Making Family Mediation Easier for Everyone: OurFamilyWizard, the Leading Co-Parenting App

Written by Lauren Orcutt of OurFamilyWizard

Although mediation is frequently a better option than a long, drawn-out, expensive legal battle, it can still be complicated and arduous. If you have ever wished for simple ways to negotiate agreements, reduce conflict, and set your clients up for long-term success, then you may be interested in OurFamilyWizard, a platform that makes co-parenting easier.

OurFamilyWizard isn’t just for co-parents—it also makes a difference to the professionals who work with them, such as their mediators, solicitors, or barristers. These professionals can use Practitioner Accounts to access, view, and download all of their clients’ communications and activity.

A collection of conflict-reduction tools

In high-, moderate-, and even low-conflict relationships, each parent has their own view of the truth, and their truths can sometimes vary. But when they share the same source of information, arguments naturally reduce.

OurFamilyWizard has tools for messaging, managing the parenting time schedule, requesting and paying reimbursements, sharing information and photos, and logging GPS check-ins—and all these actions are recorded in a secure, private, centralised space.

An indisputable record (with no extra work)

When parents use OurFamilyWizard, everything they say and do is automatically documented. Whether they’re sending a message or asking for a reimbursement, the action is recorded permanently.

When the parents come to mediation, they don’t need to gather information from multiple sources or dispute on whose collection of messages is more accurate. Instead, all communications are compartmentalised into one platform that doesn’t allow editing or deleting.

With OurFamilyWizard, both parents and their professionals have equal access to one shared source of information and communication.

Communications, expense reports, and calendar changes can be easily downloaded as a PDF or printed for meeting use or as a court-admissible document. This helps everyone, both parents and professionals, stay organised—without taking any complicated steps. It only takes a minute to generate a report.

Reducing conflict by avoiding contentious conversations

 Our features are designed to reduce messaging by preventing long and nasty messages between co-parents which do not address the key issues relating to the child. One-time changes to parenting time can be easily agreed upon by sending a Trade/Swap request, without going back and forth in the messaging feature.

Or if one parent needs to know the child’s eyeglasses prescription, medical information, or clothing sizes, they can simply check the Info Bank, without contacting the other parent.

By limiting communication to necessary conversations, OurFamilyWizard mitigates conflict and reduces the need for outside intervention by legal professionals.

This change also shifts the focus of conversations away from looking back at the past and blaming each other and towards looking to the future and solving problems.

Reducing conflict through the possibility of monitoring app activity

For many high-conflict parents, knowing that their correspondence could be observed in mediation often leads to improved interpersonal dynamics. Elaine Richardson,

an accredited mediator and collaborative lawyer, describes two high-conflict parents she introduced to OurFamilyWizard.  

“When they let me access their accounts, I honestly thought there had been some terrible mistake, that I had gotten the names wrong, that it was the wrong couple. They were so polite and pragmatic. An absolute transformation.”

Reducing conflict through feedback on your written tone

ToneMeter™, one of OurFamilyWizard’s proprietary tools, provides real-time feedback as you write. It flags any language that is aggressive, humiliating, upsetting, or concerning. It doesn’t tell the writer what to write instead, and it doesn’t prevent them from sending the contentious message—but it does encourage them to take a moment and reconsider.

This can create new habits and a new sense of caution and reflection.

Smoother, more effective mediation with long-term success

OurFamilyWizard assists the mediation process during sessions by offering a visual aid that illustrates potential child arrangement schedules, highlighting messages or journal entries, and providing a clear path forward for productive communication.

OurFamilyWizard also helps the mediator show the parents that there’s a different way to approach their parenting communication. A way that doesn’t make them dependent on their mediator or lawyers. The mediator will work with them to set them up for long-term, independent success, for the benefit of their child—which is the entire goal of family mediation.

The cost of the app v. mediation without the app

For many lawyers, answering one single message from a client can cost more than a year’s subscription to OurFamilyWizard. It’s easy money – simply read an email and charge the client—but it’s unnecessary and can even be unscrupulous. If the app resolves just one dispute, it’s a worthwhile expenditure.

Returning to mediation can also have a high price. If OurFamilyWizard helps parents avoid additional mediation, they benefit financially.

Freeing lawyers to focus on legal issues

When lawyers’ clients use OurFamilyWizard, the clients have an easier time working things out by themselves. Most lawyers don’t want to be involved in the long term, and they don’t want to solve practical problems—they prefer to spend their expertise on legal problems.

After years and years of legal training, a lawyer might find themselves in court being paid to sort out which junction of the motorway is to be the handover point. There are many other such things that parents could, and often should, organise themselves. Many hours can be tightened up when clients use OurFamilyWizard.

Protecting the child from conflict

Most importantly, the child benefits when the parents’ relationship is less contentious. Children pick up on tension quite easily, and they are often exposed to arguments directly. A difficult divorce or separation influences a child’s emotional, mental, academic, and even physical development in both the short and long term. Minimising the parents’ conflict protects the child.

Even when conflict doesn’t diminish entirely, OurFamilyWizard shields the child. If angry messages are delivered exclusively through OurFamilyWizard, then the child never even needs to know about them.

OurFamilyWizard: Aiding mediation from every angle

When used in family mediation, OurFamilyWizard benefits the mediators, the lawyers, the parents, and most of all the child. By making co-parenting easier as well as making it easier for professionals to work with co-parents, the platform helps smooth the process for all involved. As a result, OurFamilyWizard supports long-term successful co-parenting.

A special thank-you to Elaine Richardson, an accredited mediator and collaborative lawyer, for providing helpful information and invaluable insights. We appreciate her expertise and perspective.