Dear Members,                                                                                                                                            3/11/07

I am very excited to inform you that Children Need Both Parents and Iowafathers.com have decided to combine efforts as one organization. This merger will allow us to push back the special interests that have traditionally fought us from every angle.

We believe that every parent deserves the right to be a parent and every child has the right to maintain equal access to both parents after divorce or separation. As we move forward this will always be our highest priority. The merger will allow us to broaden our efforts by increasing our focus on issues such as the current child support guidelines, abuse allegations in child custody cases, and unanimous abuse tippers, just to name a few.  

For example, you may be surprised to know that your legislators have nothing to do with child support guidelines. The guidelines are actually determined by a committee of judges and lawyers appointed by the Iowa Supreme Court. Every four years the state forms a Child Support Advisory Committee. The responsibility of this committee is to conduct public meetings around the state and retrieve input from people to find out how they believe the guidelines should be improved. Based on the CSAC’s final report they ignored documented complaints from the non-custodial side, which was the majority. In the 2004 report the message from the public was clear, the guidelines are income driven and do not reflect the actual cost of raising a child. Some had indicated that the current guidelines are abusive.

The report was handed over to the Iowa Supreme court. They formed their own committee including the following members, Court of Appeals Judge Anuradha Vaitheswarn, co-chair, Court of Appeals Judge Larry Eisenhauer, co-chair, Attorney Eric Borseth, Attorney Diane Dentlinger, Assistant Attorney General Patricia Hemphill, Attorney Deborah Hughes, Assistant Attorney General Kevin Kaufman, Attorney Steven Lytle, Attorney Evelyn Ocheltree, District Court Judge Eliza Ovrom, and Senior Judge Richard Vipond. This committee of judges and lawyers ruled in their best interest by changing the support guidelines when they figured support based on grouse pay instead of after taxes, affectively increasing the percentage paid. They also ruled to decrease the exceptional visitation rule from 25% to 15%. This is an act of punishment for fathers who have exceptional visitation (above 128 days) with their children. This is just one example as to why this merger is needed.

Both organizations understand the need for this merger, we all have 40 hour plus jobs and things simply get missed. This will allow us to compete with the opposing organizations that make a living (your tax dollars) from broken homes. Funding will be equally important to our success and we plan to begin funding campaigns imediately.

The CNBP web site will be shut down and all of our board members have been appointed board positions with Iowafathers.com. All members of CNBP will be transferred to the Iowafathers.com mailing list; there you will receive news letters from founder Bryan Iehl. If you have any questions or if you wish not to participate in this change, don’t hesitate to contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or Bryan Iehl at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Thanks again for your support.

Sincerely,

Mark Griebel