If there were a hall of fame for pettiness, a divorced father in Virginia would be a shoo-in for the lengths he went to give his ex-wife and children the final kiss-off. After his daughter, Avery Sanford, turned 18, the father pulled up in his truck with a trailer attached and dumped 80,000 pennies in front of her house.
The $800 was for his final child support payment.
Avery saw it all go down through the doorbell camera on her front door. “I just turned 18,” Avery told WTVR. “When I was in the middle of class, my dad came by. He had rented a trailer.”
“He pulled up in front of our house, like turned the trailer on so it dumped out all the pennies in the street in front of our house,” she continued. “And my mom walked outside while it was happening. She didn’t recognize them at first.”
The mother called out to the man in the car, “What are you dumping on my lawn?” The man replied, “Your final child support payment!”
Avery’s mother reported the incident to the Henrico County Police.
Mother, daughter donate thousands of dumped pennies to domestic abuse center
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First of all, as a parent, to put on such a disgusting display of pettiness in front of your children, is just plain awful. Second, there’s no good reason for anyone to be upset about taking responsibility and financially supporting their child.
Avery hasn’t spoken to her father in years and after his most recent antics, it seems like keeping a distance is a good idea.
“It is really hurtful and damaging to your kids when you do things like that. And it doesn’t matter how old your kids. It doesn’t matter if they’re a young child or an adult,” Avery said. “The actions of your parents will always have some effect on you.”
Caught on Camera: ‘Frustrated’ dad makes his final child support payment in PENNIES dumped on his ex-wife’s front l… https://t.co/osIBtNVDZL
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To take the embarrassing situation and turn it into a positive, Avery and her mother have decided to donate all of the money to Safe Harbor, a domestic abuse shelter. Safe Harbor is a nonprofit organization that provides shelter, supportive services, and advocacy to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
“It’s not just her that he’d be trying to embarrass. It’s also me, it’s also my sister. And it’s upsetting that he doesn’t really consider that before he did this,” Avery said. “Turning around and donating that money to moms and children in need like I feel like, that just really turns the situation into a positive one. You can learn a lesson from it.”
A reporter reached out to Avery’s father and he seems to be feeling somewhat contrite about his behavior. He said he let 18 years of frustration get the best of him and that he didn’t want to “put a further wedge between him and his daughter.”
As for Avery, she has a bright future ahead of her. The high school senior is looking forward to attending Virginia Tech in the fall.