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Good morning dads,
I suspect that airing this subject will achieve nothing more than getting it off my chest, but doing so might make me feel better!
I suspect that more than 90% 'paying parents' are dads. Some will be absentees that perhaps rightly are pursued by the state to contribute, others will want to be involved with their children and may have gone as far as challenging society's preconceptions (and prejudice) to achieve SROs or residency.
I fall into the later group and have a have a SRO for my son, who lives with me for just under half the time (162 days/year, or 45% of the time, which took an expensive legal tussle and every bit of my emotional stamina to achieve). In spite of my ex-wife and I having almost identical costs to maintain our son the state decides (on the strength of my son's mother receiving family benefit) that I should pay 8% of my income to her. There has been no assessment of my ex-wife's income (much the same as mine) or needs (indeed I bought her a very nice house as the financial settlement and she remains in full time employment as a teacher), just a measure of my income and an arbitrary allocation of part of it.
I suppose the state does this to keep the welfare budget down. I suspect that many mothers have lower incomes, so there would not be much point chasing them for CM, whereas if dads can be kept in employment they can be taxed as well as forced to subsidise their ex-wives. Unfortunately the state does not differentiate between absentee dads (or mothers for that matter) and those with shared parenting arrangements, so it applies similar rules to all.
Ho hum. This is far from fair, but there are no votes in trying to change it and society seems to be quite happy to discriminate against half its members when it comes to family law financial issues. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the divorce rate is so high?
The shared arrangement we have is good for my son: at least I can protect him, make sure he is looked after and give him some guidance. He is happy and well adjusted. I have no complaints about that, I just wonder why the state has come to the conclusion that it needs to penalise me financially for something I did not do (i.e. break up the family).
I'm just airing my thoughts.
Best wishes,
A
My son is the resident parent and he doesn't receive maintenance ...his choice though.
It's not about the amount someone earns, or whether they are mother or father, but an acknowledgement that they are responsible for the child they brought into the world.
I think my son should claim maintenance from her, she receives maintenance from the father of her other child and kicked up merry [censored] about getting it! Why shouldn't the same rules apply? As I said, my son is uncomfortable with it and I can only deduce its a societal attitude....man the breadwinner etc.
Hi Nannyjane,
As you say, it is your son's choice, as it would be mine in the same position, that was not really my point though. What I was trying to explain is that the state chooses to appoint a financial winner and a loser on a very arbitrary basis, even when costs are almost identical. It is not exactly a coincidence that mothers are almost always the winners, your son is unusual in that he has convinced the state that he should be the resident parent (and I hope he receives family benefit from the state).
I have no complaint about shared parenting for my son (he is marvellous and I am very proud of him), it is just irritating (and nothing more) that the state chooses to discriminate against me in an arbitrary and disproportionate way. I'm not a crusader trying to change society.
Very best wishes,
A
...whilst we are governed by a 20th century morality, then we are limited by those constraints. Society has moved on but the laws and codes that we are made to live by are outdated. The Family dynamic has morphed into something hardly recognisable from 30 years ago! To find answers you must go back to the Guardianship Act of 1973 and look at the overwhelming tide of feminist agendas that washed over society in the 60s and 70s and the huge changes in society that flowed from that.
Part of the problem is that the government has to impose a single solution to cover everyone - in a lot of cases, the maintenance calculation is probably quite fair, but it doesn't allow for those cases where there is a massive inequality. The divorce courts also need to recognise that the father (usually) also has rights to a reasonable standard of living when making the settlements and that the children will be covered separately by child maintenance - why the courts don't award the house to the mother only until the children reach the end of their education is still a mystery to me after which is could be sold and the proceeds split fairly,
Finally, as I've said before, the courts really should be more willing to penalise the resident parent if they don't stick to contact agreements, and I think the CMS should take the contact order as the starting point for how many nights the children stay over with the father, not the mother's word.
Yes, there is a lot of inertia in the system.
I can't help thinking that in a fair society the starting point should be 50:50 shared parenting, if one of the parents did not want that responsibility there would then be a bill to pay in order to compensate the other. A situation like that would make a lot of mothers think twice about leaving their marriages as it would not be anywhere near as lucrative as it is now.
Unfortunately there are no votes in this issue, so it will not happen in my lifetime.
Best wishes,
A
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