WEST BLOOMFIELD -- For months, Kathleen Gorski's child support checks had been deposited, like clockwork, into her bank account. It was something she never worried about, never checked before she made a withdrawal, just assumed the money would be there.
   This month, it wasn't.
   A computer in Lansing, apparently flummoxed by the fact there were five weeks in November instead of the usual four, withheld one week of child support and placed the money in a suspension account, instead of her bank account. Unaware that her last child support check was half the amount she was due, Gorski's check to the electric company bounced.
   The West Bloomfield Township mother of two appealed to her caseworkers for an explanation, only to learn that she was one of thousands of single mothers caught in the sometimes painful transition to the state's new centralized system.
   "They kept telling me, 'You cannot count on the money being there. There's nothing we can do, and you cannot count on the money,' " Gorski said. "I know there have to be other women having this same problem. I cannot be the only one."
   Since September, when Oakland County scrapped its high-tech child support enforcement network in favor of a federally mandated state system, there have been persistent reports of delayed child support payments. Maureen Sorbet, spokeswoman for the Michigan Family Independence Agency, which oversees the system, said those complaints have dropped off in recent months.
   "It's been going really well. We've been working very closely with the counties," Sorbet said. "As with any system this size, there are going to be difficulties, but overall, it's going well."
   Gorski heard differently. Caseworkers, she said, told her they have been deluged with complaints from women whose child support checks were cut in half by the Lansing computers. Even the clerks at the Detroit Edison office, where she went Friday to explain the payment problem, told her that other women had come in with identical explanations -- the state computer ate their check.
   Sorbet said the money in Gorski's suspension account will reach her and her boys before the end of the year, and suggested she work out an arrangement with her caseworker to make sure this doesn't happen in the next five-week month.
   Even before the November incident, Gorski said she noted that it now takes 48 hours for her ex-husband's payments to reach her, instead of the 24 hours it took when the county ran the program.
   Oakland County officials, who reluctantly gave in and switched to the state's system earlier this year, could only offer sympathy and a big "I told you so" to Lansing.
   County officials scrapped their Friend of the Court child support system only after the state threatened to pass along millions of dollars in federal fines. Michigan racked up the federal fines -- which have since been waived -- by missing the deadline for compliance with the national child support enforcement standards by about five years.
   Oakland was one of the last counties in the state to turn over control to Lansing.
   "I warned them it was going to be awful, that checks were going to be misdirected," said County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, who spoke with Gorski last week. "This is a tale of woe, which I'm sure we will hear over and over and over again."
   Everyone agrees that the theory behind the computer changeover is sound: a nationwide child support database that will allow authorities to track deadbeat parents across state lines. But Oakland officials have warned for years that the system they were switching over to was less efficient than the one the county had in place.
   The state's $327-million system has been plagued by problems since it went into full operation in September. That month, thousands of child support checks -- $5 million in Oakland County alone -- were delayed as the checks followed their new route from father's paycheck to Oakland, to Lansing, to Oakland, to mother's bank account.
   The system was designed to root out deadbeat dads, but Gorski complains that it is making life harder for the good dads, the ones eager to support their children.
   "How would Gov. Engler feel if he got divorced and the money he wanted to send to his three little girls was not getting to them because of a computer?" Gorski asked. "I have a very supportive ex-husband who wants to be there to help us. It's frustrating to know that the money was taken out, but didn't reach us."

Detroit News

-- Anonymous, December 12, 2001

Answers

Michigan's $327 million computer system fails

MI: State cancels contract to expand child support computer system

Mich: Support checks in mail after FOC computer glitch fixed

-- Anonymous, December 12, 2001