When Paula Creel’s daughter went to the YMCA one day last week, she was admitted on a guest pass, but when she left, Creel said she was given a paper saying that she wouldn’t be able to return until her father paid delinquent membership fees.

That created a conundrum for everybody involved. Creel has been divorced for several years and has custody of her daughter, but her ex-husband has long held a family membership that her daughter used occasionally.

This summer, Creel’s daughter hoped to regularly go to the Y with her friends and even volunteer at the child-care center. So when Creel found out her ex-husband’s membership had been declared inactive, she told her daughter she’d just buy her a student membership.

Creel, though, said she was told she’d have to contact the Parkview YMCA, where her ex-husband had purchased his membership. There, she said, she was told her daughter couldn’t buy a membership as long as her father was delinquent. Meanwhile, she was told the director would talk to other branches and Creel should call back the following week.

The whole series of events put Creel off.

“To punish a child?” Creel said. Her daughter had done nothing wrong. “As long as he (her ex-husband) didn’t pay his balance, my daughter can never be a member of the Y.”

Well, the whole knot had been untangled by the time we called the Y on Monday morning, officials told us.

Normally, if a person buys a membership and becomes delinquent on monthly payments, he can’t visit the Y until he pays the delinquent fees. But this situation was gray, not black and white, Y officials told us, and the membership director wasn’t sure how to handle it.

It was eventually determined that because the girl lived with her mother, and her parents didn’t live together and the girl was a minor, she could get her own student membership.

If the staff had just said no, that’s the way it is, “I’d be on them big time,” said Martin Pastura, the CEO of the Y.

He called it a very minor issue and wasn’t pleased about the prospect of an article about Creel’s problem. He said the issue was solved after an exchange of e-mails Friday. Creel just hadn’t been notified yet.

“Strange things come up every day,” Pastura said. “We don’t take these things lightly. This was a little gray, which his why we ran it up the flagpole,” with officials at branches asking what could be done.

It’s all a sign of the times, though. Families, who make up the bulk of memberships at the Y, take out memberships, and something happens and they can’t afford the dues. It’s happening more and more.

In 2005, for example, among members who paid their dues monthly, about 2.7 percent were returns, meaning checks bounced, credit card charges were rejected or debit cards were denied, Pastura said. By 2009, the percentage of returns had jumped to 3.5 percent, a 29 percent increase.

The Y works with families when that happens. One option is for members to fill out scholarship aid papers, and if they qualify they are then offered reduced fees or financial aid.

In the last year, the Y has given out $751,000 in scholarships, Pastura said. The year before scholarships totaled $600,000, and $500,000 the year before that, so aid numbers have exploded by 50 percent in just two years.

Meanwhile, as the number of people seeking financial aid grows, fundraising is decreasing.

Regular donors aren’t ceasing their contributions, Pastura said, but they are giving less.

“Someone who used to give $500 is now giving $100 or $200. The number of donors is up, but the average donation is down,” he said.

Pastura said the staff needed to get hold of Creel as soon as possible and notify her that everything had been ironed out.