2 lunches??
So a week ago BM has been bugging DH for more money.
First it was help with lunches and care for days off school. Now it's like even for after care and summer care (even though she is only with BM for like 2 or 3 weeks in the summer and with us the majority of summer where we of course pay for SD's expenses, still pay for child support) doesn't make sense. So without DH knowing I go on the schools website and figure out how to add money to SD's lunch account. You'd be surprised how easy it was with just knowing her birthdate and grade. Well no wonder BM spends so much on lunches, SD buys 2 Lunches a day!!! She spends $6.50-$8 a day on lunch!!! If you ask me that is NUTS!!!! I know you people are probably like why didn't you tell DH, well because he said don't do it and in my head I'm like how much can it be? And just suffice BM and keep her mouth shut, but like yah I want to be like you know how much food your kid gets a day!!!! Omg ...
- frustratedbonusmom's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
Comments
Is she eating it or....
Do you think she's eating both or giving one away?
Lol I did think about that ,
Lol I did think about that , but my guess is she is definitely eating it. When she is visiting she wants to order from adult menu, gets mad when told to order off kids menu, and probably eats more than my daughter and I combined. She might be a little overweight but definitely not super overweight, I get it if she's hungry but $6.50 most days if a little much if you ask me. Put $30 on account after BM put $30 and that's not going to last long when she spends that much.
"BM, I called the school and
"BM, I called the school and asked them how much lunch and a dessert/snack is. They said $x. I will send along $x times y school days this month. Thanks."
Agreed, trust me that's my
Agreed, trust me that's my response.
Easy and a good learning moment.
Stop recharging her account. If she eats a week's worth of lunches in two days, she can go hungry for lunch the rest of the week.
Keep it simple.
If DH pays CS, it is on BM to feed the kid when the kid is not in your direct presence.
Again... Keep it simple.
We were the CP household. The SpermClan paid CS. It was a pittance. Even with that pittance they would take the position that when SS was in SpermLand on visitation DW should pay them.
Ummmm. Nope. That is not how it works.
Keep BM on the hook for care and feeding of SD when SD is on BM time. When BM asks for help, remind her of the help DH provides with every CS check. Remember, DH pays BM to care for the Skids. He needs to hold her accountable for delivery on what he pays her for..
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Thank you, I agree, it was
Thank you, I agree, it was first time I ever put money on her account so was just made aware of what she buys for lunch. Completely agree with you BM gets CS, claims her yearly on taxes, but with her complaints would show we are helping and keep her from taking DH back to court.
If I've learned anything
If I've learned anything about dealing with a HCBM, it is that if you give BM an inch, she will take a mile. You are helping BM to keep her from taking you back to court. The issue is, it will never be enough for BM. First it's lunch money, then it's for extra childcare, then extra money for extracurriculars, then, before you know it, you are fully funding SD while in BM's care and BM gets to keep her money that she should be contributing. You end up fully paying for two households instead of one, all while BM sits on her a** doing nothing.
In the end, a HCBM will take you to court when they feel you are no longer useful and feel that you need a swift kick in the a** to put you back in line, meaning doing what BM wants. If you stay within your CO or your CS order, there isn't much BM can do except take DH back for more CS. CS is supposed to essentially cover half of SD's expenses, with BM contributing the other half, not all of it. Don't give BM more than she is entitled to per the courts.
Yep.
Brilliant as usual CJJ.
Yep and furthermore
I would get the CO revised for you to ALTERNATE tax years so that you get to claim SD every other year. Chef learned this the hard way and we lost so much money b/c of this. When you pay a large amount of CS you're entitled to alternate (1 skid, every other year, 2 skids each parent claims one child, 3 skids--heaven forbid--2/1 rotation, etc)
Chef got stuck claiming only the oldest while the Girhippo greedily claimed the 2 youngest and in fact cheated us out of our last year of claiming YSS after I had put my foot down late in the game and demanded a rotation of YSS after OSS emancipated "accidentally" at 19. This unfairness had gone on for 12 yrs until I said ENOUGH! We got to claim SD for 1 whole yr when she was 17--Chef had been separated/ divorced and paying massive CS since she was five.
omg so unfair, I agree with
omg so unfair, I agree with you but SD lives with BM since BM moved her out of state so it is actually fair to keep it as is, but just dont agree with having to pay more when she gets CS and the tax refund
Unless
You're paying a fairly low amount of CS, I would still go for it. In our case the Girhippo had sole physical custody and they PASed out in 5 years. Chef was paying over $390 a week (in 2004 dollars) for non arrears CS and only making $25 an hour tops. She had tacked everything on to it...all the extras the orthodonture (braces at age eight for the two oldest) you name it.
Chef was bringing home $60-$100 a WEEK after CS and taxes. Yet the Gir would send them over in rags and expect for us to pay for any extras as well. The 3 ferals would insist on trips to the mall and eating out while they were with us Which for quite a while was EVERY weekend not EOW.
They had become accustomed to the finer things at the Girhippo's house especially after she married Step daddy big bucks.
I simply could not support it all on my salary alone. The breaking point came when Chef overdrew my account due to guilty daddy spending. Money that we did not have.
Lol. The SpermClan tried the EOY tax thing.
Fortuneately unsuccessfully.
They tried that when CS went up from $110/mo to $133/mo.
Nope, even the Moron Judge we had during that trial did not bite on that.
I would go for EOY tax write off if I was an NCP. Regardless of what CS level I was paying. I do not hold that attempt against the SpermClan nor anyone else.
That a CP has no responsibility to account for how CS is spent has always been infuriating to me. Even as the DH of hte CP in our blended family journey.
If SD is generally in a
If SD is generally in a fairly normal weight range.. I think the answer is for her father to talk with her and find out why she is buying 2 lunches. She may have been bullied into buying for another child. She may be trying to buy a friendship. She may be helping a less fortunate student. She could be just being wasteful (wanting something from both lunches but wasting food). OR.. she could just plain be hungry.. maybe she didn't get breakfast etc..
It really depends on the answer he gets how he wants to proceed. and... if she is at her mom's most of the time, unfortunately, he doesn't have control over whether she got a good breakfast.. or whether she could pack a sandwich to supplement what she gets at lunch etc.. but he may be able to talk with her about the other possible reasons she is overbuying.
I agree, but knowing the way
I agree, but knowing the way she eats when she is here, I really think she is eating both lunches ..and she gets breakfast at school as well, which school gives to all kids for free, so yes she has breakfast too ... I agree just asking a question should be had, and trust me if she is feeding a hungry child I am 100% okay with that (but just need to know) because trust me I am that mom that would be packing all the hungry kids a lunch if I could because knowing kids go to school without lunches breaks my heart :(
While I agree with you and feel as you do, I have a problem with
'free' lunch, etc.. as a concept. It is not free. Someone has to earn it. Missing a meal will not hurt a kid. Missing meal after rmeal after meal is of course a different situation. It is the parents of those kids who should be held accountable for feeding their children.
Giving thoise parents a get out of jail free card when they fail to care for their children, is the core problem IMHO.
I agree with the others, no
I agree with the others, no paying for extras unless it’s spelled out in the CO. Also not sure how old your SD is, but I do know if the school has a snack bar they can charge that to their lunch account as well. When my BD got into junior high she was always running out of money on her lunch account when in grade school the amount would have lasted a whole month. Dependent on what type of account you can go in and see what they are purchasing. In my BD’s case she was buying lunch, and snacks on her account. I told her if she needed snacks then she could bring those from home because I couldn’t keep paying 60 dollars every two weeks so she could buy cookies and slushies and slices of pizza on top of her lunch.
Ask the school but our lunch
Ask the school but our lunch accounts have parental controls- Can't buy ice cream, or can only buy on Friday. The older schools have things like Izzy's, you can stop the al a carte items and only do the actual lunch line. You can limit one lunch. Etc. It is all on the parental portal- but check to see if the school offers that.
I put up restrictions on DD once because she was tearing through her account $25-30 a week. Then I found out she was feeding a friend that parents didn't send lunch and her lunch account was empty. I felt so bad for kid that I allowed it to continue.
Regardless of how much of little CS is paid, the NCP has to
hammer home compliance with the CO onto the CP.
If they do not, they just abdicate even more of their status and more of the advantage to the CP.
In our case, my DW was the CP, she did not hammer home the NCP remaining compliant with the CO for a number of years out of the naive belief that if she did not hold them accountable, they (The SpermClan) would not take out their toxic crap on the Skid when he was in SpermLand on visitation. Once she gained clarity that they were taking it out on the kid even more because she did not enforce compliance with the CO, she climbed up their asses and stayed their for the remainder of the CO years.
Yes, be nice. Until it is time to not be nice, then it is game on and they have earned having their throat torn out for toxic crap. Figuratively of course.
Absolutely. Playing nice and
Absolutely. Playing nice and avoiding rocking the boat just puts the HC parent in charge NCP or CP.
In our case at first DH had to jump through BM's hoops in order to see SD. Pay this amount of money and you can have her this weekend. Then it became pay this amount of money and I will put her on the phone. Then pay this amount of money and don't expect anything. Playing nice quickly devolved into something like prostitution.
Prostitution paid on the installment plan.
Far to many NCPs are in this never ending shit show.
This is why there has to be a CO. This is why the CO has to be understood comprehensively. This is why the CO must be inforced aggressively.
In our case, no one in the SpermClan likely ever read the CO. We both kept a copy of it on our work hard drive, along with a copy of the supplemental County rules and state regulations. When the SpermGrandHag would start making shit up or pulling out of her ass we would beat the snot out of her with rolled up copies of those documents. Figuratively of course. She hated that. There was no indication that she ever figured out that all she had to do was read the CO and the pain would have stopped. Instead, she kept pulling stuff out of some unintelligent orifice of her body then tried to enforce that as fact.
SpermGrandHag: 'The Judge I clean house for says I can do this and you can' t do that.'
Our side: 'See you in court,'
Every time they invoked court, they lost. It was obvious they never read the CO. Just before issueing an order, the new Judge would climb on them pretty hard for wasting everyone's time then would tell them that they should be held to pay for our legal costs and if they ever were back in front of that Judge they would be ordered pay all legal costs for our side.
Of course, we never had the same judge twice. But watching them sheepishly scope the carpet while getting their asses chewed was always somewhat satisfying.
With the caveat
That judges as a rule are not nearly as concerned when a CP BM violates the CO aa they are when a NCP bioDAD breaks the CO. I think most of us here are living proof of that.
Chef tried to play nice and let her have her way/ turn the other cheek/take the high road while she violated the CO with a breathtaking impertinance. It only emboldened her further.
The Girhippo basically wiped her ass with the very slanted toward CP BM CO. When we brought this out in court, the judge tried his hardest to minimilize the whopping infraction and several times gave her a limp wristed "Mrs. StepDaddyBigBucks, you're not supposed to do that. "
Hell she didn't even bother showing up for a court date because she left a hand written note saying it was too stressful and got away with it. Had CHEF done that he'd still be sitting in the county lock up.
You will get no argument from me on that.
It has long boggled my mind that the Bench seems to far too often be filled by the bottom 10%ers of the legal profession who ignore the best interst of the kids over, and over, and over again while ruling for dipshit parents..
Even as the mate of the CP, it is clear to me that the NCP gets the short end of the stick far more often than not and the CP gets a seeming eternal get out of jail free card from the idiot bottom 10%ers of the legal profession who end up on the family law bench.
Though the CP advantage was firmly in our favor, we did regularly see the bias of SpermLand courts toward the local half of the blended equation. My DW left with SS when he was a toddler and never returned to SpermLand as a resident. When SS was born and the Spermidiot pulled his continuing statutory rape of minor girls crap DW did nail him with a CS order. That Judge did DW and SS a huge favor by awarding DW full physical and legal custody of SS. The Judge retired shortly after issuing that order. That CO apparently prevented the following Judge from ruining the lives of DW and SS more than a year later when the SpermClan attempted to take custody of SS away from my DW.
I didn't have time to read
I didn't have time to read all the responses.
Killjoy was getting two lunches for over a year, we found out she was eating the chips and cookies from both and throwing two sandwiches away every day. 180 x 2 = 360 sandwiches. What an azzhole.
This is why they need to ask.
This is why they need to ask.. and without judgement listen to what she has to say.. it could very well be the case she is cherry picking the "good" stuff.. or she could be eating it all.. or giving or selling it! or being forced to give it to someone... not all kids need the same portions.. so if she is a fairly normal size.. then maybe she needs that much for energy? not saying dad should have to suck it all up though
Hey, I am not sure if there
Hey, I am not sure if there was a glitch here on Step Talk or if you shut down replies to your "Here we go" post today. I had to chime in.
There is a unwritten THING where you never, ever book, plan, or even suggest a huge event that may require you to negotiate with the ex. Also never give her warning of a celebration either. Some BM's will find a way to ruin it all. Keep your plans very close to the vest. Even IF you must not inform the child until very last minute. We learned this the hard way after several holidays and special events ruined.
You wrote in "Here we go"
"The she tells us no judge will let SD out of school for a week, three weeks after school starts. Okay I get it not ideal, but it is what it is.But it was okay for BM to take SD out 2 weeks before spring break for a week??"
UGHHH I know it is frustrating, to say the least. But here is the thing, DO NOT put yourself in any situation were you must ask BM. Why would you pick a date for your wedding that will NOT fall on your step Childs time with dad? Why not plan it ONLY during dads time.
Either realize bm will not approve the dates, or change the date. Now it is up to you. But never give bm that much power in your life. Like I said, we learned the hard way. We tried to be fair and decent, we tried to be fully transparent in all things...to prove co-parenting was our focus. We tried, really tried. But bm had other ideas.
I would also think perhaps
I would also think perhaps the response of SD school made her realize not taking time is better. So when she did it she did not real. When you now want to..she does know. Or she is just one sided.
But yeah. Planning the wedding on bm time AND during school? That was not the way to do it if you wanted her to attend.
I would also think perhaps
I would also think perhaps the response of SD school made her realize not taking time is better. So when she did it she did not real. When you now want to..she does know. Or she is just one sided.
But yeah. Planning the wedding on bm time AND during school? That was not the way to do it if you wanted her to attend.