So I believe I've found the key to relative peace with skids and BM

And it is parallel parenting, in every sense of the word. These past years, I've been able to get past some pretty big stuff but the thing that I have NOT been able to get past is anything involving joint expenses. This woman pays nothing she owes. To anyone! She doesn't feel an obligation to pay the bank or anything official; how the hell have we expected her to pay us what she owes us on an ongoing basis? So basically we are just going to go forward paying for the things we can afford, expecting nothing to come from her, ever. Things we cannot afford to pay for without her portion, the twins will simply go without. It is going to suck and I realize that they may or may not even be appreciative at some point in their lives....but this has set my mind free of the demons- the anger, the constant worrying that she will pay her part. Because she won't. Ever. She has no moral code and no capability to manage her finances.
Parallel parenting saves the day!

MJL2010's blog
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Yes...we had to do this some

Yes...we had to do this some years ago. BM refuses to pay for anything and has ducked and dodged CS for years. Even though we have the kids full-time and have for the past three years, DH hasn't gone to court to get the CS updated because we know if they update it and she has to pay hundreds of dollars, she will move back and wreak havoc on everyone's life. CS finally caught up with her and she pays a grand total of $88 a month for two kids based on an old schedule where she had them 40% of the time. My 10 month old's monthly budget is more than $88.

It took a while, but we realized that it's not worth the hassle.

I know the family court

I know the family court considers child support and visitation to be two separate issues that really have no bearing on the other but damn, I just cannot understand why the courts feel a parent should get all the fun parts of being a parent when they won't accept any of the responsibility.

We had an argument at my house over this very thing a few weeks ago. BM does pay child support on a somewhat regular basis but she is about to get hit with a $500 bill for her portion of SD's medical expenses. A large portion of that is for SD5's recent dental work which, to date, includes 11 cavities filled in Dec 2013, 1 abscessed tooth, 2 kiddie root canals, another cavity filled, and 6 silver caps with 2 more scheduled. DH had to fill out paperwork to have BM kick in her portion and I ended up pitching a hissy fit over it because he wouldn't ever get off his ass and do it. Now, I am under no illusions that she will open this paperwork this week and immediately cut us a check. It will get tacked onto her child support and we likely won't see it until she gets her tax return next year. But whatever. I told DH that SD5's dental problems were caused by piss poor parenting and neglect. I didn't cause these problems and I was no longer taking SD to the dentist that it was his and BM's responsibility to do and while I had no problem paying his court ordered portion of her medical expenses I would be damned if I would pay BM's too when all he had to do was fill out paperwork to get $500.

The paperwork finally went out last week.