From: Matt Bauer
To: Darah Jewell
Date: March 29, 2026
Platform: OurFamilyWizard

Darah,

This message is written carefully and deliberately. It is not written in anger. It is not written to relitigate the past or to provoke a response. It is written because there are things that need to be said clearly, for the record, and because Holly deserves parents who have at least attempted to speak plainly to each other before closing a chapter.

I intend this to be my final substantive message on these matters. After this, my communication will return to what it has been — brief, factual, and limited to Holly's schedule, health, and logistics. I am not closing a door on Holly. I am not closing a door on the possibility that co-parenting could one day feel safe and cooperative again. But I am closing the door on silence about what has happened, because silence has been misread as acceptance, and acceptance has been misread as permission.

What Was Built and What Was Lost

For more than five years after Holly was born, we co-parented in a way that worked. It was not perfect, but it was real. We communicated. We coordinated. We trusted each other with the most important person in both of our lives. You relied on me, and I showed up. I relied on you, and you showed up. Holly had two parents who, despite everything that had happened between them, chose to put her first.

On January 4, 2022, we formalized what had already been true in practice — I signed the VS-211, the Kansas Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity, establishing my full and equal legal parental rights. Under KSA 38-1130, that document carries the same legal force as a court adjudication. I have been Holly's legal father for over four years. I have been her dad since the day she was born.

You know this. You have always known this. Even during the most difficult months, you texted me that Holly was "excited when I told her daddy is picking her up." You posted publicly about our co-parenting. You brought concerns to me directly, and I listened. You saw my growth, acknowledged it, and once told me it made you resentful — not because I failed, but because I finally became the person you had always hoped I would be.

That history matters. It is the foundation on which everything that followed should be measured.

What Happened Beginning in October 2024

In September 2024, you used access to my shared Google Calendar to monitor my personal appointments, including parent coaching sessions at R&R Collaborative. When I recognized that shared access was being used for surveillance rather than scheduling, I removed it.

What followed was not a conversation. It was not a question. It was a cascade.

Within weeks of that calendar removal, the following occurred:

• You emailed me stating I had no legal rights to Holly and that you had retained an attorney — despite the VS-211 establishing those rights three years earlier.
• Custody papers were served at my home.
• A formal ethics complaint was filed against my wife Natasha and two other providers through the Kansas Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board — filed not by you directly, but through your therapist, who had no firsthand knowledge of the allegations.
• You called UnitedHealthcare and attempted to cancel all of Holly's services — her insurance-funded therapeutic support — without my knowledge or consent.
• You contacted R&R Collaborative directly, told them you were "Holly's only legal guardian," and demanded they stop my parent coaching.
• A DCF report was filed. An investigator came to my home. The report was found to be unsubstantiated.
• A small claims lawsuit was filed against R&R Collaborative — my wife's employer.
• A HIPAA complaint was filed against R&R with the Office for Civil Rights.

Eight documented interference events between October 2024 and March 2025. Three of them successfully paused Holly's services. Every single one was built on a premise you knew to be false: that I was not Holly's legal parent.

The ethics complaints were reviewed and cleared. The DCF investigation was unsubstantiated. The insurance cancellation was reversed after I filed a formal grievance. But the damage — financial, emotional, professional, and relational — was already done.

I want to be fair about one of these. On the small claims action, you won the monetary judgment of approximately $2,665. I am not disputing that. What I will say for the record: the entire premise of the suit — that I lacked legal standing as Holly's father — was already false under the VS-211. I did not have the VS-211 physically in hand at the time of the proceedings, and legal counsel since has indicated the outcome turned on that procedural gap rather than on the merits of your underlying claim. Acknowledging that you won is not the same as accepting that the premise the suit was built on was correct. It wasn't.

What Continued After the Parenting Plan

The court issued a permanent parenting plan on June 20, 2025, confirming joint legal custody. I hoped that would mark a turning point. It did not.

At an IEP meeting — a setting designed to support Holly's education — you confronted me about discovering my marriage license on a court website and told me I had "irreparably damaged us." Holly's IEP meeting was not the place for that conversation.

At the hospital, after I brought Holly in for a precautionary X-ray, the situation escalated to the point that hospital security escorted us to our vehicle out of concern for safety. That is not a co-parenting disagreement. That is a crisis.

I have documentation of monitoring behavior at Holly's school — check-ins and inquiries that went beyond normal parental involvement and served the purpose of tracking my movements and decisions rather than supporting Holly's education.

The Pattern I Need You to Hear

I am not recounting these events to shame you. I am recounting them because I need you to understand the pattern they form and the damage that pattern has caused.

The pattern is this: when you believe you are being deceived or excluded — when something triggers the fear that you do not have full information or full control — your response bypasses conversation entirely and escalates to formal systems. Lawyers. Regulatory boards. Insurance carriers. Government agencies. School administrators. Hospital confrontations. And when those channels do not produce the result you are looking for, the next one is activated.

I understand where this comes from. I am not pretending I do not. Our relationship had real dysfunction. I contributed to it. I have acknowledged that — in therapy, in direct conversation with you, and in sustained behavioral change over many years. There were times I was not honest when I should have been. There were times I handled things in ways that gave you legitimate reasons not to trust me. I have taken accountability for that, and my behavior over the past several years reflects that accountability.

But understanding where fear comes from does not make the actions it produces acceptable. You are allowed to feel afraid. You are allowed to feel hurt. You are allowed to distrust. What you are not allowed to do is act on those feelings in ways that threaten my wife's career, disrupt my child's therapeutic services, weaponize government agencies against my family, and then decline to acknowledge the impact of any of it.

The Polo message you sent on October 26, 2024 — the same day custody papers were served at my home — demonstrates that you already know this. In that message, you apologized to both me and Natasha. You acknowledged that your behavior was not reflective of who you are. You admitted to misrepresenting me, to saying negative things within Holly's earshot, and to your therapist holding inappropriate opinions about me. That self-awareness was real. And then it was abandoned the moment the legal process gained momentum.

That contrast — between who you are when you are regulated and who you become when fear takes over — is the single most painful thing about this entire experience.

The Damage

I want to be direct about what your actions have cost.

My wife, Natasha, has been diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her diagnosing physician formally attributed the condition to the sustained campaign of complaints, interference, and professional targeting she endured. She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst with over a decade of professional service and no prior sanctions of any kind. She attempted to build a cooperative relationship with you. She wrote you a respectful, thoughtful letter. The ethics complaint filed against her — through your therapist — remains unresolved at the state level after more than sixteen months, despite the BACB having already cleared her. That complaint hangs over her professional life every single day.

I have spent thousands of dollars in legal fees to prove something that was never in question: that I am Holly's father. I have lost the ability to be present at my daughter's medical appointments without fear of confrontation. I have lost the ability to communicate informally with the person I co-parent with. I have lost the co-parenting relationship that I genuinely valued.

And Holly has lost time. Services were paused. Therapeutic momentum was disrupted. Her parents' relationship became a source of stress rather than stability. None of that was about her needs. It was about fear, control, and the belief that formal systems could accomplish what a conversation could not.

My Boundaries Going Forward

I want to be careful about how I word this part, because I have spent a long time thinking about the difference between a demand and a boundary. A demand is something I want you to do. A boundary is something I am doing — regardless of what you choose. I have no real control over your behavior. I do have control over mine. So what follows is a description of what I am doing from this point forward, and what I will do if certain things happen. You retain the choice in your own actions. I retain the choice in mine. Where our actions intersect — Holly — the parenting plan and the legal record will govern.

1. R&R Collaborative. I am continuing my parent coaching at R&R Collaborative and supporting Holly's services there. If contact is made with R&R staff, administration, or insurers about my coaching, Holly's care, or anything involving my household — through any channel, including therapists, attorneys, or surrogates — I will document it, treat it as a violation of joint legal custody, and provide the documentation to legal counsel for any enforcement action that becomes necessary. I will not match interference with retaliation. I will let the parenting plan and the legal record speak.

2. Parenting plan compliance on my side. I am following the June 20, 2025 parenting plan as written. I am making no unilateral decisions about Holly's medical care, education, services, or residence. When unilateral actions are taken on the other side — cancellations, pharmacy changes, provider access changes, schedule changes — I will document the deviation in OFW and pursue enforcement through the proper legal mechanisms, not through informal pressure or escalation back at you.

3. OurFamilyWizard only. I am communicating with you exclusively through OurFamilyWizard. I will not respond substantively to texts, calls, voicemails, or messages relayed through Holly, family members, friends, or service providers. The only exception is a genuine emergency involving Holly's immediate safety. This is what I am doing for myself, regardless of what you choose to do.

4. Auxiliary contact on Holly's insurance. I am pursuing auxiliary-contact status on Holly's UnitedHealthcare account through OFW, my attorney, and the insurer directly. If I am blocked from being a contact on my own daughter's insurance, that obstruction will be documented and pursued legally. This is a basic function of joint legal custody and I will not stop pursuing it.

5. Third-party narratives. I will not engage with second-hand versions of what I supposedly said or did. If you have a concern about my parenting, raise it with me directly through OFW. If I learn — and I have already learned, in documented instances — that my professional contacts, my family, Natasha's colleagues, Holly's service providers, or Holly's school staff have been contacted with mischaracterizations of me or my household, I will document those contacts and address them through counsel rather than through OFW dialogue with you. Documentation is already being kept and will continue to be.

6. How I respond to concerns. I will respond to concerns raised with me directly through OFW. Concerns I learn of through regulatory boards, government agencies, attorneys, insurance carriers, schools, hospitals, or any third party — without prior direct communication to me — will be addressed exclusively through legal counsel. I am no longer in a position where I will discuss in OFW the substance of an institutional complaint that should have come to me first.

7. At Holly's appointments and meetings. I will be present at Holly's medical appointments, IEP meetings, school events, and therapy meetings. I will be respectful and focused on Holly. If at any of those appointments the conversation moves into legal territory, accusations, surveillance commentary, or anything other than Holly's care or education, I will name it in the moment ("This isn't the place for that conversation"), ask that we redirect to Holly or reschedule, leave if necessary, and document the incident. Holly's service providers and school staff are her support team, not channels for our conflict, and I will hold that line for her sake.

8. My network is not a back channel. I have informed and will continue to inform my family, my professional contacts, Natasha's colleagues, Holly's providers, and Holly's school that any inquiries about me, my household, or my parenting from outside formal, mutual channels are not appropriate and should be redirected to me through OFW. Attempts to use those people as proxies — to gather information about me, to pressure me, or to build a case against me — will be documented and addressed through counsel.

I will not be sending follow-up messages to repeat or remind you of these. They are written here once, clearly, and they govern my behavior from this point forward. They are about what I am doing, not what you must do.

What I Want You to Know

I need to say this part honestly, because it is true and because Holly will one day be old enough to read these words and I want her to see a father who was fair.

You are a wonderful mother. Holly is lucky to have you. Your protectiveness, your advocacy, your deep love for her — none of that has ever been in question for me. I have never criticized your parenting, your relationships, or the people you have brought into Holly's life. I trust you with Holly. I always have.

And beyond parenting — Darah, you are a wonderful person when you are regulated. I still miss being able to talk about certain bands, music, comedians, the things we used to laugh about together. It is genuinely sad to me that that relationship and that dynamic had to suffer and die. We had something good once, not as partners but as people who cared about each other and shared a child and could actually talk. I wish that had survived.

But I cannot maintain a relationship — any relationship — with someone whose fear consistently produces actions that threaten my family's safety, my wife's livelihood, and my daughter's services. Both things are true at the same time: you are a loving mother, and your actions have caused serious harm. Acknowledging one does not erase the other.

A Note on Documentation

Everything referenced in this message is supported by written communication, provider correspondence, official records, audio recordings, video recordings, home security footage, legal documents, and complete transcripts. I have maintained thorough documentation of every event described here.

I sincerely hope none of it is ever needed in a legal setting. But I will protect myself and my family if I am required to do so.

Closing

I did not want this outcome. I tried other paths first. I reset. I clarified. I de-escalated. I gave the benefit of the doubt more times than I can count. I did this because I believed — and still believe — that Holly deserves parents who can function together without fear.

What I have learned is that I cannot control whether that happens. I can only control what I do. And what I am doing is setting clear boundaries, documenting my position, and continuing to show up for Holly every single day with the same love, consistency, and commitment I have shown since the day she was born.

If your behavior shifts — genuinely, consistently, and without retaliation — the door to a better co-parenting relationship remains open. I would welcome that. Holly would benefit from it. But it requires accountability, not just intention. It requires changed behavior, sustained over time. I know that is possible, because I have done it myself.

This is where I stand.

— Matt