Matt Weichers
My
name is Matt Weichers and I am the Vice-President of IowaFathers.
I am married to Jen and we have a blended family of four children. My ex-wife and I were given joint legal custody of our children but she has since moved the children out of state and I am now only rarely allowed by her to see my children. I have had difficulty getting the Iowa judicial system to enforce my divorce decree uniformly, and as a result my ex- wife acts automously dealing with the issues of my children. Unfortunately, my children are the ones that ultimately suffer as a result of this.
Iowa Judges' suffer from “group think” and many are bias against joint physical care. Through educating citizens and legal professionals I hope this will change. I feel strongly that the laws need to be changed so that judge bias no longer plays a role in custody cases. The laws need to be changed so that each parent starts out with joint physical care or roughly half of the time with their child and IF there is a compelling reason to take the child from their parent then placement should be given to one parent or the other.
The children deserve to have both parents in their lives but unfortunately the law as it exists today is not applied equally so that many times children aren't given this opportunity. This can and will change with the help of people like you.