Child maintenance and additional payments

proud_father

Hello all,

I have my child 40% of the time. In term time it is alternate weekends and one weekday a week and 50/50 in holidays. We have used CMS to determine the payments I have to give to the resident parent which is quite high from my wage.

We are still negotiating the additional payments in our divorce proceedings since my ex has included it in the initial negotiations and our communication has broken down. I am looking to contribute extra 50/50 of school uniforms and trips. After a disagreement, she had refused to provide school uniform for the new year and asked me to buy my own uniform, shoes, bag, lunch box and PE kit for school. She'll buy her own shoes, coat, bag, uniform etc. I do want to contribute to it, but I don't feel it's fair on our child to have dad's and mum's school clothes. If it was alternating weeks, then it makes sense to have our own, rather than packing a whole week's worth of clothes.

I understood extra costs are voluntary, but I feel there is a loophole, where I am forced to buy school clothes, because I have my child in the first day of the year. Also I won't ruin my child's first day and put them in non-uniform.

Spendless

Why doesn't one of you buy the coat. lunch bag and the other the shoes and PE Kit and then you 50/50 the  cost of the shirt, trousers/skirt etc. If you disagree about the uniform to the extent that the child is aware then the child will be the one that remembers. My friend's son-in-law tells her how he used to have to make sure on Tuesday evenings, regardless of how much homework  he had or what time he arrived home after sports clubs  that he laundered the white school shirts that he'd had on the previous 2 days - why -  because he only had 1 3pack of shirts and when he fetched it up with his Mum how simply life would be with another set she'd reply 'tell your Dad to buy them then'. That someone in his 30s remembers this  tells me that's a situation that shouldn't have been created by either parent. 

tightauldgit

proud_father said:

Hello all,

I have my child 40% of the time. In term time it is alternate weekends and one weekday a week and 50/50 in holidays. We have used CMS to determine the payments I have to give to the resident parent which is quite high from my wage.

We are still negotiating the additional payments in our divorce proceedings since my ex has included it in the initial negotiations and our communication has broken down. I am looking to contribute extra 50/50 of school uniforms and trips. After a disagreement, she had refused to provide school uniform for the new year and asked me to buy my own uniform, shoes, bag, lunch box and PE kit for school. She'll buy her own shoes, coat, bag, uniform etc. I do want to contribute to it, but I don't feel it's fair on our child to have dad's and mum's school clothes. If it was alternating weeks, then it makes sense to have our own, rather than packing a whole week's worth of clothes.

I understood extra costs are voluntary, but I feel there is a loophole, where I am forced to buy school clothes, because I have my child in the first day of the year. Also I won't ruin my child's first day and put them in non-uniform.

If things are breaking down and your partner is being a pain then there really isn't much that can be done. I've gone through 5 years of duplicating school uniform because of our arrangement and it's a stupid expense but other party isn't willing to compromise so I just go along with it and do what I need to do. 

The solution is probably simple - if not optimal.

1. Pay what CMS say you need to pay
2. Make NO additional payments for anything and make it clear that's the arrangement - courts don't over-rule CMS on child arrangements anyway
3. Buy you kid whatever uniform, clothes, kit they need for the days they are with you
4. Let your ex pay whatever they need for the days that kid is with them