I was divorced in 94 and paid CS until 2009 when my youngest became 18. My ex would push my buttons and keeps trying to do it to this day. I’m saying this to establish I know where you are coming from re the tension of shuttling kids between two households and empathize re having to deal with an irrational or undependable spouse.
Having said all this you are, in all honesty, acting like a huge, huge jerk. Trying to drag your financially hapless ex into the question of how to come up with this money is like making fun of a retarded child. She’s a financial tard, she’s irresponsible, she doesn’t spend your CS contribution in appropriate and responsible ways… we get it… he gets it. She sucks because she won’t or can’t step up with half the required amount. You have won the debate!
Really… you should be ashamed of yourself for putting your kid in this position. It’s not his fault his mom’s a financial idiot. You chose her and married her, not him. Putting him on the spot for an attractive opportunity he cannot possible undertake without you more or less underwriting the financial end of this is cruel.
Put on your dad pants and pay for the trip. If you want him to kick in some cash after the fact work it out with him man to man. Stop trying to drag your financially incompetent ex into this decision it’s petty, stupid and controlling.
I think I’m hearing you on the lessons about life financing that you’re hoping to impart to your son in this situation, and I would completely agree with you … if we were talking about a situation where, let’s say, he was asking for start-up money for a business venture he was going into with his irresponsible cousin, or his dingbat best friend.
Okay, but this is his mother. He sounds like a good kid, having been chosen for this program and all, and it seems crappy to run him through the mill over his mom’s poor fiscal choices. You already know he’s worried about this. It seems like this situation would only encourage him to resent his mother’s shortcomings, and then feel guilty about resenting her (because again, it’s his mom, and she hopefully has some good qualities as a parent as well). He’s probably also aware, given how knowledgeable you said he is about your child support arrangements, that some of these funds are directly or indirectly benefiting his younger half brother, and on top of everything else, he might feel responsible/guilty about insisting that the money go toward his trip.
Whether you fund it or not, or assist him with a financial repayment plan (this was a great suggestion, either paying it back directly from wages or through project work for you), it would be kinder to base it on what you can afford and what you realistically feel his contribution could be. Leave dopey mom out of it.
Get over your issues with your Ex, and stop putting your son in the middle. Oh and acknowledge that your issues, with how the child support is spent, should never be shared with your child.
And while you’re at it, get over your self ‘teaching’ him hard financial lessons. He’s worried the rest of his ‘other’ family, may be out in the street, without your contribution. (Believe me, he’s already learned all the hard financial lessons he’ll need.) And all you can do is feel righteous? Seems like maybe you could do some learning too!
I’ve been through this except my bad with money ex spouse is male. Don’t make your kids the go between or the ones who pay. I’m not suggesting you pay the entire amount if you can’t afford it, making bad financial decisions yourself is not going to reverse the damage your ex wife’s financial lessons have wrought.
What you need to do is take your ex and child support out of the equation.
If you think it’s a good idea, you think he deserves it and you think you can afford it, do it.
If you think he should contribute base his contribution on what HE can control.
There are tons of great ideas in this thread of ways he can contribute himself. Don’t teach him that you’re going to make him pay for his mother’s sins.
The other half of this however is that you don’t enable him supporting her. This is something (not trip related) that you’re going to have to watch for when child support stops. I found out a couple years ago that my ex started “borrowing” from my son when he started his first job at 16 and didn’t stop until I had an intervention with my kids when Son was 20. By that time my ex had “borrowed” over $5000 and hadn’t paid back a cent. All by using his younger half siblings as leverage. Oh you wouldn’t want the kids to go hungry/without heat/without AC would you? This while the boy is working and putting himself through university and managing to save money to travel.
The intervention mostly worked (you can’t teach your father good financial habits, no matter how much money you give him he can always spend more, you need to cut back on your work hours because your school work is slipping, he’s not going to pay you back if you give him money you need to recognize that you’re just giving it and the crowning glory - you realize that you’re paying for his AC while you and your roommates have decided to not turn yours on because of the cost?) but my daughter just confessed that my son allowed my ex to use his tutition credits on his income tax this year. Since the boy doesn’t earn enough to claim the credits yet it doesn’t seem to him like he’s handing over cash but since those credits can be saved for several years this is going to cost him later. Time for another “hey this is how tax works” lesson, but I need to have it without outing my daughter for telling me.
Yes yes yes! I found myself thinking about this thread last night and feeling so bad for this kid. Isn’t being a teen enough pressure without being put in the middle of your divorced parents financial issues?
Omar needs to cough up for the darn trip and have the kid get a job to make some money for spending money. This way he does contribute but the trip doesn’t depend on him getting a job in this crappy economy.
The kid’s got enough money in his savings to pay for most of the trip himself. He also has a job. He doesn’t need to be coddled. And he’s not in between his mom and I. He has a separate relationship with each of us. He’s fully aware of his mom’s poor money management skills…not from me, but from first hand knowledge.
I guess I’m an easy mark here, since I’ve got the wherewithall to pay for the trip myself, but the problem is, so should she. Our custody arrangement is that we are supposed to share the costs of his expenditures 50/50…of course the source of her funds to pay her share come from me via the child support. When she doesn’t live up to her side of the bargain, she’s cheating my son and me.
I have a feeling that if I was a mom, complaining about the deadbeat father that never paid his share, the tune posted here would be a bit different.
When he heads off to college next year, I will be footing the bill. I will also no longer having my ex-wife picking my pocket.
The problem isn’t that your wife is a deadbeat who doesn’t pay her share. The problem is that you are forcing your child into this situation inappropriately. If a woman were on here complaining about her deadbeat ex-husband and asking what people thought about her plan to make her child ask the deadbeat ex for money that they both knew the deadbeat wasn’t going to have or be able to come up with, in order for that child to participate in an opportunity that everyone seems to think would be a worthwhile one, I think the responses would be identical.
Nobody is sympathizing with your ex-wife here. They are sympathizing with your son.
So why are you *putting *him in between the two of you again? You’re standing by the principle of “50/50” when you know that that isn’t going to be the reality, hasn’t been for some time, and isn’t going to matter in another year. What are you proving in this situation, and who is going to suffer the consequences? Hint: it isn’t you, and it isn’t your ex.
If you’re determined on principle to pay only half of the trip, then that’s fine: he has the money to cover the other half. I think that sounds like a perfectly reasonable arrangement for a trip like this even leaving your ex out of it completely.
But suggesting to your son that he ask his mom for the money, knowing the situation, benefits no one except you and your wounded pride. If it really bothers you that much, man up and pick up the phone and call your ex and tell her she needs to chip in for the trip. Otherwise, do right by your son and treat him like the adult he’s becoming-- which means not rubbing his nose in his mom’s bad decisions.
I’m with Sveijk on this one. 6000 USD might not be much for an all expenses paid, maximum filled trip, but is that really what your son needs? Especially since either he, or his mom, can’t afford to pay it and they will have to rely on you for it, either for a gift or a loan?
Sure, you could make an do-europe-in-14-days-trip. Your son will see all the sights and he will be told all sorts of stuff.
But there are alternatives. If he wanted to fully immerse himself in a culture, he could do so much cheaper by following a study course abroad. He wouldn’t lose out on college time, it would look good on his resume, and it would teach him independence.
If he wanted just to meet kids from al over the world abroad, another possibility is to volunteer.. Also looks good on a resume and may deepen his understanding of the world and his altruism. It is also so cheap that he could afford it easily on a summer job.
Backpacking is another possibility. That also builds a lot of independence and self-reliance and self-confidence. Again, much cheaper then 6000 bucks.
A trip like the one you planned just treats your son like bus coach meat. All he will learn is how to be a tourist on all inclusive trips.
This is the point I was trying to make earlier. She is cheating both of you, and that sucks, but there’s nothing you can do to make your ex-wife make it right. She apparently can’t support her own lifestyle at the moment even when she’s improperly using your child support funds in an attempt to do so. If you were somehow able to make her live up to her obligations and pay half the cost of the trip with those funds, it would just create a bigger hole in her finances that, if I’m understanding the situation correctly, would have negative implications for your son. It’s not fair and it’s not right, but that seems to be the situation you’ve described.
Since she can’t pay, the financing for the trip comes down to whatever you and your son can arrange between you. You both know that already, so what purpose is served by making him go to your ex-wife?
I am not and have never been in a situation like the OP’s, but I completely agree with what he’s doing. It’s not unreasonable to ask his 17 year old son to come up with half the expenses, even if it means asking his mom.
I don’t understand the notion that the OP is trying to teach his ex a lesson or put his son in the middle of a battle. The kid apparently fully understands the situation. There aren’t any lessons to be learned. Just because we all know the ex is bad with money doesn’t mean she can’t even be asked to take make any contributions.
Since Omar Little mentioned his son would be a student ambassador I imagine there are aspects to the trip he wouldn’t experience as a typical tourist.
Everything I know about the son, which I’ll admit comes entirely from this thread, points to him being a good, responsible kid. My gut reaction is that whatever can be done within reason to make the trip possible for him should be done.
Forcing him to ask his mother, who he knows is on shaky financial footing puts him in a bad spot. If his choices are A) ask mom for money or B) don’t go he might choose not to go to spare his mom or himself the unpleasantness that would surround asking her for money she doesn’t have.
In Omar’s shoes I would ask my son to be responsible for 1/3 rather than half, and would consider him asking his grandparents, aunts and uncles to chip in an acceptable way for him to add to his own savings.
Did you have problems with this woman over money, or communicating about money while you were married to her? Or fairly dividing responsibilities? When I was in the throes of divorcing my son’s father one of my wisest friends asked me to remember that the problems we had in our marriage would be the same problems we had in our divorce.
Basically because he is instructing his son to “ask his mother for the money” when the outcome of that conversation cannot be in doubt, and in the OP it seems to be a condition of Omar’s contribution. It seems he wants to force the son to act as an envoy to shame the Ex with her failings.
I think you are unwittingly punishing your son for his mother’s lack of money management skills. Does it suck that the funds intended for your son are not being spent exclusively on your son? Yes. Should she be kicking in for the trip? Yes. Is it ever going to happen? No. Who gets to be technically right and a total dick at the same time? You. Who loses out? Your son.
It sounds like your son is helping to support his mother, half-brother and his step-father. If that’s not the case and he is blowing his wages on video games and junk food, then you have every right to expect him to chip in. If he is spending his money on helping out with groceries and gas, I’m unclear on what you expect him to do in a Catch-22 that he was unfortunate enough to be born into.
Not from me it wouldn’t. You’re 100% right that she should pay half. What you’re wrong about is that you have a kid who is 100% stuck in the middle and you are looking to teach him the wrong lesson.
My contribution isn’t contingent upon him asking his mom. He can come up with the other half whereever he wants to. But he doesn’t want to foot the entire other half himself, nor do I expect him to. He plans on putting forth a $1,000 on his own, which will leave about $2 grand short. I suggested that he ask his mother how much she would be willing put in, since she is his other parent and does receive money from me for his support. Oh, the horror of that suggestion. :rolleyes: What a horrible parent I am!
If she says no or nothing, he can come back to me and we talk about other alternatives. Where did I say he wasn’t going to get to go? Does it piss me off that she’s irresponsible, especially when it’s in regard to our son? Hell yes, and rightly so.
But to suggest that I should coddle him and spare him his dissapointment of his mom’s behavior, that’s on her. And yes, I do think teaching him to behave in an adult like manner and having reasonable expectations of how the adults around you behave is a good lesson for him to learn. He’s not 9.
ETA: and I don’t remember her being this irresponsible with money when we were married, but I was more in charge of the monthly financial picture then. I paid the bills, etc. Maybe she’s having more fun with her new husband, and may be why she left me.
This is the part that you are heartbreakingly blind to. You want to rub his nose in her shit. That’s sad.
What is unreasonable is expecting the situation with his mother to change. He’s going to learn a lesson all right, but it’s not the one you are thinking.
With all of your psychological expertise and vast knowledge of my family that you’ve garnered in about 250 words, please tell the lesson he’s going to learn.
ISTM the issue is that asking his mother to pay for a portion of it would be perfectly reasonable - if you weren’t as sure as you seem to be that the answer will be No.
You know your ex is a deadbeat. Your son apparently knows his mother is a deadbeat. What’s the point of making him ask her - to prove that she is a deadbeat? Everybody involved already knows that.
Nobody disagrees with you that your ex should be more responsible.
If you are forcing him to ask his mother to make some kind of point, I think it is not a good idea.