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Mom Asks If It's Wrong To Save Up Child Support And Make Son Walk To School

Published October 22, 2021

When a couple with children gets a divorce, it's inevitable for the question of child support to come up.

And while it's possible for both parents to come to an agreement about what seems like a fair contribution to a household's expenses, we often hear about cases where the one on the hook for these payments either vanishes completely or coughs them up extremely begrudgingly.

But what tends to get the general public about as mad are stories in which the parent receiving this money uses it for purposes that aren't relevant to a child's upbringing.

Either of these genres tend to turn any discussion about child support into a heated debate online, and this context likely has a lot to do with why one mom recently found herself explaining more about her situation than she expected to.

Even before they got together, the mom we're about to hear from and her ex had very different concepts of financial stability.

BBC via YouTube

As she explained in a Reddit post, she grew up with a single parent and was used to living by a strict budget, while her ex grew up knowing he'd never have to worry about money in his life.

This has resulted in him contributing more than he needs to in child support payments and the mom in turn finds she only needs to use 20%-30% of each payment at a time.

But while this arrangement would sound like a dream come true to a lot of parents, it has recently become a point of contention for the former couple.

Warner Home Video via YouTube

Apparently, what ignited their argument was the fact that the mom will not accept money for a car and instead has her four-year-old son walk to and from school.

But while her ex sees this decision as unnecessarily frugal, the mom figures she wouldn't use the car often enough to justify what she considers to be a wasteful expense.

As she put it, "Now he’s angry at me for making our son 'live cheaply.'"

The mom also mentioned that this wasn't the only reason her ex made this accusation.

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In addition to buying clothes he considers cheap, she rarely takes the child out to eat and instructs him to get just one reasonably-priced toy when they go out to a toy shop.

She also didn't get him soccer cleats or a goal when he became interested in the sport, but she mentioned that the dad did eventually buy him the shoes and the kid didn't like them.

So since she's not spending this money, what is she doing with it?

Well, in her words, "I never used most of it but kept it in a separate account for either a rainy day or for our son."

At first, the Reddit community she reached out to seemed decisively against her in this situation.

However, it seems that this backlash was based on assumptions that she makes her child walk to school alone and/or across a great distance.

Indeed, it's hardly a coincidence that opinions seemed more favorable towards her once she edited her post to explain that she accompanies him to and from school and that this walk takes a total of 25 minutes.

As one user said, "This is exactly how I think about raising my 4 y old. Environmentally concious [sic] and not spoiling her. Walking is good for your health."

And while there were some who still believed she should spend more on what her child wants in the moment, they found themselves increasingly in the minority as time went on.

In the words of one of these users, "Child support is for the child. If you aren't using it for the child, maybe he should take you back to court to renegotiate how much money he is giving YOU and instead buy your son stuff."

But others saw this attitude as less practical than what the mom is doing, especially if the child is happy as he is.

As someone in this camp put it, "As long as the kid gets everything he needs and you are not skimping, it's okay. He may be thankful later for having saved him some money, in fact."

h/t: Reddit | aitalivingcheaply

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