2019 ended with my ex sending an email acknowledging he owed me $117,000 in retroactive support payments but advised that his lawyer told him not to pay me unless I sign an order dismissing all outstanding matters before the court.  He also reduced his support payments to me by more than $700/month to put pressure on me to do this.

We have a mediation agreement in place that spells out exactly how he is to pay support. For 3 years he chose not to disclose his income.  I had no choice but to go to court in order for him to do this.  That forced him to disclose 2 years of income information and to file his taxes for the 3rd year of income. He still failed, however, to disclose all sources of income as per the agreement so the judge gave him an additional 60 days to do that.  He did not.  Now we have to secure another court date.  It is clear from what has been disclosed that he at least owes $117,000 but he said he isn’t going to pay voluntarily.  He will wait for the judge to order that.

This is not a negotiable issue. We have an agreement in place since 2014 but as usual, even though he gloated about how much he “won” in that agreement, he still wants to play games and withhold support as a power and control move over me. His response:

“You’ve become a bar joke Robyn. People always have a horror story about divorce and the crazy ex’s and what they have to pay in support. No one can top me. I tell people to read the blog so they can see what type of person I’m dealing with. I tell people how much I pay in support and they are flabbergasted at what you do. That’s what you’ve become at age 53, a bar joke, and not much else.”

He’s got one thing right.  No one can top him.

He makes in excess of $225,000/year.  He won’t pay any portion of our daughter’s dance expenses even though he agreed this would be a special expense where we pay our share according to our income. He never paid a dime towards our pet expenses even though he agreed to pay 50%.  He hasn’t contributed a dime to support our daughter’s Global Perspectives trip to Tanzania where she has worked for 2 years in school to raise funds to build a library for a girls’ dorm.  He came to one meeting, signed the consent for her to go, made an appearance at one of the fundraisers (although apart from his $15/ticket he never gave any money to the cause or donated anything for the silent auction) and even though he knows exactly from the meeting the cost of the trip he still asked me twice to send over the information. (I actually have sent it at least 3 times and every time I followed up asking if he was forwarding his share of the payments to me he asked me to send the documentation again).  There are a lot of things she needs for this trip but all I asked him to contribute towards is the flight and hotel–$4800, $180 for the passport and $250 for vaccinations and malaria pills. He recognizes that the trip is considered an Extraordinary Expense under the Family Law Act for our daughter’s education and knows he is required to pay his share.  His response to me in December is that I can’t have my cake and eat it too. He wants me to sign the consent saying I won’t go after him for anything else he is responsible to pay, he will pay me the $117,000 and he will then consider paying me the trip (the expense was incurred after our court application was filed so it is not currently before the court, but we will now just add it).

If he wants to complain about what he has to pay in support, he should at least pay it. If he didn’t want to pay support, he never should have had an affair and left the marriage.  If he now spends his time sitting in bars telling his story to anyone who will listen then I suspect that 7 years after having an affair and destroying his family and everything we built together, that the grass is not so green on the other side.