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Regarding the recent debate on your pages about child support and children being used as a "cash prize" or "cash crop":
I have been on the paying end of that situation as a father but I did pay my full support amount, and for 22 years (while in college), not just 18. I also paid a third of my children's college expenses, split evenly between Mom, Dad, and each child. I also had and still have a great relationship with my children.
One issue for me is that during all of those years, I was just a wallet to the court system. I fail to understand how the courts can limit a father's time with his own biological children, yet allow the mother to date and have in the household any other man she chooses. That's fair? And before anyone brings up "joint custody," I had that. Guess what, it is a sham.
Until the courts begin to think a little differently about a biological father's rights to visit his own children, at any time, especially when any other man can be in the house unrestricted, then fathers will continue to feel like just a wallet. Many will skirt payments because they are treated so unfairly by the courts.
Stephen Despres
King George