CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - Tammy Doyle says she and her daughter do without some luxuries. But as far as she is concerned, her child is getting what's really important: the benefit of amicably divorced parents.

It's the kind of relationship money can't buy. And that, the 33-year-old mom said, is far more important than child support in the form of cash.

"I have a good ex-husband," Doyle says. "We're like best friends."

Local dad Rory Mack also is divorced, and he pays child support every month. In fact, he guarantees the check will be in the mail by asking his boss to withhold it from his check and funnel it through the court to his ex-wife. It amounts to about 40 percent of his take-home pay.

On the other hand, his second wife's ex "plays the game," Mack said. Sometimes the support his stepkids are due comes on the 15th, sometimes on the 26th.

While Mack, 39, says his ex-wife is right to expect the check each month and on time, Doyle figures she saves herself the hassle of demanding and offers her daughter the best of both worlds.

"If that check never comes in, he had the choice to be a father," she says. "It won't be a check that stopped him."

Doyle and Mack have different views of child support, but thousands of single parents in Wyoming don't have the luxury of choice, according to numbers from the Department of Family Services.

For the vast majority of single parents living in Wyoming, that monthly check makes a significant difference, says Rodger McDaniel, director of Family Services.

Seven years after the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, there are 2 million fewer parents on welfare, and states are far better equipped to collect support from parents, according to officials and a White House Web site.

Child support and social services are close companions, Brenda Lyttle says. She directs the collection effort on behalf of parents who also are seeking state aid.

"A lot in the law changed because the federal government noticed through social services that a lot of single parents were applying for public assistance because they weren't receiving child support," she said. "So in response, they created the Child Support Enforcement Program in 1975."

That didn't make a big enough dent, so the feds took another stab in 1996. Officials in Wyoming agree the collection can is fuller every year. But even Gov. Dave Freudenthal and First Lady Nancy Freudenthal are touting the importance of paying child support in public service announcements.

There's good reason for that attention, McDaniel said.

In Wyoming, a quarter of households are headed by single parents, 70 percent of whom are women. They typically earn less than their ex-husbands.

McDaniel said he especially is concerned about parents who traded in holy matrimony for an economy that doesn't favor them.

"More than a third of all jobs in Wyoming pay below-poverty wages, so a major piece of self-sufficiency is the ability to attain child support from noncustodial parents," he said.

That isn't as easy as it might seem or should be, officials say.

Some of those parents, the vast majority of whom are dads, change jobs too frequently for the state to tackle them with court orders. Their pictures can be posted on the state's Web site below a "Wanted" banner and above their last known address, occupation and amount owed in back child support.

Others don't work at all, at least not in aboveboard professions, child support enforcement officials say.

"They can find a way to avoid paying if they want," McDaniel said. "If they're so intent on avoiding responsibility, they'll quit a job to avoid paying, and then it's pretty hard to collect."

Those single parents who don't get their child support are forced to turn to the state for help, and that's why even the most happily married taxpayers should care about the child support issue, McDaniel said.

"People really need to know that when someone chooses not to pay child support, two things happen: The taxpayer picks up the burden, and those programs never are sufficient to make the family self-sufficient," he added. "The subsidies aren't enough to support a family."

In Wyoming, fewer than 15 percent of all divorced parents pay child support willingly, McDaniel said, adding that those statistics are hard to come by because Family Services only gets involved when there's a problem with support collection.

That's thanks to federal law which dictates that when a single parent seeking state aid comes to Family Services, the state must make an effort to collect from the former spouse.

Throughout the state, 125 caseworkers and attorneys provide child support enforcement services in 43,000 open cases.

In the meantime, those single parents work two or three jobs to make ends meet in homes where TV is called on to baby-sit, McDaniel said. He added that most of those who come to his agency are working.

But money is only one part of the parenting question.

Added Lyttle, "Kids need more than just money from the fathers."

In recent months, she has seen the tide turn in child support collection efforts. Keynote speakers now extol the value of societal shifts instead of focusing on heavy-handed collection efforts.

Call it social marketing, but the new idea is creating a culture that persuades parents to pay willingly. Talks at high schools around the state won't just address teen pregnancy but a teen father's legal tender.

In the meantime, Family Services is tasked with collection, and the state's agents aren't too bad at it, he says.

In fact, they're slightly better than the national average with 61 percent of all support due and paid to Wyoming kids through income withholding, voluntary or court-ordered.

In 2003, that amounted to 217,098 payments or 18,091 checks cut and funneled through the state enforcement office each month.

Since 1997 that number has increased from $49.3 million collected to $74.8 million in 2002.

It's a mission that's accomplished at a cost to the state of about 11 cents per child support dollar - far less than it costs to subsidize the working poor.

AP-WS-03-22-04 1627EST