Child support can be a sore point for many co-parents, especially when one side refuses to pay up. After four long years, one Redditor's ex finally decided to step up and hand over the child support he owed for their son. But he has a problem with how she is spending it, and now the mom wants to know if she's in the wrong.
The mom began by explaining her ex didn’t even believe her when she told him she was pregnant.
As the original poster explained in a post on the Am I the A–hole subreddit, her ex accused her of lying “and then when I took a test in front of him to prove I wasn’t lying he claimed it couldn’t be his child, and I was trying to trap/manipulate him,” she wrote.
The two ended up going their separate ways and the OP has been raising her now 4-year-old son on her own.
Recently, “his sister reached out to me on social media to tell me my son looked exactly like my ex did at that age,” she wrote. “Then suddenly he and his family wanted to meet my son and make up for lost time.”
After years of nothing, her ex did do something right — he gave her “an eye watering amount of ‘child support’ for the years he’s missed.”
And the money gave the OP an idea. Ever since she first found out she was pregnant, her parents have been saving to buy their first house.
“My financial situation was very bad during the first two years of my son’s life, and I don’t know how we would’ve survived if my parents hadn’t helped me, but it meant that their dream of owning their own home was no longer a reality,” she recalled. “So, when my ex gave me the money, I gave some of it to my parents so that they could buy their house, which they did.”
But the money recently came into question when the OP’s ex told her he thought she should move closer to him.
OP told him that the area was way too expensive for her and that she didn’t have the money to live there — but he pointed out she did in fact have the money: all of that child support cash.
“I didn’t want to tell him about helping my parents, but he kept going on and on about moving closer to him, so I finally snapped and told him I didn’t have all of the money he gave me anymore,” she recalled. "He made a joke about how I couldn’t have spent it that fast, but he realized I wasn’t joking and asked me what I did with the money.”
That’s when the OP slipped and told him that she gave the money to her parents “and he wasn’t happy at all.”
“We had a fight over it where I told him if he hadn’t been such a deadbeat none of this would’ve happened and he said I had stolen from our son,” she wrote. “Now he keeps saying that I was right, and we should let the lawyers handle everything from now on instead of him trying to be nice.”
"So Am I the A–hole?" she asked.
Many of the commenters thought the OP was doing the right thing by paying her parents back.
“[Not the A–hole]," one commenter wrote. "Someone paid for his son and you paid them back. He has no reason to be angry honestly."
"Ohhhh, so he was meant to be able to CONTROL you with that money, and you messed up his plans? another person noted. "How rude of you. [Not the A–hole]. As others have pointed out, if he wasn't around for the first four years, he doesn't NOW get to complain because you gave some money to the people who stopped his now-magically-precious son from starving."
"[Not the A–hole]," someone else commented. "The way I see it is, your parent's paid child support in the absence of your ex, so when he did pay, you just paid your parents back. It really isn't that complicated."
Others felt it wasn't her money to give away.
"That money was for your son not your parents," one commenter pointed out. "I swear courts need to make moms account for how they spend support."
Another wrote: "[You're the A–hole] That money should have been used for your son for his future. He'll need the money more than your parents will in the coming decades."
"[You're the A–hole]," another commenter decided. "Not actually an AH but for the sake of this sub I’m writing it. Now your ex is also TA but that money is meant to go towards your son. Your parents helped which is really great! But that’s no[t] how child support works, it’s meant for son."
The OP later clarified that she only gave her parents 20 to 25% of her ex's money — "but I'm thinking about moving in with them since they have the space now," she wrote.
"My ex is the type of person that believes he can throw money at a problem to make it disappear or to get his way," she added, but she's not going to let his money control her.
"I don't care if he doesn't give me any more money, I don't need or want his help."
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