Dead Beat Dad
By Wayne Beckles

Because of the business-related financial hardship, I found myself six months behind on my child support payments. As a result of falling behind, my income tax refund had been intercepted, my driver’s license had been suspended, the state was threatening to revoke my professional license, and ultimately, because the child support was based on a court ordered arrangement, I was in contempt of court and facing possible jail time.

I was tired of the bullshit. I had been paying child support for nearly ten years and at $14,000 per year I had already paid close to $140,000. I know some people pay more. I know some pay less. To me $140,000 is a lot of money. But that’s not my point. I’m quite happy to support my children and have been doing so in one form or another for their entire lives.  What had me frustrated was that I got no “credit” for being compliant for the nine plus years that I had lived apart from my children. I was being treated the same as the so-called “deadbeat dads” who denied the children were even theirs and who hadn’t paid one red cent to provide for their own children.

Somehow, I managed to shift from the involved responsible doting dad who was there for everything for his three children from witnessing them being born and through every moment of their lives to this, the stereotype of the deadbeat dad. I did not live with them, I seldom saw them, and was in violation of a court-ordered agreement to provide for them financially. I suppose that somewhere, someone out there may be calling me a deadbeat dad. After all, I am roughly seven thousand dollars behind on my child support. Before I found myself in this situation, I unwed to judge non-custodial parents who were not up to date on their payment as being negligent. I once believed that money was the most important thing.

Now I see that there are two things that are even more important that the money. The second most difficult part of falling behind on my child support payment is that it has resulted in a further interruption in my relationship with my children. The visitation regimen has been stymied for the better part of two years. I keep telling my kids and myself that soon I will catch up on my payments and things will be back to normal.

Over the past few years of promising and struggling and fumbling and failing, I can tell by the sound of their voices over the phone, that to my children my words have become rhetoric and my being, rhetorical…

I used to fantasize that at the end of my life I would say: “I have lived a full life and I have no regrets.” That would sound very noble. That would be a lie. I have one, stinging regret. I regret relinquishing custody of my children. I always have and always will. That single decision has profoundly affected my entire life and relegated me to sitting on the sidelines as a bystander. My only hope is that they know how much I love them, can forgive me for my absence, and remember when I was there.

I use to wish I could build a steel box around my heart to protect it from the pain of being away from my children. Sometimes this may look like it doesn’t matter to me, but to the contrary, it matters so much that I am afraid to show it. Of course this is impossible. I would have to be dead to not feel anything in relation to my children (and even then, I would be “connected” to them). As long as my heart can beat, it will beat for my children. The only way I would not give everything for my children is if my heart were no longer beating. Maybe we can call that a “dead beat.”