Dear Quentin, This has bugged me all my life. My father left my family when I was 7. I’m not sure how much in child support he paid my mother. Soon after I graduated college, he visited me for the first time since he left the family. He told me that he wanted to send me money each month to eventually purchase a house in the U.S. that would belong to the family. He started sending me payments of $1,000 a month to a joint bank account. I felt obligated to inform the rest of my family — my three siblings and my mother.
“‘This happened in 1992 in Los Angeles, and I can just imagine a $150,000 house back then would be worth $1 million today.’”
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