Child Support
In my situation I received support for 2 of my children from a previous marriage. My current partner pays support for 2 of his children from a previous marriage. How do you guys in similar situation handle this? I don't feel it's fair that my support payment go in the family budget, because in the end 35% of his income is going right out the window to support his children. Am I shallow for wanting to keep my childrens money for the things that I want for them? After all the bills are said and done he has no money left over for extras, but I have money left over (if we were to seperate the finances). Our finances are combined but I do not combine my child support as it should be spent on things for my children. Such as education etc... I also receive baby bonus for those 2 children but currently place it in the same financial budget that we use for the whole family, even though those funds are supposed to be for my 3 biological children. I want to keep things fair, but I don't think it's fair that the funds I receive for my children go to all 5 children equally. It's not like he can chose to not pay support thus we have extra income in our budget. My partner complains sometimes that things aren't fair, HOWEVER... My ex and I make more money then he and his ex do. So in the end, my children will have extras that his won't. We don't treat them differently when we have them or when we do things together. We use that family budget excluding the child support, and thus I just save it. My ex and I split costs for everything, extra curicular activities etc... his ex doesn't want to split the cost for activities, thus we end up having to pay for something in full to keep it "fair", it maybe "fair" to the kids, but I don't feel it's "fair" to me or the future needs of my biological children. Tips, suggestions, experiences and any type of advice or support is welcome.
CMAC
Get rid of the complications
Get rid of the complications and seperate all your money. Then every month go through the household bills and both of you pay half. After that its up to him to do things for his children and you for yours. Its not your responsibility to make things fair, his kids have two parents, let those parents care for them and you and your ex care for yours. He might be upset at first but at least it is all out there and thats the end of that.
Should we be paying 50/50 on
Should we be paying 50/50 on the bills? If he makes more money then I do on paper? He pays daycare and support based on his income, should the bills not also be paid based on his income?
Thanks!!
I think that would be up to
I think that would be up to you, maybe make him pay more on certain bills like the rent/morgage or on the utilities, if his first family can have that percentage so should you.
You will never be able to
You will never be able to make it fair. Your SO should not put a burden on you to try to make it fair. If he wants his kids to have more he should get a second job. Your kids money should be for them. My DH paid CS for 20 years to his ex who lived with a bum who didn't work. Now that CS has stopped they are losing their home to foreclosure, have no health insurance or retirement. Why? Because they didn't support themselves. They used the CS $ to artificially inflate their income and now have nothing.
Well, my DH thinks the same
Well, my DH thinks the same way too. I told him its "not fair" that our DS will go without things because we pay soo much money in child support to SS. So if my bios get more things on a day to day basis, then so be it! If his son needs something, he can go ask his BM who gets almost $700 a month from us! It will never be fair and nothing in life is guaranteed so I would make sure you worry about YOUR children first. Its unfortunate that the burden falls on the new spouse and hte old spouse gets all the money
Someone should tell him life is NOT fair
I understand how you feel. I
I understand how you feel. I feel that a lot too. I think the only way to fairly tackle it is to have completely separate finances. And I would agree that household bills are split according to income ratios. However, I dont' like my marriage to be like that so I suck it up and try not to dwell on it.
On the other hand, I dont' think of CS as being the kids money. I think of it as money to contribute to the expense of raising them. that includes much of the household expenses.
Maybe you could compromise and put 1/3 of the CS in the household budget and keep 2/3 back for other expenses for your kids.
I most definately believe someone should tell him that life is not fair !
Well I keep the CS to myself
Well I keep the CS to myself and I put all of my baby bonus, which is the same amount as CS in the family budget. If I'm doing the 1/3 thing... then I'm keeping both the CS and the Baby bonus and 1/3 of that would be alot less then what I currently leave in the budget...
Thanks!
Sorry, I'm not familiar with
Sorry, I'm not familiar with the baby bonus thing. If you are putting some in the family budget and keeping some then I don't see how it isn't fair.
If the baby bonus is from
If the baby bonus is from your child you share with your partner then it should go into the family funds. The child is shared between you and him.
No baby bonus, is for all
No baby bonus, is for all three of my biological children and you get the most for the first one, then a little less for the second and even less for the third. They actually have it all calculated per child. This is something we receive from the government, if your income falls below a certain amount.
I think your money should be
I think your money should be separate. The child support you receive is for YOUR children, not his. With that said, he should NOT have to pay 1/2 of the living expenses in your home. He has no children at home living with him. You have 3 children living with you. Thus, you should pay a much bigger percentage of the total bills than he does.
It is not fair for him to use your children's CS for his own kids or himself, but it's also not fair for you to keep your children's child support separate and technically for him to not only have to support his kids through CS, but your kids in your home. You should be supporting your kids on your own 100% wth your ex, not your new husband.
We have one child, our child
We have one child, our child that live 100% of the time with us and the other 4 live with us 50% of the time, on the same schedual (we both have shared cutody and they live with us as much as they live with their other parents). He doesn't support my kids and in the end I end up supporting his because I have extra money for mine, that he doesn't get because he makes more Salary dollars.