When you have children, going through a divorce can be an intensely stressful – even traumatic – process for the entire family. In the midst of such upheaval, most parents are rightly concerned with how to best help their children get through the ordeal of divorce. One of the most important things parents can do to help children process the changes in their lives is to maintain a healthy and respectful co-parenting relationship with their other parent.
This can be easier said than done, however. Many parents struggle to find their footing after separating. Relating to each other only as co-parents rather than romantic partners can be a real challenge at first.
Perhaps surprisingly, one of the parts of co-parenting that many newly separated or divorced parents struggle with is all the logistical details that need to be handled when one house is separated into two different households. Especially if one parent tended to handle much of the organizational household labor during your marriage, adjusting to being separately responsible for each doing your fair share of that labor can be difficult, especially as the task seems exponentially harder once you are tracking across two different houses and household systems.
Thankfully, many tools have emerged in recent years to help parents deal with the logistical issues that tend to come up as points of conflict for divorced parents, including scheduling, tracking expenses, to-do lists, and more. Here are 5 of those tools:
#1. Our Family Wizard
Our Family Wizard is an app that helps you coordinate your parenting schedule with your ex and track shared expenses. It also provides a message board with a tool called ToneMeter helps parents maintain a positive and productive tone throughout their communications.
#2. Coparently
Coparently facilitates effective co-parenting by providing tools like a calendar, messaging center, and expense tracker. It even allows parents to provide special access to their children so that they too can keep track of your parenting schedule without accessing any other tools.
#3. Cozi
Cozi is another co-parenting app that includes features like a shared calendar, to-do lists, and even a place to share shopping lists. This can be helpful when putting together birthday gift lists or tracking down every item on your child’s school supply list.
#4. 2Houses
2Houses streamlines the process of organizing your custody schedule, keeping track of shared expenses, and exchanging information like medical and school records. You can also set it to provide read-only access to your mediator or attorney.
#5. coParenter
coParenter provides many of the same features as these other apps with the benefit of access to live, on-demand mediators and co-parenting coaches through the app itself. If you and your ex have a dispute or need help navigating your co-parenting relationship, you can use this tool to access help.
These tools can help co-parents avoid and even resolve common points of conflict. There are times, however, when even your best efforts cannot achieve resolution to certain issues. Whether it’s a dispute about custody, child support, or some other part of your parenting agreement, it is important to know when you need to consult an experienced family law attorney.
At Palmer Rodak & Associates, we are committed to helping our clients navigate these challenging issues so they can focus their attention on what matters most – their children.
If you need the support of an attorney to modify or enforce your divorce settlement, contact us online or call us at (760) 573-2223 to schedule a consultation.
