Welcome to Jennifer Dykes, your new contributor to the "Our Lives" feature in the Life, etc. section. She certainly tells a tale of malfeasance of governmental proportions and likely of a "deadbeat dad." But for every child support debacle there must be hundreds of situations that work well and voluntarily.

On the polar opposite of her situation was my own. As a male in Virginia in 1983, the only way I could become the custodial parent would have been if my ex were in jail. Custody would have been extremely hard anyway, as I had to work 70 hours and more per week to make ends meet. When my payments started, my ex used the money to buy a new sports car, the support being a bit more than the car payment. I never missed making a payment and paid for my two daughters' college, but I want to spit every time I hear the term "deadbeat dads" as if dads were the only deadbeat possibility.

Carl Meredith

Raleigh

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