Dear Deadbeat,

Our chapter is coming to an end. 

It’s been a little more than 30 years since I was 24 years old and I told you that I was pregnant. We were both living in Hollywood. Living the dream that most 20-year-olds only dreamt about. Hitting the hottest clubs, being around the prettiest people that were trying to become someone, and hobnobbing and being friends with celebrities and professional athletes. I told you months earlier that it was over, but we had that one more night two weeks before my 24th birthday. That night resulted in me being pregnant and the day I found out, I was instinctively aware that you weren’t going to be part of his life. Somehow, my intuition wasn’t wrong.

You told me to schedule an appointment 2 days later for an abortion. I didn’t. The morning you came to take me to the appointment, I hid in my bathroom until you stopped ringing my front door. Thankfully, you eventually went away and a few weeks after that, I moved to San Diego where I lived until my son was 5 1/2 months old. I sent you a birth announcement, but it was returned to sender. Maybe you had moved, maybe you hadn’t. 

Months after we had moved back to L.A., I ran into one of your best friends, and you came by and saw your son twice. You knew he was yours. You embraced him, held him cheek to cheek with yours. He was turning a year old, a week later. You handed me $100 for what you said was a gift for your friend’s baby’s birthday. You could easily flow in and out of attachment to detachment in a heartbeat. We spoke over the phone for a while and you brought up child support. You said you would give me $400 or $450 a month, but that you couldn’t be part of his life. Eventually, you stopped calling and changed your number.

For the next 12 years of his life, we had no contact with you. I didn’t know how to find you. I didn’t know how I was going to make it. I never had a plan. All I knew is that as soon as I found out I was pregnant that I was keeping him and I was going to do it, even if it was going to be by myself!

The first five years I was on welfare. You weren’t there and my family was not there to help me out in any way. When I found you towards the end of 2007, I reached out. We got caught up over several phone calls, and it seemed like you wanted to be part of his life. I thought that you had possibly grown-up. You even spoke to him over the phone. But then you started to hesitate. Besides the fact that you said your oldest daughter wouldn’t take it well, you told me that it wouldn’t be fair to him. That if he went to Orange County, where you were now living, to be with you and your children, and to see how you and your children were living and then have to return to where he and I lived, that it wouldn’t be fair to him. You even brought up child support again, like you had so many years earlier. The same amount that you had offered when he was 1. Yet again, you stopped any contact with me and never saw him.

In the 12 years that you were not in the picture I had gotten off welfare and got two college degrees. I was making ok money, enough to pay the necessities for our rent controlled, one bedroom apartment on the westside, but, I wasn’t making anything substantial enough to get us away from being so close to low poverty. And even though I had gotten two college degrees, I was in a career that I hated. Years earlier, I had the opportunity to take an internship with the MGM Photo Department while I was getting my Bachelors Degree in Art and Minoring in Photography which was my love and my passion that started when I was a child. But, because they wanted me to intern 3 days instead of 2, it meant that the 30 hour a week position I had been working would have to be reduced to one less day. I couldn’t afford to do that. So, I missed the opportunity that probably could’ve changed my career path and brought me much happiness and success.

After I had found you and you stopped contact, I filed paternity papers in January. It was now 2008. You never showed up to court, even though you were served by an Orange County Sheriff. I was granted sole custody of my 13-year-old and you were established as his father because you did not fight it and show up to court. Then six months later, I filed for child support which yet again you did not show up to court. The courts and I established a child support amount based on what my income was and your assumed income was and their guidelines. 

It wasn’t until 2011 that we finally had a day in court together. And it was only because you took me to court to try to vacate the order and say that you had no idea about a child or child support. You tried to say on your paperwork that you were broke and that your girlfriend at the time was paying all of your expenses which was obviously a lie because I had seen on MySpace the Mercedes you bought her and the engagement ring. When I asked for proof on my response to your court papers, your lawyer recused himself, and you defended yourself. You probably thought that you could convince the judge of your lies. 

While we waited in the hallway to have our moment in front of the judge, you offered me $20,000 to settle. How were you so broke and offering me that much money? You told me that if I didn’t take it that I would not see a fraction of any child support. I didn’t take it. 

In court, the child support services attorney told me to hold back from speaking up. You and the judge were discussing back-and-forth about the fact that you did pay all of your expenses and not your girlfriend and that possibly you made around $5500 a month. Your expenses that you had listed were in the high four thousands. So. because of this, your monthly child support amount was increased. I thought I had one of my best days ever and that everything wrong in my life had just gone right. I cried as I left the courtroom and in the hallway fell into my friend’s arms that was there to support me. But in the end, I guess you thought you had the last laugh. You turned around and paid me $2.35 and $10.98. I still have copies of those checks. Maybe you thought I deserved this because I did not take your offer. It would be another six years that we would see each other in court again despite the countless court hearings and even a bench warrant hearing that I was the only one showing up to. 

In 2017, my son was about to be 23 years old. He had graduated from high school. And was in his final year at UCLA. By this time, your child support was ballooning, accruing interest. Just like many that hear about my story didn’t know, child support doesn’t just go away because the child is 18. The child support had started when my son was 13 and went until he was 18. But that monthly amount of the last 5 years before my son became 18, and the accruing interest because it was not kept current, would continue accruing interest even after he was 18, as long as there was a past due balance. And still in 2017, besides the $13.33 I had received in 2011, I was not receiving a dime and our son was becoming an adult. You were smart. You were self employed so we could never garnish your wages. Despite never getting the financial help I needed from you, I managed to take care of him financially, physically, and emotionally for the first 22 years by myself. No family around. No other man to really help out. And, he was on the right path, going to college and being a funny, easy going, good human.

And here we were again, in 2017, having another day in court because you took me to court. Finally, Child Support Services had gotten your attention by suspending your real estate license. We had our day in court, and the judge believed your lies on your court papers. I still didn’t have the means to hire an attorney, so I defended myself as best I could. But you had yet again lied and said that you were financially struggling even though weeks earlier you and your attorney were offering me $20,000 to settle. You didn’t like me countering, so we ended up in court. The judge went ahead and lowered your monthly child support payments from $951 to $600 a month but also required you to pay a deposit of $5000, which was due in 6 weeks. You paid it about a week after our court date. You were always proving to me that you weren’t financially struggling.

We chatted after court that time and went and had lunch. It was like we were friends again like we had been 23 years prior. But I kept my guard up. You wanted to buy our son a car when you heard he didn’t have one. I told you how I wanted to take him to Europe. We had never been. He had taken three years of French in high school. You offered to pay for him to go for three months. You also wanted to meet him. I was hesitant, but my son was now old enough to make his own decisions. One afternoon you made an arrangement with him to pick him up and take him to lunch. You two talked and text afterwards. You wanted a DNA test. So we went and got a DNA test. You and he left that appointment to go have lunch again. You stayed in contact with him until about two weeks later when you called me and told me you couldn’t do this. You couldn’t be part of his life. I guess you hadn’t grown up.

You finally paid child support consistently.

But just two years later in 2019, you take me to court again. It seemed like the only time you would show up to court was because you were taking me to court. You wanted to lower your monthly child support payment again. Now you were asking it to be lowered to $15 a month! You were claiming again that you were broke. Each and every time that you submitted an I&E (Income and Expense Declaration) you said that your monthly income was $700 or this time $1444 and that a girlfriend was paying all or most of your expenses. But, on your Profit and Loss statement from your company for nine months it showed that you grossed over 100k. I don’t know if you realize that it doesn’t matter how large your expenses are. What matters is your income! And, I am not sure that it was because of that or the fact that I also found a company, the night before, that your ex-wife had started for you and you didn’t disclose it, but you were denied.

You continued paying the child support monthly of $600. But, in the middle of 2020 those payments were sporadic and less. I wouldn’t find out until 2021 when I took you back to court to try to increase the monthly payments to $1500 that the Los Angeles Child Support Services told me that you had filed unemployment and that’s why I was receiving $200 here and there. Here, I was taking you to court to raise your monthly amount because I had seen online that you had leased a new large office space and was renovating it but on the other end you were possibly lying to other government agencies about how well you were financially doing. I was shocked. 

I defended myself again in court. I provided all my internet findings and you provided your lies on your I&E again and ultimately I was denied the increase because I could not prove your actual finances. 

I said to myself after that that I would continue to try to prove that you were lying. To try to earn the respect at least from the courts that I so deserved years ago. I vowed that if I had to bring you to court every year, I would. So the following year, I took you to court again. It was obvious what I was doing. Even your attorney said in court that I shouldn’t be able to take you to court every year. Ha ha. 

After this court hearing where the judge, a different one than we had ever seen, saw maybe a glimpse into your financials not being 100%, she requested that we have a continuance. She wanted to see us in court again and she reprimanded you to disclose everything. She told you that whatever assets or companies that you were associated with, that you needed to disclose that and bring all the financial records the next time we saw her. I felt relieved. I felt like I had one more chance. I felt like next time I would have another victory. But, that night reality showed his pretty face. I couldn’t sleep. I thought, what would make you all of a sudden disclose everything? Supposedly in the eyes of the law, you were  disclosing everything. My lack of sleep actually made my brain think. I reached out to an old friend that I used to work with at my first corporate job at the PI firm. He was now in DC, working for the DOJ. He gave me lots of insight on all the things I could do. I ended up contacting several attorneys. I did several free consultations. One attorney told me of how I could hire an attorney just to subpoena your financials. With the quotes that I was getting for retainers, I still couldn’t afford hiring an attorney fully. So I found an attorney in Manhattan Beach and she worked with me to retrieve whatever we could of your bank statements and credit card statements. Thankfully months earlier, through the help of a cousin that was also in real estate, I knew of other business entities that led back to you as the owner. Once we received back all the financials, I was and I wasn’t shocked. We ended up having a continuance on the continuance. The judge was clearly annoyed, but only your attorney had shown up to court and he had just been hired by you, so he said he needed more time to go over the case. I wonder if you know he and I spoke for over an hour after that court session. You probably don’t know that his paralegals didn’t want to take your case. They obviously knew you were lying. I was happy to have a continuance because I hired the attorney that did the subpoenas on your financials. I needed her to defend me in court because based on what we found and me not knowing what I can say or not say, it was worth the risk to charge her fees on my credit card.

We had our day in court at the beginning of 2023. You were still trying to settle with me. But, I was done negotiating. I was done allowing you to think that you were smarter than I. I was done with you demonstrating that the son that we created and his well-being as a child didn’t matter. I was done with you never realizing or caring that I provided for him on my own. Also, did you ever stop to think that you were getting away with not paying the first 12 years of child support? That you were not reimbursing the welfare agency and all the taxpayers for the dollars I received that you should have been paying? That I or my son may have had missed opportunities because we were financially strapped? That there may have been a Christmas tree that he did not have one year because I couldn’t afford it? I’m sorry, not sorry, that your stubborn ego didn’t want to pay for years and that is why your balance had grown to a gargantuan amount. 

In the end, justice always prevails, at least to some extent.

I am not sure how your attorney convinced you to change your monthly payments to such a ridiculously large amount that it would pay off your balance in close to a year and a half. When your attorney presented to the judge caused even the judge to have an expression on her face of disbelievement, I can’t explain what was going on internally with me. I guess it was an out of body experience that I still have yet to fully grasp. All I know is that I will think of that attorney until the day I die and wish him well for the rest of his years.

With a few minor hiccups, the balance was paid off only a few months after it should have been. I was okay with that. We hopefully have had our last day in court a month ago. The heavens and all my loved ones that have passed must have been with me once again to get this same judge in front of us to hear my Request for Order case to recoup some of my attorney fees. She remembered you and the ridiculous amount you had increased your monthly child support payments to. She grilled you. Your lies may have worked in the past. Did you know that she specialized in fraud cases? Did you not realize that all your records that you had ever submitted was stored in one folder for the judge to refer back to? It was finally so easy to see. The girlfriend that you have claimed for the last few years that you listed on your I&Es as helping you with all or some of your expenses, you could not even get her name right. Obviously, you came up with a name that we could not find no matter how hard we searched. But, you even had a hard time spelling back her name to the judge. Every document you spelled it differently. She tested you on what you recently put down on your I&E. Everything was wrong. She ended up ruling in my favor and you jumped off furious before court was over.

In about two months from now, hopefully you’ll pay me back some of my attorney fees that I was awarded. Hopefully you’ll just be tired of continuously lying just to get the upper hand. Hopefully you just won’t want to deal with something you should have taken care of ages ago.

I never thought when I first met you that we’d have some kind of story. That we’d play such a pivotal role in each other’s lives. When I first saw you, I just told our friend that you were cute. That was it. I never expected or wanted anything to come of that. And here we are, decades later, grown adults ourselves with a grown adult. No matter what we’ve been through and with me standing up for what was right, I still do not wish you harm or hate you. I don’t like you either. You had time and time again to do the right thing. You have somewhat altered the one I will always love the most and that has changed me for the better. Your actions, inaction, probably took years off my life because I was doing what two people should do. You steered my career into one I don’t love waking up in the morning for and no amount of money now can change the fact that I think constantly that my life could have gone in a different direction if you had only helped me financially in the beginning. In your mind, you’ve probably thought how greedy I was. At some point I think you said, I had wanted to trap you, which was so far from the truth. I had other and better possibilities. You’ll never truly know how large of a scale that your choices made in our lives. What I know is that you made me stronger and more resourceful than I ever thought I could be. That through taking you to court, defending myself on my own and speaking up for myself for the first time in my life that I am more than capable to dismantle this facade you stand behind to your friends, family, and community. Maybe one day, at least your children, my son’s half siblings, will learn the truth, that they have another sibling or even maybe two out there.

Take care and I hope you grow!

K.