So I asked my ex to pay for half of our daughter's trip to Europe with the high school marching band. His portion would have been less than $1500 and his response is, as with everything, no. Actually, it was worse than that. First he blamed me for his lousy communication with his daughter saying that she "learned how to communicate" from me. Then he wrote that her not being able to go would be an important lesson to her. Could he be a bigger jackass? $120 extra dollars a month for a year so his daughter can participate in an amazing opportunity and he won't do it because I didn't ask his permission first. Ignoring that I have full legal custody and that she is only just starting high school so this is a recent development, how about putting his kid first for once?

As I wrote to him, it is very sad to me that he is so unsupportive of her. He has never paid for a single dance lesson, music lesson, or anything else that she has taken an interest in or pursued. For years, he paid $234 in child support because he claimed to be jobless. This continued even after he got a job until I got the courts involved. Now he pays a whopping $1080 and half her medical bills, but nothing else. I feel bad for her that her father is such a world class jerk