A UK family is crying party foul after their 5-year-old was billed for missing a schoolmate's birthday celebration. Now they are being threatened with legal action, should they refuse to pay.

Cornwall residents Derek Nash and Tanya Walsh said they were shocked when their son, Alex, arrived home from preschool with a brown envelope stuffed in his backpack. Inside there was a formal invoice from another mother, Julie Lawrence, for £15.95 ($24.14): monies due, apparently, for failing to RSVP to her son's fete when Alex could no longer attend.


"It was an invoice for a 'child no-show' fee for the party... and it was a proper invoice with full official details, even her bank details, and e-mail address, and name," Nash told BBC News in an earlier report.

After expressing his frustration to his son's teacher and school officials, Nash confronted Lawrence at her home, stating that he had found the invoice in his son's bag and "wasn't happy about that."

"Because I was so angry, I said she wasn't going to get a penny out of me," Nash told BBC News. But Lawrence is now threatening to take Alex's family to small claims court.

Etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore recommended different courses of action for both parents.

"This is the first time I have ever heard of someone invoicing their guests for not showing up. It’s just bad etiquette," Whitmore told ABC News.

Instead, Whitmore suggested "a courtesy call saying, 'I’m sorry that your child could not attend my child’s party. I had to incur the cost of him not showing up. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you could help me out by helping me either fully or in part take care of the bill for him not showing up.'”

Whitmore went on to add that Alex's parents weren't off the hook either. The couple claimed they couldn't find the original invitation when they realized their son was double-booked and therefore couldn't connect with Lawrence.

But Whitmore, who is also the author of Poised for Success, believes Alex's father or mother could have made more of an attempt to get in touch.

"[They] could have tried to find the phone number through directory assistance," Whitmore said. "Or, these days, they should have contacted the mother through the Internet. If you Google someone, you can find out a lot of information about them. They also could have searched for her on many different social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, or contacted someone they did know, perhaps a friend of a friend, who would have been able to provide the information."
those English folk, huh...lol

https://gma.yahoo.com/5-old-receives-invoice-missing-friends-party-213745041--abc-news-parenting.html

The World has gone mad Moe?

lol, i want my 15 quid...

and he should get a good spanking as well.

Wow. Crazy and very interesting article....thanx....lol

and what about the spanking?

I would b asking why my child (who did not attend party) was not given the party cake and the bag of goodies - they could have delivered them with the invoice.

kids parties - avoid them like the plague...

Almost as litigious as Americans.

How phucked up is that?!

And they wonder why the world is going to hell in a hand basket....

No brains to work with! Bring on common core! May as well make insanity rule

And here I thought schools were for education, not litigation!

This prepares the child so they can have the necessary tools later on to sue for hot coffee spills and other ridiculous lawsuits

Ahh, yes - I read this same report from a different source yesterday.
In order for the mother who delivered the bill to have a case, she needs the following proofs ("prooves"):

That the mother had to pay the ski establishment in advance, instead of on a child-who-showed-up basis.
(If she did not have to pay in advance, that means the ski establishment charged a fixed fee, and she would've had to pay that fixed fee no matter how many children showed up.)

An agreement or contract that said the boy's father would pay the given sum in advance (no more, no less) whether or not services were rendered.(This way the parents of the child who didn't show up would be out of pocket, not the mother of the birthday boy.)
(Verbal-only agreements do not stand up in a court of law without several witnesses; even then, I don't think it's counted as "hard" evidence. This is why people always say "get it in writing".)

That the parents of other guests of the party had to pay the same amount in advance.
(Otherwise she's discriminating against the boy and his father for not showing up.)

That the other parents did, in fact, pay the same amount in advance. If they didn't, she has to show that she has served them with similar invoices.
(Further discriminating against them, picking on them out of all the other parents who didn't pay.)

If it was my kid she billed, she'd be getting my dogs shite in an envelope, not money! Cheeky *****, eh?