I wanted to elaborate on the item I broached in my last post.
xW is now proposing that instead of me paying her CS, we should just split all of the childcare costs down the middle. She would even go so far as each of us taking one of the two boys (me S9 and she S5) and covering just their expenses, separately. She would take out dependent care coverage on one dependent the next time her enrollment opens with her employer.
The funny thing is two years ago I offered this as a solution (well, maybe not divvying it up by each child, per se) during our (so-called) "voluntary" mediation at that time. xW first shot it down and the (biased) mediator supported that objection. I threw this suggestion out again back when our lawyers were trying to hammer out an agreement almost a year later (it gained even less traction.) Now, all of a sudden -- most likely having something to do with the fact that S5 will be entering public school this Fall -- xW is singing a new tune. It can only mean she is rejiggering the deal yet again only because it somehow now offers her some advantage.
The gist of it would mean that I would be making payments for daycare and/or after-school care during my weeks and she would cover her own weeks. Seems reasonable.
However, the problem I see with her changing this up now is manyfold. First, her original reasons against still stand. By paying for both children together and their weeks together, we each save money. For track-out care at the YMCA, it requires at least one of us to maintain a membership -- xW's rationale back then was to question why should it be necessary to force both parents to maintain a monthly Y membership and the associated costs. With splitting it up, I would be required to take on a Y membership myself. Furthermore, since the various weeks would thus have to be paid ad hoc instead of as a quarterly disbursement we would lose the weekly discount for paying in bulk. The cost savings to both of us were her original rationalizations against splitting these tabs in the first place.
It is apparent she now wants to make sure I am further hurt financially, however much or however little that might end up being, regardless if she hurts herself in the process. She just wants to be petty.
Likewise she is intimating that I have all along been failing to pay my fair share anyway -- saying what I pay hardly counts to offset what she has been paying to providers. And she further suggests that my having to pay these childcare expenses will force me to face my lack of contribution, as she sees it, to my S's upkeep.
I don't think she has an earthly clue to what she's saying. I've run the numbers and I've tried to explain to her that a significant part of my child support -- to which she doesn't quite appreciate -- is not represented in the monthly check I write her but by the premiums for medical and dental coverage I provide for both of our S's. She still gets a net paycheck each month that is far more than her due, as I have as many expenses raising our S's during my weeks as she does during hers.
Also, should she take one of the boys under her for dependent benefits coverage, she will be paying more for that first dependent of hers than I have been paying for a second dependent up to that point.
Added all up I can see she's being exceedingly less thrifty with money than she usually is. But I guess if she thinks she can get me to waste more than herself, she'll accept that loss.
Another thing she hasn't considered -- which you can be sure I am, a very hard look-see -- is that if she wants to place the onus on me for paying these childcare expenses directly instead of putting that into her hands as she had been insisting, since forever, I will take her anti and raise her double. She is efectively, raising the bar to me taking full reigns of my daycare provisions for my S's. I fully intend to and am in the very process of shopping for my daycare providers during my own weeks entirely. xW don't know it yet, but she's now opened the whole can of worms about daycare in general -- not just the question of what mechanism we employ -- and thus the floodgates will be open: I can now provision my own daycare for my S's during my weeks, and give now heed to what plans xW has always been wanting to foist on all of us. I can carve my own path and thumb my nose at xW and her megalomania. I can tell her evil mother, the treacherous xMIL, to take a hike -- I DO NOT have to pay xMIL half of what she's getting now, as xW is trying to assume.
See, my ex has for a long time taken advantage of my willingness to compromise and succumb to her plans. I bent over backwards for her and went the extra mile, out of some elusive hope (at first) that perhaps our M could have been saved and (later) that we could have reached some form of cordiality and peace between us, as co-parents. This has been her means of leverage against me.
But now, I am embracing the fact that she has most certainly and willingly made herself to be my enemy ... and as such I owe her nothing, absolutely nothing ... and I no longer have to play her games anymore. I am free now -- I no longer feel the need to relinquish whatever control she demands to smooth the road between us. No longer need I walk on egg shells.
I am giddy now just thinking that she is finally cutting the ties that have held me down so long. I'm not relishing the added expenses this will require of me, naturally, but the prospect of freeing myself from her control (and the nasty xMIL's oversight), even in just this one key area, leads me to think she doesn't know what she is proposing.
The one rub to all this is that this new proposed arrangement is not exactly in line with the wording of our consent order. I hate it, but I'm probably going to have to contact the L again to get a verdict.
