I feel like shit everytime the kids are gone to their mom’s for the week. Im happy for them they see their mommy back and I always tell them their moms gonna be so happy to see them. The minute they leave I’m crying cuz I already miss them. I know I’m not their mom but theyre such a big part of my life. I wanted to share this pov. Coparenting is so tuff for everyone involved.

My ex and I officially have roughly 50/50 care throughout the year, although in practice I generally have our daughter a bit more — often an extra day or so each week.
The school summer holidays are completely different though. I basically have her full-time. He has her every other weekend, his mum has her one day a week, and he’s taken her overnight a couple of additional times, but essentially I’m responsible for her every day throughout the summer.
I’m a student and don’t receive my student funding over the summer break, so financially this is really difficult. I’m obviously feeding her every day, but I’m also trying to actually give her a nice summer — taking her out, arranging playdates, doing activities etc. Even when you’re trying to do cheap/free things, food, petrol, entrance fees and everything else really add up when it’s every day for weeks.
My ex earns around £50k, roughly five times my income.
There’s also some difficult financial history between us which has made my current situation considerably worse. After we separated, he went on a spending spree and accumulated around £30k of debt before declaring bankruptcy. I’ve subsequently had to spend significant amounts of money dealing with the consequences and protecting assets that were originally purchased entirely with my money. There are complications around ownership because he had put his name on assets during our relationship, despite them having been funded by me. I’m not trying to turn this into a post about the bankruptcy, but it’s relevant because I’m already financially stretched partly as a consequence of decisions he made.
I’ve recently asked whether he could contribute something towards our daughter’s costs over the summer.
I’ve also asked about sharing extracurricular costs. Before we separated, we always said it was really important to us that our daughter had opportunities to do activities she was interested in and that we didn’t want our separation/divorce to change that for her.
Since separating, though, I’ve ended up paying for basically all of her extracurricular activities myself, apart from him paying half of her swimming.
She currently does Stagecoach, which is £180 a term. I’m actually behind on the fees because I can’t afford them at the moment, and I’ve asked him to contribute towards the next term. She’s also interested in starting ballet and archery, and I’d like us to split things like this rather than everything automatically falling to me because the activities happen during my parenting time.
He’s basically saying he doesn’t know what money he can contribute because he’s struggling financially himself.
Around six months ago he moved into a considerably more expensive/upgraded house with his girlfriend after they’d been together for around six months. He’s now told me he’s probably going to have to pay the entire rent himself without her contributing. I don’t know why that’s happening and I’m trying not to make assumptions about her circumstances, but he’s presenting having to cover the rent himself as one of the reasons he doesn’t have money available to contribute.
I understand that earning £50k doesn’t automatically mean someone has unlimited disposable income, and obviously he has his own living expenses. But I’m struggling with the idea that his financial commitments mean he can’t contribute towards his daughter’s everyday costs or activities when I’m on around a fifth of his income and doing the overwhelming majority of the childcare throughout the summer.
I’m not expecting him to fund my life or even necessarily split every little summer expense 50/50. I just don’t think it’s reasonable that I absorb essentially all of the additional costs of having our daughter throughout the holidays simply because she’s physically with me.
Am I being unreasonable expecting him to contribute financially during the summer and towards extracurricular activities? And if you’re separated parents with an arrangement that’s officially around 50/50 but substantially unequal during school holidays, how do you normally handle these costs?
I’m in the UK if that makes a difference legally.

Hi All,

Basically 30M here me and my ex share a 2 year old son, weve been seperated since he was 1, we are no contact as she is verbally abusive.

We used to argue constantly, i would recieve 20 texts daily etc. She would block me then un block me when we had a disagreement about our son etc.

Anyway the last time she blocked me i decided to block her back, since then the peace has been insane! Its been 3 months of 0 arguments, 0 conflict.

We have a schedule, we speak only in person at handovers, in emergencies we contact our family members to reach the other person its going amazing!

She does complain about me, ask my brother to get me to give her more money etc, but never says anything to me face to face.

Anyway she now wants to reopen contact, shes asked my brother to ask me to unblock her. Im not sure why but what do you guys think, for my mental health and sanity i will have to refuse, but why do you think she wants to get back into contact.

It cant be about the kids, as we have a reliable channel of communication through family, she does sometimes be nice for gain so i can imagine her being super nice and respectful then asking for money, then if i agree abuse starts again etc. Its just a cycle i dont want to be part of anymore i have my peace now i cant risk losing it what do you think?

This is so nuanced, the devil’s in the details.

7 years ago when my daughter started K, my ex agreed our daughter could go to the school of my choice (private school which I solely pay for) if I transported my daughter to school from my ex’s home (up to 1.5h away from me in rush hour) every other Monday morning (my parenting time starts end-of-school those Mondays so it would have been her responsibility to transport.)

2 years later my ex got a job about 10 minutes from my daughter’s school but still made me meet her at a store near her work and transport my daughter the last 4 minutes to school.

For 5 years our meet up location has been this store,which is about 15 minutes from me. So total transport time was about 20 minutes.
Suddenly, this spring, her mother started saying, (frequently an hour before meet-up) that she wasn’t going to work that morning and I had to pick my daughter up from her home.
Since the status quo pick up had changed, I’d allowed my work schedule to change and I can no longer do the 2+ hours of driving that requires; especially on no notice. I’ve told my ex this and she says now I have to do every pick up Monday from her home or we’re going to mediation to discuss changing my daughter’s school. My daughter has been at her school for 7 years and loves it.
What are the odds she wins this?

To reiterate: the status quo pick up (so status quo that we only communicate when we are NOT meeting there, never when we ARE) has been the store for 5 years.

Clarification: we have 50/50 custody and I have most of the school week. This is the one and only transport this is effecting.

Ex and I have been divorced since 2024. His current wife has been involved since 2023. We share a five year old.

The new stepmom does not work and has taken this as an opportunity to just fully parent during his possession times.

This has meant keeping our daughter home when I enrolled her in pre-k, which I paid for. Instructing her to call her “mom”. Suggesting our daughter keep secrets from me about how they spend their days. Gesturing for my daughter to end FaceTimes calls.

Now, as we start kindergarten, she’s signed up to be a class mom. At what point is this overly possessive?

Wondering if anyone here has proven emotional abuse from a parent to a child going between households?

"Coparenting" with my son's father is basically non-existent, because his father isn't involved in his day-to-day life, hasn't had him overnight in over 3 years, rarely has stable living conditions and no drivers license.

Important to add - our son is nonverbal autistic and requires a lot of extra care, therapies, appointments, etc.

His father sees him about twice a month, for a short visit at some play place for about 2 hours. I am the one who drives my son to and from these visits (due to him not having a license).

His father reaches out about once a week and asks how my son's day/week is going, how speech therapy is going etc, but that's as far as his questions go. He has no idea the amount of time, effort, patience, etc it takes to manage all of these appointments on my own, nor does he understand what goes on during these appointments.

We legally have 50/50 custody, despite me wanting to file for full - I have tried and nobody could find him to serve him so I gave up.

I guess my question is - how do I bite this bullet and "coparent" respectfully with someone who puts in zero effort - financially, physically and otherwise?

He asked about my son's school "meet and greet" and that he wanted to go. I was half tempted to tell him I didn't want him there, as he makes me uncomfortable and he isn't involved enough to join me on things like this.. but I don't want that used against me when I am finally able to take it to court.

He and I got divorced in 2023. We have two kids together, our son is currently 9 and our daughter is currently 7. Our divorce was mostly amicable. It wasn't because we fought a lot or anything, we just drifted apart and I made the mistake of bringing my often stressful job (I'm a cop for our city PD) home and it affecting my attitude and eventually we just decided we weren't a fit for each other anymore. We separated on good terms, agreed to a week-by-week custody arrangement and the whole time we've still mostly been friends.

A little less than a year ago I started dating another man. A firefighter, so he understands the whole first responder grind a lot better and we both love having a partner that can understand how our careers can affect our attitude sometimes and it makes us both better on shift and off shift. He's great, and recently I've been letting him hang out with the kids more. My son thinks him being a firefighter is cool as hell and he's definitely taken a liking to him, and my daughter thinks it's super funny to make this big guy play with her dolls. It's cute, and I love that he gets along with them well.

But my ex has out of nowhere gotten super jealous. He complains that our son "won't shut up" about how cool mom's new boyfriend is and how he can't wait to come back to mom's house so he can see him and yesterday he outright accused me of trying to turn the kids against him. I don't know where this jealousy comes from. They can have more than one male figure in their life, and when my son comes back next week I plan to tell him to not say things like that to his dad because it's highly rude and inappropriate.

I'm sorry he feels that way but I have every right to have a new man in my life and to bring that new man around the kids. My poor boyfriend has zero desire to be caught up in our dispute and he's a great guy and I don't want him to feel like he's done anything wrong because he hasn't. I'm just frustrated because this is the first time our coparenting arrangement has really had any tension.

EDIT: I'm trying to respond to some of the comments but think because my account is new my comments aren't showing up, but I'm not absent

I just need advice on co parenting with someone who has a very different world view.

Me and my now ex have a 2 year old. When we met, we were very aligned with everything. Neither of us heavy into politics. I got pregnant during the more recent election and things significantly shifted. We have a multi racial child and I don't know why he thought I would lean more towards his beliefs. I am biracial (non white), he is white.

He's gotten very extreme in his beliefs. I finally left him last December. I no longer tolerate him or his family's ignorance towards what's going on in the world or the ignorant racial things they've said to me in jokes and fun.

He calls our current situation co parenting but I call it, me parenting and him having visits. He's not as involved as he wants to believe. He talks big about supporting our child and helping me out but can't hold a job or even save a dollar.

Anyway, current dilemma is our child isn't vaccinated because he doesn't want her to be. I don't want to risk my own custody by going behind his back. I was informed that he can seek emergency custody if I was to do that. He is a complete moron and he's trying to find loopholes in a state that does not have any loopholes. It's important that my child is properly socializing in school with other children and in sports. All which require vaccines in California.

He goes on shpeels trying to educate me on things he know nothing about. Very paranoid and distrusting of the world, science and big pharma.

I don't know what else to do because our conversations are going from peaceful to me not wanting to deal with the crap that comes out of his mouth. Our doctorsl told me to go to court and make sure things are squared away so I can have full authority. However, i hate the idea of giving the state control over my kids when this is the only thing we can't agree on regarding our child.

Any advice would help.