I hope it's alright to post here. I'll say upfront that I'm in Australia, so I'm not looking for legal advice so much as ...strategy advice, I guess. My friend is lovely and wonderful and smart, but I think can be quite naive and I want to advise her (she has asked, specifically, I promise I'm not just being interfering) without scaring her off.
She has a DD, 4 years old. She and her partner separated two years ago - never married, but he is named on BC, no issue there. When they separated, they drew up a formal financial separation agreement that dealt with their assets, but never made any formal agreement in relation to their daughter, either in terms of custody or child support. This is because they had a 50:50 custody split, and are both fairly wealthy due to a financial windfall that happened during their relationship and was split (unevenly, favouring him) between them.
So, no problem for ages. He doesn't work due to this financial windfall. She works fulltime, she owns her own business. Their DD was booked into nursery two days a week, one falling on 'her' day, one on his day. She arranged this and has always paid for it. This is Issue One, as it was never meant to be a lasting arrangement. She has since expressed a lot of irritation about this inequality, but every time she raised it with him, he got annoyed, and she dropped it again since she can afford it and it's not worth the hassle. I had suggested that she contact the nursery directly and change the arrangement, so that her direct debit only covered the day that she needed DD in nursery, and then if he wanted DD to continue on the second day, that was up to him to arrange and open an account. That was a year ago.
Anyway, a few months ago it became clear that he was struggling. Not dropping DD off at nursery until almost lunchtime, that sort of thing. He finally contacted her and confessed - his latent alcohol & pot problem was getting out of control, he needed her to take DD fulltime while he got himself sorted out. In order to do this, she increased nursery to three days a week and also called in family favours. She encouraged him to go to counselling, take ADs, etc, and has been supporting a slow build up back to full contact - starting with day visits, then occasional overnights, then increasing. All throughout, she's been paying all of nursery.
Last week, she allowed DD to go to him overnight during the week, and she just didn't turn up at nursery the following day. He called her at 4pm to say, you'll have to close the shop and come pick up DD, I haven't managed to do anything with her all day or get her to nursery. She got there to find DD just standing there, and he was clearly not right. DD told her that she hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. She took DD back, said she was cutting off all contact until he got himself sorted out, he didn't argue. Well, yes he did, he argued that she was overreacting wrt day visits but agreed he didn't want DD overnight again for a while.
Two days later he rings her and confesses that he's been taking crystal meth.
This is such a novel, sorry! Here is my actual question: because she is now looking down the barrel of full custody, she wants to follow my suggestion of a year ago and ensure that some of the nursery fees are paid by her ex. She isn't chasing any further child support, although she is entitled to it - it's not means tested so her income is irrelevant, he should be paying 15% or so. So she wants to contact nursery, cancel her direct debit for half the days and make them chase him for those days.
I think she's missing the point. I think she should be contacting nursery and saying that he no longer has custody, is a danger to himself, should not be allowed to pick up DD. I can't see how that could be compatible with making him directly responsible for payments, and now that he doesn't have custody, the whole point of that strategy - which was to make it his problem if he didn't pay, by withdrawing childcare - is moot.
I also think she should be formalising custody. She is all "oh, but he's a nice guy underneath, he won't push it". But, I'm right, aren't I? Crystal fucking meth is bad news? Like, bad enough that she should get this in place now and not wait until he comes to pick up DD and takes her off somewhere?
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A strategy question for a friend, if I may
7 replies
Tortoiseonthehalfshell · 14/01/2013 10:54
OP posts:
HeyHoHereWeGo ·
14/01/2013 13:38
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