District Attorney and Child Support

Re “Children Have a Right to Support,” Aug. 16.

This article misleads the reader into believing that the district attorney’s involvement is a bright, shining sword in the child-support enforcement area and that children everywhere are benefiting.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Once again, children are merely pawns in a game to expand big government. Very few children benefit more by money than by a noncustodial parent’s involvement in his or her life on a day-to-day basis.

The district attorney, in showering children with money, has assumed the role of “Disneyland Dad” while failing to note that children these days are worse off.

The district attorney’s office is a maze of bureaucracy that is often--yes, often--on the wrong side of the law in trying to collect unpaid child support.

Countless men have had their lives destroyed or run up thousands of dollars in legal fees trying to prove that they either (a) had already paid money being claimed or (b) were not the father of the child in question.

What I find particularly amusing is that despite the fact that debtors’ prison was outlawed and that California Family Code specifically separates issues of custody and visitation from financial issues, effectively by criminalizing the matter we do in fact place people in debtors’ prison and cut them off from their families.

Is it any wonder that two households cannot be created out of one salary?

MIKE L. CHASE

Brentwood