Dear Editor:

I would like to shed some light on something that touches thousands of families all over Texas. The family court system today creates a winner and a loser when it comes to child custody and can breed an environment of lucrative opportunity for the legal world.  All too often custody cases are awarded on gender and not facts. When this happens you have children who are kept from seeing loving and capable parents.  While this happens on both sides of the gender spectrum, it is most often the father who is on the losing end. Equal parenting, however, would allow for equal time with each parent and has been shown in studies to cause less psychological, emotional and social stress on children than what our current system calls for. It also takes the win/lose situation out of the equation decreasing the amount of conflict between parents and chance for parental alienation. While this may not be appropriate for all situations, it should be the starting point for custody and the courts should then bear the burden of proof as to why equal custody is not in the best interest of the child. Children need and deserve both parents equally.
I recently found my self affected by this after over two years of legal battle.  Anyone who knows me knows my children are my life and my first priority.  After the divorce my ex and I had not followed the divorce possession and had agreed on an alternate schedule. I was the primary caregiver, involved in school, their medical well being and provided a stable household. My ex remarried a year after the divorce and at that point filled for custody of both children. During the year until we went to trial she continued to have minimal involvement in the children’s lives. My trial day was a rushed blur as my attorney completely and utterly failed me and my children. Thousands of dollars spent and she did very little to rebut the testimony of my ex and her family.  My children were ripped from the home they have know all their lives, the only school they have known and the church where they were both raised.  I went from seeing my children 60-70-percent of the time to less than 30-percent.
As the fog cleared my family and I gathered and we realized this issue is bigger than just my case. Maybe God was telling us to use our voices and do something about it and so our journey began. We found there was a father’s rights movement all over the nation. Each state working toward equal rights for both parents. We found the Father’s Rights Movement of Texas community and joined. Finding out that there was no support locally, my sister and I started the Father’s Right’s Movement of Southeast Texas.  Since founding this we have been invited to work with others who strive for the same goals. While the Texas House bill for equal parenting was not successful in 2015 we will continue to be a voice for equal parenting and offering support to those in need.
The Father’s Rights Movement of Southeast Texas is a community that is against parental alienation and strives to work toward a brighter future for children to have both parents in their lives equally.

Respectfully,
Matt Beach
Buna, Texas
Father’s Rights Movement of Southeast Texas
https://www.facebook.com/fathersrightsmovementofsoutheasttexas