Child maintenance & income support pre April 2010

Thanks, pre April 2010 again, if they were having their interest only portion of mortgage paid by benefits, would they still have got that benefit if they had declared the £394 monthly child maintenance payment?

Kind of. It's self defence. It's my ex and mother of my 8 year old son who doesn't work that is in this situation. I've always supported her, giving her the majority of the equity from the house we shared when we split up (50k of 56k even though I had a separate loan of 18k that was used as a deposit to buy the house), was the guarantor when she rented a place, advised her when she bought a place, have always supported her financially, happily have my son every other weekend, before I moved further away had him during the week as well, and use half my annual leave and bank holidays to care for my son and to let her have a break...... My son has special needs, goes to a special school, school bus collects him at 8:15am and returns him 4:15pm or later. Anyhow, she has always complained about her lot and she has increasingly levelled a hate campaign at me over the 6 years since we split up. She has disrupted relationships accusing me of threatening his moral welfare, blocked me from seeing him at one point when I had a girlfriend she didn't like, made foundless accusations against my girlfriend etc. If he has a stomach bug she will scream and shout for me to come and help look after him....even though she doesn't work and I do. This means emails, texts, abusive phone calls and voice mails etc. She wants more money, she wants more holidays, she wants me to have him mid week despite it being a 4 hour commute to pick him up and return him to school (1 hour each way) and not practical or fair for my son or me. She refuses to help by bringing him to me once a fortnight even though she'd then get a night off as pay off for 2 hours travelling. She will never be flexible over weekends if I need to do something....weddings/funerals whatever. She refused to flex weekends to make it easier for my partner's son to see his dad when arrangements got awkward with his dad's work. This may sound petty but she really keeps the pressure on constantly and accuses me of being a disgusting human being of not being a good parent of not being interested in my son of trying to make her life hard....etc etc.... I do as much as I can and even offered when she said she couldn't cope, to have my son full time. In fact I would love that. I'd see more of him, I could hopefully get less grief from her....and she would actually have to get a job and see that she still needed holidays and weekends to rest even not being the primary carer.... But she twisted it and accused me of threatening to try and take her son away from her.

If I take a holiday, and she sends an email and gets an out of office reply, she sends sarcastic then abusive emails....etc.

Anyhow, the point is....she is getting worse....and it's getting to the stage that the only thing I can think of to make her back off is to send her the copy of all the payments I have made to her and let her know that the DWP would be very interested in speaking to her.

Of course I'm not interested in her getting a criminal record or owing tens of thousands of pounds....but I'm at my wits end..... So every now and then I think about this stuff.....

It may not be an answer but I don't have an answer. I don't have any legal recourse against her actions. It is putting a serious strain on my current relationship. It is very distressing for everyone.

It really is a horrible situation that I have no answers for....even though I would welcome any opinions!

Oh for some peace and love.....

I'll do my best. Thanks. The ironic thing is that if she keeps pushing and I do report her I'll be acting more like the b*st*rd she accuses me of being. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies and all that...