When one parent earns more

It's Sunday night. You've just put the Pool's monthly figure into your banking app. You stare at the confirm transfer button for a second longer than usual. The amount isn't ruinous. It's just real. It's a noticeable share of what your account holds for the month.

You think, briefly, about your Co-Parent's account. You don't know exactly what's in it. You know they earn meaningfully more than you do. The same monthly figure that's pressing on you sits in their balance as a smaller, easier number.

You press confirm. You close the app.

The next morning, you carry a thought into the day that you don't quite want to name. The Pool is fifty-fifty. But the feeling of the Pool isn't fifty-fifty. The feeling of the Pool sits much heavier on one of you than the other.

This article is about that imbalance. What to do with it. How to talk about it. And why getting it right is one of the most consequential decisions you'll make for your child.

What this article is about

This article assumes the Pool structure from Article 01 is in place and that you've worked through the basic categories. It picks up the question the earlier articles left open: how should the two parents actually divide the contributions when their incomes are very different?

The article is in the tender category. It touches a place that often sits beneath unspoken resentment in co-parenting families. Read it slowly. The principles are simple. Putting them into practice can take time.

It covers four things. Why equal contributions feel fair but often aren't. The proportional model. The conversation that has to happen. What to do when the gap is large, or changes, or feels unjust to one of you.

Why equal contributions feel fair but often aren't

The instinct toward equal contributions is honest. We're both the parents. We both contribute. Equal in, equal out. The principle has the appeal of obvious fairness.

It also has a hidden cost: it makes the child's standard of living dependent on which home they happen to be in.

Imagine two parents, one earning much more than the other. They split the Pool equally. The Pool, between them, funds the school fees, the medical, the activities, the clothing. So far, the child's standard of living looks the same across both homes.

But the Pool isn't the whole picture. Each parent's home also reflects what they can afford. The higher-earning parent's home has the better appliances, the nicer furniture, the comfortable holidays. The lower-earning parent's home is more modest. The Pool covers the structured needs. It doesn't cover the texture of life.

The child experiences this every week. They move between a home with one kind of texture and a home with another. The contrast is constant. They notice. They start to absorb it as which parent's home is the better one, even when they don't have language for it.

Worse: under equal contribution, the lower-earning parent's home is also squeezed by the Pool obligation. The Pool, which is meant to support the child equally across both homes, can actively make one home thinner. The lower-earning parent might be eating less, heating less, postponing repairs, to fund their half of the Pool. The child's home isn't just naturally more modest. It's actively poorer because of how the Pool is funded.

This is what equal contributions feel fair but aren't means in practice. The optics of fairness produce an outcome that isn't fair to the child.

The proportional model

The alternative is proportional contributions.

The principle: the Pool is funded in proportion to each parent's ability to fund it. Higher earner contributes more. Lower earner contributes less. The total still meets the child's needs. Neither home is forced into hardship by the Pool obligation.

There are two ways families work this out in practice.

The income-ratio model. Add the two after-tax incomes together. Calculate each parent's percentage of the total. Each contributes that percentage of the Pool's monthly target. If one parent earns 60% of the household total, they fund 60% of the Pool. The other funds 40%.

The income-ratio model is simple, easy to recalculate when incomes change, and clean to defend in a mediation or legal setting if it ever comes to that. It assumes both parents can afford to contribute something; if either is at subsistence, the model needs adjustment.

The remaining-resources model. Subtract each parent's essential household costs (rent or mortgage, utilities, food, transport, the genuine fixed costs of running a home) from their after-tax income. What's left is their disposable income. Pool contributions come out of disposable income in equal proportion to what each has available.

The remaining-resources model is more accurate to actual capacity. It's harder to maintain (both parents need to share enough financial information to make it work) and it requires a higher trust baseline. It also handles unusual situations better: the higher-earning parent who lives in an expensive area, or the lower-earning parent whose costs are subsidised by family, can both be assessed honestly.

For most families, the income-ratio model is enough. For families where there's a meaningful difference in living costs between the two homes, or where one parent has unusual circumstances, the remaining-resources model is worth the extra effort.

Some families use a hybrid: the income ratio as the starting point, then a small adjustment for known cost-of-living differences. 60–40 by income, but his rent is twice mine so we move to 55–45. That's a reasonable conversation.

The conversation that has to happen

Proportional contribution requires a conversation about money that many separated couples find harder than the contribution itself.

Both parents have to know roughly what the other earns.

This isn't a small ask. Income is private. It's tied to identity, to comparison, to the history between you. Naming your income, and asking for theirs, can feel exposing in ways that the operational logistics of co-parenting don't.

A few things make the conversation easier.

Frame it as funding the child, not comparing yourselves. The numbers aren't a referendum on either of your worth. They're the input to one specific calculation: how the Pool gets funded. Keeping the conversation tightly bounded to what the child needs and how we fund it helps.

Be specific about what you need to know. You don't need the full picture. You need the after-tax monthly income figure. Not the salary, not the bonus history, not the investment income unless it's meaningful. One number, current, that lets you calculate the proportion.

Both parents share at once. Don't ask the other person for their number before sharing yours. Either share both at the same time (here's mine, what's yours?) or make it the same five-minute call (let's both look at our last three payslips together). The information moves symmetrically.

Plan for a revisit. Incomes change. Salaries increase. Jobs are lost or found. Careers shift. The proportion needs to be revisited annually, or whenever either of you has a material change. Building this into the annual conversation (Article 02 sketched the pattern; this is the moment in it where the contribution conversation happens) removes the awkwardness of having to bring it up separately.

If the conversation cannot happen for emotional reasons that are bigger than money, that's a Module 09 issue (mediation can help open the conversation) or a Module 12 issue (when one parent won't engage with the financial structure). Don't try to muscle through. Get a third-party setting if you need one.

When the gap is large

In some families the income gap is small. One parent earns 55% of the household total, the other 45%. The proportional adjustment is gentle. The lower-earning parent contributes slightly less. Nobody feels significantly imbalanced.

In other families the gap is large. One parent earns 80% of the household total, or 90%. The proportional model in its pure form sends the same imbalance through. The higher-earning parent funds most of the Pool. The lower-earning parent funds a small share, sometimes a tiny one. Sometimes the lower-earning parent can only afford a token contribution.

Two things matter when the gap is large.

Dignity, not symmetry. A parent who contributes 10% to the Pool is no less a parent than one who contributes 90%. The contribution isn't a measure of love or commitment or significance. It's a function of capacity. Communicating this between you, plainly, prevents the gap from becoming a quiet wound.

A higher-earning parent who contributes 90% needs to genuinely understand that this is the right outcome, not a generous concession. A lower-earning parent who contributes 10% needs to genuinely understand that this is the right outcome, not a humiliation. Both of you saying this out loud, occasionally, keeps the structure healthy.

The Pool isn't charity. Even when the gap is large, both parents are funding the same shared mission. The higher-earning parent isn't giving to the lower-earning parent. They're contributing what they can to the child, in the proportion that reflects what they have. The lower-earning parent isn't receiving. They're contributing what they can, in the proportion that reflects what they have.

This framing matters. If the Pool starts to feel like one parent giving and the other receiving, all of the dynamics that come with charity start to seep in: gratitude expectations, power imbalance, the slow corrosion of equal standing as parents. The proportional model is meant to prevent exactly this. Keep returning to we're both funding the child.

When the gap changes mid-year

Incomes don't sit still. Someone's income drops suddenly. Someone gets a promotion. Someone takes parental leave. Someone starts a business that's slow to pay out.

The proportional model can absorb these changes if you let it. Two principles:

Notify quickly. A parent whose income changes meaningfully (up or down by more than ten or fifteen per cent) tells their Co-Parent within a fortnight. The notice is administrative: my income has changed, here's the new figure, here's what I think the new Pool contribution should be. It's not a request for permission. It's information that affects the structure.

Reset cleanly. When the change is real and not temporary, recalculate the proportion. Adjust the contributions starting the next monthly cycle. Don't try to back-credit or back-debit earlier months. The Pool's principle is forward-looking. Trying to settle the past creates its own running tally.

For temporary changes (a three-month leave between jobs, a slow quarter for the self-employed), the proportion can be paused at the current figure with a top-up from the higher-earning parent for the duration. The conversation: I'm between jobs for three months. I'll keep contributing at my current level, but I won't be able to step up if the Pool runs thin. Can you cover unexpected items during that period? Reply: yes, that's fine. Three months later, when the income returns, the structure resumes.

When it feels unjust

Sometimes the proportional structure feels unjust to one of the parents. The higher-earner thinks they're shouldering too much. The lower-earner feels their contribution is being undervalued. Both feelings can be legitimate; both also sometimes mask something else.

Three things to check if the feeling persists:

Is the income data accurate? Either parent may be working with an outdated or partial picture. Refresh the numbers.

Are there hidden costs? If one parent has substantially different fixed costs (a chronic medical condition, an elder-care responsibility, financial obligations predating the separation), the income-ratio model may genuinely misrepresent capacity. The remaining-resources model handles this better.

Is the feeling actually about money? Sometimes the Pool feels unfair sentiment is a place where the rest of the relationship is leaking through. Resentments about parenting time, about decisions made years ago, about the separation itself, can attach themselves to the most accountable surface available, which is often the Pool. If the math is right and the feeling persists, the next conversation isn't a money conversation. It's the one Article 12 covers.

The closing

Sunday night, six months later. You've put the Pool's monthly figure into your banking app. You stare at the confirm transfer button for a second.

The figure is different. It went up six months ago when your Co-Parent had the salary increase, and yours stayed steady, and the proportions were recalculated. You contribute a smaller percentage now. The amount that comes out of your account each month is smaller too.

You press confirm. You close the app.

You think, briefly, about your Co-Parent's account. You don't envy what's in it. You know the Pool is funded fairly. You know your child has what they need across both homes. You know that the texture of each home reflects what each parent can afford, and that the difference is real, and that you and your Co-Parent have, together, made it as small as it needed to be.

You make a cup of tea. The phone goes back on the table.

The proportional structure isn't a feeling. It's a number. The number is doing its work in the background. What's left, on a Sunday night, is what you do with your evening.

Which is what Sunday nights are for.