Bachelor dad: Keeping it together 
Dave King got primary custody of his four kids. Now he has to figure out how to juggle his career and family and cover those endless bills.
By Josh Hyatt, Money Magazine senior writer
March 5 2008: 11:16 AM EST
(Money Magazine) -- As a younger man, David King enjoyed running marathons once in a while: There were two in New York, one in Austin, another in San Diego. Now he runs one every day, starting and finishing at his home in tiny Decatur, Texas. "I don't do any formal exercise anymore," says King, 45. "But I feel like I do the same amount of running around."
He's exaggerating, of course - probably. As a single father with primary custody of four kids, King is often off and sprinting by 5:30 a.m. on weekdays to deliver 14-year-old Ethan to a 6 a.m. football practice (an hour later in the off-season). Then he's back home, nudging Emily, 12, out of bed and shaking nine-year-old Samuel to life. (Jesse, 17, adheres to his own teen time zone.)
Within the hour, King deposits them at school. Then, with his laptop jawed open in the passenger seat of his Honda Accord and his BlackBerry nestled in his palm, he begins his hour-long commute to Dallas, where he works as senior vice president of business technology for a mortgage bank.
From behind the wheel King is making calls, trading e-mails and fussing with file attachments - oh, and glimpsing at the road now and then. He can't afford to be stopped; besides the fine, he can't squeeze another meeting into his day.
After work he drives the boys to their evening activities, shuttles Emily to cheerleading practice and, during football season, assists with coaching the middle and high school teams. King's only unscheduled weeknight is Wednesday. But as president of the middle school PTA, he's likely to be busy recruiting chaperones for an upcoming dance. "I'm real plugged into the moms' network," says King.
Getting there
He has worked hard to get to this place. King and his ex-wife divorced in 1998, and she was awarded primary custody. But King continued to seek custody and finally, last year, his ex-wife consented in a mediated agreement. By July all four kids were living with Dad. "My life rose to a new level of chaos," says King.
His finances were already there. Over the 10 years since the divorce, King has spent $500,000 on legal fees and child-support payments. He swallowed a pay cut of $45,000 a year to take a job that offered more flexibility but "significantly stifled my career."
Meanwhile, since the kids came to live with him, King's everyday expenses have soared, shoving aside long-term financial needs. (He has kept 10% of his salary flowing into his 401(k), mostly because his contributions are deducted automatically.) Funds for college? He has only a fraction of the costs set aside for his older children and nothing for the younger two.
And if something happened to him, there's no telling where his assets would go since he doesn't have a will. "I haven't been able to educate myself on everything," he says wearily. "I'm only one person."
A new kind of single parent
Dave King is a member of a once rare but now fast-growing demographic: single dads. Between 1990 and 2006, the number of U.S. households headed by single fathers more than doubled, rising to 2.5 million from 1.1 million, according to the Census Bureau; in fact, fathers now head one out of five of the country's nearly 13 million single-parent families.
In divorce cases it is no longer assumed that custody of the children should automatically be awarded to the mother as it used to be. "Society is allowing men and women more flexibility in their roles," says University of Maryland professor Geoffrey Greif, author of The Daddy Track and the Single Father. "And the laws governing divorce have given fathers a better chance of winning custody."
Single fathers often face different financial challenges than single moms. For women the big issue usually is figuring out how to make ends meet; the typical woman's standard of living drops about 30% after a divorce, reports the Social Science Research Council.
For men, however, solo parenthood more often wreaks havoc on their careers. Eyes will roll in the office as you explain to the boss, once again, why you're the one who has to skip out early to attend the school play or stay home to nurse a sick child. And there's no status in turning down a promotion because your kids need you at home - in fact, as a single father you may no longer be offered the chance to say no.
In his pre-custody career, King was constantly on the go, earning $200,000 a year and racking up nearly 2 million frequent-flier points as a banking industry consultant. He believes that he was on track to make partner and that he would be raking in $500,000 a year by now.
Instead, once he gained custody of the children, he made the agonizing decision to leave that orbit so he'd have the time to care for them properly; today he earns $156,000. "I love my kids deeply, so I'm happy to make whatever trade-offs I need to make," says King. "But I have to fight my own anger and frustration when I think about the opportunities I had that were lost."
A Glimpse Into The Future, From The Past (J. David Michael)
In 1989 I walked into a philosophy 101 class in college and started to present my paper. This was the dawn of the internet but I had never heard of it yet. I announced with pride that I had written that I had discovered how technology effects divorce rates.
Former U.S. Olympian, Undefeated Professional Boxer and...
Olivia & Me (Mike Coon)
The early morning of January 14th, 2010 I woke to the beeping alarm, rolled out of bed and prepared for work. My groggy thoughts moved toward the weather, the commute and the workday...
The Legacy Of Love (Bill Applegate)
In November 2007, my wife, Jen, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, an anaplastic astrocytoma grade 3/4 to be exact. On August 27th 2009, she passed away. She was only 38 years old...
For comments or suggestions vist us on facebook
