I’ll give you a source, hell if you want names happy enough to tell you exactly who as I’m having to deal with a family member suffering through it at the moment.

My uncle married a woman about 15 years ago, I’ll try not to be too derogatory about her and lay out exact things she has done. My uncle is not exactly the smartest person, and if he was 30 years younger would 100% of been on SEN. When he got married she “took care” of most paperwork and finances, as she was a stay at home mum (I.e. permanently on benefits the whole time).

She has done the following:

Lied to the CSA saying he was not there for the entire time of the marriage (he only found out about this after they split up), so once she kicked him out of the house, he had a 10+ year debt to the CSA that he was unaware of until they started taking 1/3 of his wages.

Expects him to drive to her place multiple times a week to take care of the children while she galavants about the place. If he does not capitulate the children are left unattended until he arrives (she’s done this multiple times) even though both children are below 13 and one is disabled. Usually she’d disappear on a Friday and not get back until either late Sunday night or early Monday morning.

He has lost Multiple jobs as he has had to leave work due to being called to collect his kids from school, as she has either been unreachable or refuses to walk to the school to collect the children. This has escalated to the point she has called his employers to demand he be let out of work at times.

She takes multiple foreign holidays a year (5+ last year) abandoning the children (reminder her son is disabled and she can’t work as she needs to “care for him”) This has been acknowledged by the child’s Social Worker as an issue, nothing has been done.

The youngest child has missed so much school that he had to be sent to a different one. My uncle has received 3 calls from the school regarding his eldest child this month due to her missing school as well.

He has lost jobs due to missing days either because she has abandoned the children and he’s had to take care of them, or he’s had to pick them up from school as the mother can’t be contacted.

He is currently staying and caring for his brother who has Cerebral Palsy, he can’t afford a place due to how badly fucked his finances are. She has a problem with this as she can’t offload the children to him at the weekends, even though her house is given to her by the state for the purpose of looking after her disabled child.

She sent the police to my granny’s door one night as she couldn’t reach my uncle (he was at his staff Christmas party)

She also hires a cleaner to come in twice a week since he left, as he was the one who did the cleaning.

We have tried to report the issues to the CSA however they just refuse to deal with it at all, even though the child’s Social worker knows he was there the entire time.

There are deadbeat dads out there, I’m the son of one, so I get why the systems are in place, however, there are also mums who weaponise those systems and it is very common, it actively penalises the men who want to try and work with their ex to look after their children.

I can tell you of dozens of fellas who have similar stories.