Ex Wife Needs Help With Childcare

salesman1979

Jude57 said:

salesman1979 said:

pinkshoes said:

£140 travel?!?! How far is it??

Which one of you moved away? 

If you're doing her a favour then I would expect her to be paying the travel. Could she not put them in a prepaid taxi?? 

A return train from Liverpool to Birmingham is almost £50. Then a return from Birmingham to Liverpool for 2 adults plus 4 kids (me and daughter who is 17 being the adults) with my railcard is about £93. 

A taxi would take the same time as it used to take me to drive it and the cost would be £176 each way according to Uber. 

I can see how the train is easier but I'll ask again, could the 17 year old not take charge of the younger siblings for the train journey and you your ex drop them off/collect them at the station? That would save one adult return fare which in turn could pay for a taxi to/from the station.

Unless there's some reason preventing it, a 17 year old is well able to keep an eye on younger siblings. They might not WANT to, but, barring any special needs, there's no reason they can't. That would apply equally to the train journey and to babysitting for a few hours while mum works. At 17 I'd have jumped at the chance to earn some extra cash for doing that.

Unfortunately not. 

Ex wife obviously allows my daughter to babysit the others but we’ve had the conversation before about her bringing them on the train if they got on the direct train from Birmingham New St to Liverpool Lime St but she simply will not entertain it. 

As far as I’m aware, she doesn’t get paid to babysit her brothers. 

turnitround

Even if the ex allowed this to happen it would not be too long before a 17 year old decided she does not want to go to dad's at weekends. 

turnitround

Just reading this thread takes me back. We had all the 'You need to step up as a dad' stuff thrown at us.  Ours was a 250 mile each way trip every weekend.

Many times she would let us drive down, setting off at 5am, only to ring us when we were half an hour away to say child was ill/at a party/had other plans etc.

Ive seen this from both sides but just wondered what would happen if things were the other way round and you decided to get the odd job on your weekends and she had to step in at short notice.  She knows she has the children every other weekend so why take a job which does not fit in with that? What would the reaction be if you were to perhaps have an invite to a wedding or similar and needed to change your weekend?

salesman1979

turnitround said:

Just reading this thread takes me back. We had all the 'You need to step up as a dad' stuff thrown at us.  Ours was a 250 mile each way trip every weekend.

Many times she would let us drive down, setting off at 5am, only to ring us when we were half an hour away to say child was ill/at a party/had other plans etc.

Ive seen this from both sides but just wondered what would happen if things were the other way round and you decided to get the odd job on your weekends and she had to step in at short notice.  She knows she has the children every other weekend so why take a job which does not fit in with that? What would the reaction be if you were to perhaps have an invite to a wedding or similar and needed to change your weekend?

turnitround said:

Just reading this thread takes me back. We had all the 'You need to step up as a dad' stuff thrown at us.  Ours was a 250 mile each way trip every weekend.

Many times she would let us drive down, setting off at 5am, only to ring us when we were half an hour away to say child was ill/at a party/had other plans etc.

Ive seen this from both sides but just wondered what would happen if things were the other way round and you decided to get the odd job on your weekends and she had to step in at short notice.  She knows she has the children every other weekend so why take a job which does not fit in with that? What would the reaction be if you were to perhaps have an invite to a wedding or similar and needed to change your weekend?

Well recently she’s been banging on about flexibility a lot. Saying that we should both be flexible and if I need to book something on my weekend or if I go on holiday and it goes over my weekend that she’ll be flexible etc. I told her that won’t happen as I have the kids for 2 nights in 14 so I can easily plan around that and that I’ll never ever ask her to help me out with my weekends. So far I haven’t changed a single weekend of mine but I have accommodated her when she wanted Xmas day but it fell on my weekend (asked kids and their preference was to stay home for Xmas day). I think she may have also swapped a weekend last year but I can’t really remember. 

TBagpuss

I would suggest that you put something in writing, is telephone calls are getting heated.

Maybe something along the lines of 

Dear Ex, 

Following on from our telephone conversation I am writing to clarify what we discussed. I confirm that I am happy to help out by looking after the children when you have to work on a weekend when they are with you, subject to my availability. As discussed, i would need you to give me at least 4 weeks notice of any dates you'd like me to have them, I will then be able to confirm that i can help, or let you know if I am not available, so you can make alternative arrangements. Obviously if you are able to provide more than 4 weeks notice this would be very helpful, and would reduce the risk of my being unable to help due to prior commitments. 

I presume that you would arrange to bring the children to my home, and to pick them up at the end of the weekend? If you would want me to travel to collect them then I would be willing to do so but would need you to cover the costs - I'm happy to use my Family rail cards to reduce these, however, I would not be able to take on the extra costs. 

If you have other options / proposals then add them in, but setting it out like that makes it harder for her to claim that you weren't clear or agreed something different, and you have a record of what you said you could and couldn't do. 

salesman1979

TBagpuss said:

I would suggest that you put something in writing, is telephone calls are getting heated.

Maybe something along the lines of 

Dear Ex, 

Following on from our telephone conversation I am writing to clarify what we discussed. I confirm that I am happy to help out by looking after the children when you have to work on a weekend when they are with you, subject to my availability. As discussed, i would need you to give me at least 4 weeks notice of any dates you'd like me to have them, I will then be able to confirm that i can help, or let you know if I am not available, so you can make alternative arrangements. Obviously if you are able to provide more than 4 weeks notice this would be very helpful, and would reduce the risk of my being unable to help due to prior commitments. 

I presume that you would arrange to bring the children to my home, and to pick them up at the end of the weekend? If you would want me to travel to collect them then I would be willing to do so but would need you to cover the costs - I'm happy to use my Family rail cards to reduce these, however, I would not be able to take on the extra costs. 

If you have other options / proposals then add them in, but setting it out like that makes it harder for her to claim that you weren't clear or agreed something different, and you have a record of what you said you could and couldn't do. 

This is a great idea. Thanks. I’ll send her an email.  

alligin

And cc the email to yourself so that everything is logged.

Jude57

alligin said:

And cc the email to yourself so that everything is logged.

Unnecessary and unless done via Bcc (or similar for whatever software you use) to conceal the fact, could provoke an unwanted reaction from the ex along the lines of 'don't you trust me to remember what we agreed?'. It will automatically be saved in your Sent folder.

It might, however, be an idea to create a 'Childcare' folder to keep all correspondence about the children.

salesman1979

Ok I have drafted the following email 

Ex Wife

I want to clarify my position regarding your request to help out by having the kids on additional weekends in order to assist you with your new job. 

Originally you advised that your mum would be able to help you most of the time and the suggestion was that asking me would be a last resort. You said you could give me at least 4 weeks notice when my help would be required. Based on this initial conversation I agreed to help out as I’d love to spend more time with the kids. 

A week or so later I had some questions which I felt we should clarify so as to manage each other’s expectations. 

1. I asked what would happen if I were unable to help on any particular weekend. I stressed that most of the time this shouldn’t be an issue and that if I had plans that were simply a night out that I’d be happy to cancel unless it were a special occasion, but that if my plans were more of an “event” such as a concert, a sporting event or weekend away etc that these plans couldn’t be changed and that I’d have to decline. What I wanted to clarify here were your expectations. Am I expected to agree every time I’m asked? Would I be vilified if I am unable to help out on occasion?

2. What if your mum had to let you down at the last minute? Am I expected to drop everything in order to help out at short notice?

3. How do the kids get to my home in Liverpool and who takes on the cost of this? Your opinion here was that I absorb this cost without question. There are of course alternatives to me travelling to Solihull on the train to collect them and then all 6 of us returning on the train to Liverpool. I proposed that you could put them on a direct Birmingham to Liverpool train with Daughter in charge as she’s 17. You could of course drive them here if you wished. If you wanted to use the trains then I’m happy for my family railcard to be used in order to reduce the cost to roughly £64 return for all 5 children. As I often work on the weekends I’m not scheduled to regularly have the kids I would lose out financially by not being available to work and so in turn I couldn’t absorb the cost of bringing them to Liverpool. 

4. How frequent will this be? You haven’t been able to answer this nor have you provided any dates you know your mum definitely can’t help you out even though you’ve mentioned this a few times. Whilst I’m happy to help where I can, we already know that my having the kids on consecutive weekends leads to the older boys not wanting to come to me the following weekend which would be my regular weekend anyway, as they then haven’t seen their friends at the weekends for too long. I wouldn’t want to get into the habit of swapping weekends as then I potentially go almost 3 weeks between visits after helping you out. 

I have tried to have this discussion with you over the phone but you got upset and took it as me trying to wriggle out of our agreement which I’m not doing. I think these are valid concerns that need to be addressed. Your assertion that as their father I need to “step up” simply doesn’t apply here. I already see the kids as often as possible, I pay child maintenance (more than the CMS calculator suggests I pay) and on top of that I buy clothes and pay for mobile phones, iPads, Xbox subscriptions etc as well as fund their days out with friends, online game purchases etc. So far this year I’ve bank transferred over £600 to them in small payments. I even sent them home with clothes as they were upset that you were unable to buy them branded clothes and the older boys in particular didn’t want clothes from Primark. I offered to help you with the cost of your family holiday this summer when you told me you may have to cancel it as the cost of living increase means you may not be able to afford to pay it off before the deadline, this was on top of me giving you spending money for the kids. 

I’m not the bad guy in any of this, I always help out wherever I can. Other separated parents I’ve spoken to are telling me that I do far too much already but ultimately I do what I do for my childrens benefit. 

ABFG

OP - I have a distance between me and my kids as well, it's hard optimising what's best when a routine is broken. But it sounds like your issue here is 'extra' unplanned weekends, as in over and above your expected costs. Is there any mileage for you to save some money in saying you will go there, stay in a cheap hotel nearby and use the facilities at ex's house to feed/entertain the kids while she's at work? That would get rid of the kids' train costs, allow you to see the eldest if they aren't interested in travelling any more and you can pass back some of the food costs etc. Effectively the £93 ticket instead pays for the hotel and then there would be some savings for you. Dare I say it, but if ex is amenable (and you) even cut out the hotel and stay there in a spare room/sofa for those few occasions?

I don't know exactly your arrangements, but this might suit the kids having to travel less, you have to travel less, might be easier for them to be involved in weekend activities/friends etc.