Coparenting with an ex can be a tough road to follow, even for people who have an amicable relationship and are always trying to put the child’s best interests first.

When you add in unresolved feelings and financial shenanigans, it makes for a truly toxic stew.

In today’s story, we meet a person who may have inadvertently discovered that their ex-spouse is making some shady decisions with their money.

Check it out.

AITA for paying my child’s school fees?

Separated Parents/1 child.

I pay my 50% of our child’s private school fees (not a small amount of money) to their other parent directly and to my knowledge they paid the entire lot from their bank account.

They never had any reason to suspect that these fees were going to something other than the child’s tuition. That was, until lately.

Recently, the other parent has been quite negatively explosive toward me telling me that we aren’t friends, they hate me and they think the way that I portray myself is disgusting but also not to contact them unless it was directly about our child.

Unfortunately, a recent deterioration in their interactions has caused the system they were using to pay for their little one’s school to break down, and it may have uncovered some sketchy behavior.

It all seemed to come out all at once but I genuinely don’t know where it came from.

The only thing I can think of is that they’ve heard about our little one’s outfit in my upcoming wedding.

Some really horrible things were said and I haven’t spoken to them since and it’s going to take a long long time for me to trust them or even be on board/same page with them again.

It’s never good to keep fighting with an ex, but I guess a lot of feelings come up when remarriages are on the table. If the ex-spouse was truly concerned about their child’s wedding outfit, then either it’s incredibly inappropriate or there are some unresolved feelings there.

For 8 years we’ve been civil with little issues.

We’ve even also done many joint birthday parties together and we’ve been welcome in each other’s homes on any given day.

We’ve always done the very best for our child.

We’ve both moved on with other people and families.

This former couple were obviously committed to making the coparenting gig work, but they’d hit a real roadblock.

Theirs had a breakdown a few years ago but now has a new partner whilst I’m getting married in a few months.

It’s never been a problem with our particular dynamic.

They do however make rude comments about myself and my fiancé and how family life is our only life and that we have nothing better to do but otherwise, I’ve never been overly discouraged.

The ex-spouse seems to make a habit of disparaging the OP as their new partner, which probably doesn’t make for the most harmonious relations, but hey, if they got along perfectly, they’d probably still be together.

I’m quite tolerant of barely tolerable people.

I’ve just gotten on with the fact that the other parent didn’t want to be a family with me, the didn’t want me and I moved on.

Granted, that did take me a long time with a lot of pain and heartache to do but I finally got there.

Moving on from an ex-spouse is hard, especially if you share children with them. After their big blowout fight, this poster thought they’d avoid the ex and pay the school fees directly to the child’s school. And that’s when the trouble started.

School fees are due next week and I don’t want to be giving the other parent my money, so instead of paying directly to the other parent as I want my share of the fees paid by me documented directly and correctly.

I’ve paid with the payment details on the invoice and now according to the other parent, I’ve done them a disservice regarding their education loans and their finances which I knew nothing about…

The poster is baffled as to how paying the school directly would have had any effect on their’s ex’s educational loans or other finances. Was there some sort of payment schedule they were unaware of?

But why would me paying my 50% share of our child’s school fees directly to the school have anything to do with the other parents educational loans and finances?

They definitely haven’t paid the fees upfront so it’s not as though they’d be reimbursing themselves but even still, why would a loan be taken out in the full amount of school fees when half are already paid by me?

Something is very not right with this situation, and the OP feels like they aren’t getting the full story.

It was only when they felt the need to remind me that I owed them money in a few days, that I told them I’d already paid my share (honoring them asking me to not contact them… cause why would I want to after being told I’m hated?)

They were just trying to let their ex cool off for a bit, but apparently this has caused an even bigger problem.

Child Support is not something we get involved in as we have our child 50/50 and finances don’t ever come into play.

We can imagine that if child support were an issue, there’d be even more finances to dig into after this little escapade.

AITA for wanting my half share documented from here on out?

In the comments, people had some strong opinions, and a few questions, too.

This person was pretty sure the ex-spouse was doing something shady with their taxes and claiming deductions for the full price of the payment instead of only their half.

This person also thought it was likely that the other parent was lying about the origin and dispersal of the funds. It’s a pretty serious allegations, because if the kid actually does have a scholarship or discount and the other parent is pretending they don’t and pocketing the difference, it amounts to fraud.

Which is exactly what happened to a friend of the person making this comment.

Ethical issues aside, the bottom line is that the he did nothing wrong.

But a lot of commenters were wondering what is going on with the child’s wedding clothes that started this entire mess.

He clarified that the dress is perfectly normal and only triggered their ex’s rage.

These coparents need a better way of handling finances.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.