Apps to help with co-parenting communication

From websites to apps on your mobile phone, you’d be surprised just how many co-parenting aids there are available to help you through this challenging period. Many of the apps also offer features to help make the process feel less daunting, and to help you to approach it in a manageable and organised way.

Below, I’ve created a list of five of the most highly recommended online co-parenting assistants out there. These range in their functions, as well as different factors like costs and usage type, so encompass a vast range of different potential uses, for whatever stage in your co-parenting journey you may be at. These highly rated co-parenting apps provide tools for everything including the basics like establishing better communication between you and your ex, keeping your co-parenting relationship civil, to streamlining your schedules, tracking your shared expenses and providing a basepoint from which you can store information, and effortlessly share these responsibilities.

Try out a few different options (most of them have free trials) so that you can figure out which works best for your personal situation. Successful communication is integral to good co-parenting and so, fingers crossed, these nifty bits of tech will transform the process, and make successful communication infinitely easier for you both.

Coparently

Coparently is a highly rated app, filled with digital communication tools designed to help improve the clarity in your co-parenting. Its online and mobile tools provide a shared platform, assisting you both by providing relevant information which can easily be updated by either of you, in the form of mutual calendars, expenses (which you can export and print for a hard-copy) and contact or important medical information. It has a handy, user-friendly interface and its own secure messaging centre, all of which will help you to communicate with each other in a more clear and organised fashion.

For a slightly older child, you even have the option to add them to your shared Coparently account, so that they can add in their own requests or details for the family schedule.

Although it doesn’t come cheap ($9.99 a month, each), it’s designed for easy, regular use and incorporation into your routines on a day-to-day basis. Plus, Coparently offers users a 30 day free trial, so you can get a sense of how useful you would find it first, before you commit to paying.

Talking Parents

Rather than a simple messaging service, Talking Parents provides its co-parenting users with a system that records your communications. This is designed to give you a clear, easy way to supply proof of correspondence, should it be required by the courts. So, it’s a handy app to use if there’s some history of conflict in your co-parenting, as it makes the stress of these legal situations, should they arise, an awful lot easier.

While the app itself is free to use, there is a charge of $3.99 if you need to download a record of your communications through the app.

Cozi

The ideal tool for managing busy schedules, Cozi is a free online calendar that helps you co-manage your co-parenting itinerary. It provides you with shared calendar pages, alongside shopping lists, to do lists, reminders and many more handy organisational add-ons. Your shared calendar can then be accessed easily by your child or other family members if required. It’s the perfect all-in-one location for life’s things to keep on top of.

Although you can pay for an ad-free version ($19.99 a year) the free version makes for a great way of trialling how useful this addition is in your co-parenting lives.

WeParent

WeParent is an app that has been designed by psychologists, with the aim of limiting the stresses of co-parenting. The founder’s psychological research was utilised to design an app that would reduce the hassle and confusion of the whole experience and, in so doing, enable co-parents to do the best by their child.

It provides an all-in-one tool that can help you to manage your schedules, key information, documents, expenses, events, appointments and messages. Plus, you can try it out for free with a 14 day trial. If you choose to continue using it past the free trial period, the WeParent family plan is reasonably priced at $7.99 a month for the entire family to use (or a straight cost of $99.99 for a lifetime’s use).

Parentship

Parentship is designed to provide the ultimate tool for thorough co-parenting organisation. Its customised dashboard means users have a clear view of everything from key reminders and important documents (which you’ll have access to through the supre handy digital document centre), to events coming up on their coordinated calendars and even ‘smart’ profiles providing specific details, schedules and the like for each of your children.

You can try it out and see how Parentship can improve your co-parenting strategy for a free month’s trial, and from there it’s still a very affordable app – costing just $3.99 a month.

These apps are all great options in their own way and so, since they all provide you with something slightly different in their benefits and specialisms, I’d recommend trying all of the above together before you both commit to paying for your favourite (after all, since they’re free, why not make the most out of the trials). Choose an app that is simple and effective for you, so that it can best help you both to communicate more conveniently, more often and in a way that is generally better across the board.

Following on from a separation, co-parenting is a step that is filled with various complexities and unanticipated difficulties that are all, most likely, completely unfamiliar terrain for you. But you are, by no means, the first person to undertake this journey. The internet is filled with the advice, wisdom and guidance of people who have been through this themselves, or are experts in the field, to help you on your way.