Child Support - Opinions Sought

Sorry this goes on a bit!

My children are 15 and 13 and I have always done a lot for them especially in the last 5 years when I have worked from home a fair bit. We have been separated for over a year and in that time I was fully working from home most of the time, and unemployed for the last 3 months.

In the time we were separated we have shared the child care and I have had the children at least 50% of the nights and typically 60-70%. I have kept a diary recording this. I was foolishly paying child maintenance above CSA levels whilst I was working as I was on good money, and was paying nothing whilst I was unemployed.

When I have the children I do things like buy clothes, shoes etc for them and the ex and I split the cost of things like clubs, music lessons and school trips.

I will shortly be starting work again, and my new job will be paying significantly less than I was earning before. I am also moving out of the marital home and buying a house in my own name using my share of the equity and taking on a big mortgage. The house I am buying is in an area suitable for schools and big enough so the children can have a bedroom each, and as such is more expensive than if I bought a house just for my own needs.

We will continue to share child care and I am expecting to go on sharing the cost of clothes shoes etc.

I am now thinking it is unfair of my ex to ask me for child maintenance since we will both be working and both looking after the children the same amount of time and therefore have the same child care costs. When we argued about this earlier my ex said that the child maintenance would be so that I contribute towards my children....this really annoyed me as by caring for them half the time I incurr the same costs as her so why should I pay her child maintenance. I could understand it if she looked after the children more than me, but when care is split equally it seems unfair for one parent to have to pay child maintenance. She started muttering about the CSA

I would welcome opinions on this point if anyone has an views or practical experience.

Thanks

This is an interesting one and I will be very interested to hear responses.

In my case, my children are small (5, 2 and yet to be born). My stbx currently cares for the older ones (he will not be able to have the baby the same way) for 6 out of 14 nights CAFCASS involved, hoping for a reduction to this for various reasons). There is a huge disparity in our incomes - he earns at least 5 times what I do, I suspect 6 or 7 times (own business, difficult to give an exact figure as he is evasive).

In my case, I think it is reasonable to request child support/maintenance because of the disparity. However, if we were earning much the same, I would be more than willing to discuss a no maintenance situation providing we were able to come to an agreement over larger purchases (large presents, school trips etc. ). I think you would need a good level of trust in your relationship with your stbx or it could quickly feel like one side taking advantage of the other/one side buying everything and the other nothing. Could work well where the relationship is reasonably open and honest though.