School Uniform

Since my husband separated with SD mum he’s paid maintenance (private agreement), half of school uniform/trips, swimming lessons etc, and we provide everything at ours. We have her 2-3 nights per week and half of holidays, her mums never had to send her with anything. She comes in the shoes and coat we sent her in. Recently, since having our son, BM has done everything she can to make life hard and get more out of us (it’s never been amicable anyway). She applied for maintenance through the CMS but lied about the circumstances so husband was initially told we had to pay a lot more. After we proved everything she’s not getting anything more than their private agreement but it caused us a lot of stress. Then she started keeping uniform. She picks her up from school after she’s been with us so we’re reliant on her sending the uniform back. There’s no point arguing that we’ve paid half as she won’t hear it so we bought uniform and shoes just for the days she’s with us and said she’d have to do the same going forward. We labelled all of our uniform so there’s no confusion but since day 1 of this arrangement she’s either sent smaller sizes back or just not sent things back. Obviously we can’t keep buying more uniform, it’s expensive and we have another child to provide for. But if we continue like this we’ll run out of clothes to fit her. BM just won’t listen and does whatever she can to be spiteful. Has anyone else had the same situation and can help with a way around this? We can’t change the days we have her due to work so she’s always going to get her from school and have the uniform.

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How old is she? Can she change at school before coming out and leave her uniform in school School May support

Probably not what you want to hear but I’d make arrangements so that she doesn’t have to get involved in your days. Be it a childminder, after school club, family member etc. she’s absolutely in the wrong, and it’s disgusting when they do this because it punishes the child too. But you can’t reason with a woman like that, and I’d just be inclined to remove the opportunity for her to do it. Only other option may be to get the school involved, you send SD to school in other clothing and explain to them that BM has kept all of her uniform and is refusing to send it back, and you cannot purchase new uniform on a weekly basis. But again, this will affect your SD and I’m not sure if your school would get involved.

How old is SD? Can she pack a uniform.to bring?

Wow that's ridiculous! She's punishing the child too😟 Can you get the school involved ?

Thanks for all the replies/advice❤️ She’s 5 so not able to change at school or pack her bag unfortunately. We don’t have any family in the area and couldn’t ask any of hers as they’re scared to upset her - she stops anyone seeing SD if people don’t accommodate her getting her own way. I suppose our options would be to get the school involved (if they even would🤷🏼‍♀️) or eventually when we do run out of uniform to send her in the clothes her mums sent her in (we return these clothes in SD school bag every week and there’s absolute drama if we ever forget🤦🏼‍♀️). It’s a shame as in all scenarios it’ll be SD feeling the consequences but it’s a difficult situation to work around.

My advice would be to say to the school this is the issue we are going to run out of uniform she has clothes in her bag can someone support her to change and her uniform stay in school until we can collect her and the uniform

Yeah we had a similar issue, wasn’t about uniform but we always send the child back in the clothes they come in. Then no mix up of clothes. We don’t even get any child care money off her! Only half school uniform/trips etc. snacks at school, but that’s it. No offer of child care like we paid her originally 🤷🏻‍♀️

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