A person cannot move from being a child one moment to being an adult the next. Yet the senator can cite case law in which the same judge who says a divorced father should pay for an adult son's education declares, in the next breath, that the father has no right to have input into what school is attended since the son is an adult and entitled to make his own decisions. In 1998, Robert's second wife made an oral presentation to a federal committee investigating divorce-related matters. She pointed out that while this surely had not been the intent of legislators, the child support she was receiving from her own former husband for her two minor children was, in effect, subsidizing the education of Robert's adult daughter. Still in debt, the couple now have no savings, are worried their ability to assist their remaining two children with post-secondary costs will be limited, and are anticipating their retirement years with consternation.
People have no idea.
They don't believe it can be this bad. In truth, Preston was not a deadbeat. He was fully paid up on the support he owed his former wife for their younger child. But it wasn't just the media, his ex and government officials who insisted Preston should be condemned. Hazel McBride, a Toronto psychotherapist, tells a similar story concerning a child with suicidal tendencies whom she counselled for three years during the early 1990s.