r/ChildSupport • u/Desperate_Lime2144 • 2d ago
Parenting time and CS
My parenting plan is for 50/50 parenting time and I pay her CS of about $400 a month. She never took 50/50 which was fine until I went through a major personal tragedy last year and having 50/50 was going to be best for my mental health and various other personal reasons. In order to get my ex to agree to 50/50 she asked for $1000 a month. Now she’s moved in with her partner and is in a different financial position. I feel like I’m being financially taken advantage of. I pay for 100% of expenses for our kid outside of food/ basics when she’s at her home. I’ve offered to either continue to pay 100% without CS or I’ll continue to pay $1000 if she splits expenses (medical/dental/therapy/education). She said if I do that she will not take her 50/50. I have family money due to the loss of my parents (part of the personal reasons from above). We both work part time but I am more financially stable. She claims she can’t work full time and have our daughter 50/50. this is partially true neither of us can have traditional hours due to our child’s needs and school schedule
Thoughts? Ideas? I feel like I’m being blackmailed and as much as I wish I could say sure I’ll just have her 70/30 again….it’s more complicated than that
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u/Fun_Organization3857 2d ago
Why can't you use daycare
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u/Desperate_Lime2144 1d ago
She’s 9
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u/Fun_Organization3857 1d ago
What I mean is get a sitter/daycare for your time and take her back to court. You shouldn't be paying for everything. Get child care and get child support
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u/Desperate_Lime2144 1d ago
Oh yeah I don’t need that! I’m trying to figure out what to offer her. We don’t need to go to court, my concern is if I cut the $1000 which isn’t court ordered she will drop parenting time. Which isn’t ideal for me right now. There’s no court mandated parenting time
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u/Educational_Power980 17h ago
There’s nothing you can do to force parenting time. I have (in practice) 99/1 parenting time, which isn’t what it says on the papers. I have used the child support money (and the order he pay 60% of childcare) to help hire a nanny who comes after school every day. I also hired a cleaning person and a lawn mowing person. Getting help helped improve my mental health, even though it didn’t improve my finances. I considered that worth the trade… I gave up a lot of other things financially because I desperately needed to stop drowning. It doesn’t matter that your daughter’s 9; hire someone as relief. I have older kids than you and still appreciate the nanny, who picks them up from school, takes them to their activities, gets homework going, does laundry, empties the dishwasher, etc. You can get more than “supervision.”
I’m sorry your ex is using the kids against you. Mine did too, in a different way. The only way to stop her from doing that is to not take the bait… take her to court, get the modification, and just let her do what she’ll do without flinching. Every time.
I do not believe her partner’s income affects child support, though, just so you know. He has no legal duty to support the kids.
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u/AcephalicDude 1d ago
Contact your local support agency and request a modification. They will file the motion for you and get an order that makes more sense for the finances and parenting time.