise as I have said when I,ve got it they can have it , without question. When we were married it was,nt a problem as we both earned good money & only had 1 home to fund. Out of my 1600 pm take home , 500pm is rent , 300pm to ex , 100pm to council tax,150pm fuel to get to work , the rest goes on food, leccy & gas rtc. I,m usually -100 every month. Its just gettin beyond a joke now. I may as well give up work & go on the pannel !!!

Dobbs.

Dobber

I totally understand, at the moment i cant work (and refuse to actually, as his ex is coming after him and i dont see why i should at the moment, after paying all their debts off by remortgaging my own property, but thats another story!)
Anyway at the moment we are so much in debt! We spend £1000 per month over the income my husband earns so you can imagine the sort of debt we are talking about here after this has been going on for two years.
Makes you feel whats the point? Feels like your slowly being sucked dry! (cant put on here what i really feel!!!lol)
Keep your chin up,
best regards
louise