[child support] nice little conundrum

The way it ought to be

Warning - please do not read this if you're prone to either high blood pressure, tears or anger with Higham over his outrageous statements. This post is about something which has touched a raw nerve and it pulls no punches. Thank you.

Plus it's all hypothetical.

Lord Nazh started a train of thought on the abortion issue, putting a hypothetical where if a man didn't want the child [I think] and she did, then she had the child and:

A period of time later, you split up (in no relation to said pregnancy). Here's the question: should it be his choice whether to support the child or not?

That's a difficult one.

It seems to me that there are two issues to payments overall.

Firstly, the upkeep and upbringing of the child and it would be a pretty low father who wouldn't contribute to his child's education, clothing and so on because it's his own flesh and blood.

In principle, here, there's agreement.

However, just as it was within the marriage, so it must be outside. If the woman expects payment to be made for the child, then the man has a right to be in on the decision as to what is being paid for, e.g. new school, new outfit, holiday with a school group and so on.

If he completely disagrees, e.g. she wants one school but he wants the son to go to his old school and she's known this for a long time, then he has every right to refuse to pay on this particular issue. Trouble is, as so much divorce is due to unreasonableness on the part of one or both, it's likely to be so here as well.

Then we come to the question of her new husband or boyfriend. There is so much dishonesty going on here and I can vouch for that because I've been in both positions - both the boyfriend and the poor sod who was paying.

As the boyfriend, I was told that I wasn't officially living with her, that we didn't officially sleep together and that I was officially "just a friend", otherwise she wouldn't get a penny from him. She couldn't see that I might sympathize with my fellow man here. I was in a position to keep her myself and wanted to but it wasn't enough cash for her plans.

With the boot on the other foot, how much should the new man pay? I can't do much about her living with someone who is not the father of my child and I do feel that if I'm to have any say in my child's upbringing, logically I need to pay for that right but again - how much should the new boyfriend also be contributing?

On this first issue, I'm open to argument.

The second issue is money directly to her to keep her in her lifestyle - alimony. Over my dead body. Now she knows this and therefore presents it as payments for the child but my way round that is to directly go to wherever payment is required - school, health insurance, whatever - and pay the cost for my child over the counter and get the receipt.

Of course she doesn't like that and wants a set payment each month. My response is - of course I'll pay a set amount each month, no problem. Just send me the bills and I'll pay them - even beyond the set amount and no quibbling.

But she's not getting a penny for herself.

Into this comes the risibly named Child Support Agency, the only group whose premises I've ever considered blowing up. Of course, as every father knows, it has zero to do with child support and everything to do with extorting the maximum possible out of the ex-husband to supplement her life with her new man.

As I said before - over my dead body.

I'd rather go to prison, seriously. Regulars here know that if I've been unfair and you can show that, I'll backtrack. On this issue though, I feel strongly that it is completely unreasonable that if a woman has chosen to depart, that any further payments need to be made to her except for the children and then directly.

The objection to this is what if she's alone and not working?

Now we get into a really nasty area. Is she alone? I know she's as pretty as a picture and a charmer, I know of three guys alone who would have moved onto her once I departed so what's the score here?

She stays alone and brings a boyfriend in for the occasional adultery, charms men into doing the maintenance work she doesn't want to herself and therefore has a case to be financially supported from a distance, no?

I say not. She has to take responsibility for her actions. She chose to separate her child from his father so she has two choices - be truly independent, as the feminists would say, leaving him to cover the bulk of the child's costs and that's all. Or else she makes some arrangement with the men she brings in.

That's her business in which I shouldn't interfere.

But in all of this there is one body, one group, who have zero say in any of it - the Extortion of Ex-Husbands Agency. That body is something up with which I flatly refuse to put.