Father says he's still paying child support for 3-year-old son who died 25 years ago
DETROIT (WXYZ) - Lional Campbell's son, Michael, passed away at the age of three from acute meningitis.

"It took a lot out of me," says Campbell who is from Detroit and now lives in Kentucky. And it's that distance that is making it even more difficult for Campbell to wage a fight with the Wayne County Friend of the Court over child support that Campbell says he is still paying for Michael.

A spokesperson for the Friend of the Court says no one ever notified them of the boy's death until Campbell began asking why he still owed child support in 2011 for a child that was deceased by the age of 3.

For years, Campbell never questioned paying child support to Friend of the Court because he thought the money was for what he owed for an older son he fathered with Michael's mother.

The older son was born seven years before Michael and is now 34 years old....

Here's to American dads
...For one thing, in the American legal system, men have absolutely no say in the reproductive decisions of the women they impregnate. What’s more, as Dr. Helen Smith argues in her new book “Men On Strike,” men are responding to a culture that’s hostile to them. “Most men are not acting irresponsibly because they are immature or because they want to harm women,” she writes. “They are acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives today’s society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands and providers.”

I think that’s an overstatement. But, as Smith notes, courts almost always favor the mother in child custody and child support decisions. Revealingly, the federal government spends $5 billion a year to enforce child support (usually from fathers) but just $10 million to enforce visitation rights (generally on behalf of fathers)....