Dads

Dads recently made unusual news in New Jersey, Spain, Iceland, and Boston.

Following a 1980 divorce, a New Jersey man named Roy dutifully made child support payments to his ex-wife for what Roy thought was their baby boy. In 1999 his ex told him the child wasn’t his, and DNA tests confirmed it.

You know the running of the bulls in Spain’s San Fermin Festival that Hemingway wrote about in The Sun Also Rises? Well, as the bulls ran after them, Spanish divorced dad Luis Miguel Gomez and his 10-year old son were captured smiling on Spanish TV. His ex-wife wasn’t smiling, and neither was local judge Adolfo Carretero, who promptly revoked Gomez’s visitation rights.

In Iceland new fathers are allowed nine months of leave, and a new law may require dads to take at least three months off. That may not be a hard sell, considering thirty percent already do. But they may want to add a running bull provision.

Sixty-three year old Rhiannon O’Donnabhain is a Boston father of three. But she is having problems with the IRS. It seems that the expenses for her sex-change operation were not deemed deductible. Why is everything always about the money?

Back in New Jersey, Roy may be out years of child support but he did gain a son. Even today he and non-biological son Darren remain close. Maybe there are worthwhile things money can buy.