I completely understand your feelings and frustrations with this.

But I'm surprising myself with my answer/advice. I will probably be the unpopular SM here and I don't mean to disagree with you. As infuriating as the BM's attitude is, it really isn't her responsibility to buy new pants for her son to attend a special event with your family (meaning you, your DH, and the DD's).

My DH buys special clothes for his kid when we have special plans. And despite the CS he pays, he purchases her new school clothes, clothes for special events and clothes for the summer. If he didn't, she wouldn't get them. Not that Uberskank ever asks him directly, she always makes the kid do her dirty work. Like it's okay to make a kid beg her father for the things that she needs.

We know from experience Uberskank would tell DH exactly where to go if he called and said his kid needs a new outfit for any event we planned.

In this situation I suggest you turn the other cheek and ask your DH to go out and buy his son the new khakis.

Shaman, I agree with you.

I just asked DH about this, and he said he wouldn't even go through BM on this one. Not worth it to talk to her. He would ask his son if he had khakis, and if not, just take him shopping.

Yeah I would have said the same thing. There's no reason you or DH can't go buy the kid pants to go
to an event that you planned to take him to on your time. I wouldn't do it for any of the BMs. If they make plans, they can make preparations.

That is what cs is for. I can understand if they asked for him to wear a tux or a suit, as most kids do not normally have either...but I can guarantee you that 99% of boys have at least one pair of slacks that are not jeans. I think she is just being a witch. If you want to attend, go to any goodwill store or similar...get him a pair & do NOT allow him to take them to BMs.

We went through this for years! Funny, skid always dressed up even for school, but anytime we had a party to go to, idiot would claim she had nothing and we had to buy it. That was the time that she would send her 9yr old in shorts & a coat to our home in December!

I wouldn't have even botherd to ask her, if it was an event we were going to I would think it was our resbonsibilty to dress him. We keep all of his clothes seperate, she buys clothes for her house and for school, and then we have some clothes for him here at our house. I just go to goodwill, thriftstores always have a lot of kids clothes that our nice because kids grow out of them so soon. I would pop over to the local thrift shop and get him some dress slacks, its not fair to him to dress him down whenevery one else is dressed up, he will feel like he doesn't belong, its not his fault his mom won't send him slacks.

I had to buy my SK's clothes once to wear to a wedding. I stuck with plain pants and nice shirts for both of them. BM wouldn't buy them because she had just gotten married (a year before) and had spent SOOOOOO much money on her big white wedding that she couldn't afford to buy them. Okay, fine, I'll go buy them. Then BM proceeds to tell ME what kind, brand, color, etc to buy for them!!!!!! And oh, by the way, she had an event she had to go to around the same time, and it sure was a lifesaver that I was buying them clothes -- that's why she felt she could dictate to me what to buy. I did the exact opposite of what she had requested, and I kept the clothes here, never to be seen by her despite the fact that she called and came over a couple of times asking for the clothes.

I agree with the others-just because your dh pays child support does not mean he gets to dictate the type of clothes that she buys for your ss. We've had this argument with bm before-back when she paid cs-she didnt pay anything for many years and when she finally was ordered to she was pissy and therefore all about her "rights". I was given a long list of everything we needed to provide for his summer visit. We have also been asked to provide dress clothes at various times as well. If we have the stuff, no big deal we send it-but I am not going to rush out and go shopping to make sure he has things for an event on bm's time.

The shoe has been on the other foot for years-she has physical custody now-and we never once have asked her to provide anything in terms of clothing etc. In fact I'd say we still purchase 75 percent of his clothes for the most part. If we want him to look a certain way at our home we provide the stuff for him to look that way.