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A former family law judge and educator has teamed up with technology entrepreneurs to launch an app that, he hopes, will help divorced parents better manage their co-parenting conflicts, their communications , their shared calendar and other decisions within the same platform. The application, called coParenter, aims to be more comprehensive than its competitors, while leveraging a combination of artificial intelligence technology and human interaction on demand to help co to cope with situations of intense conflict.
The idea of co-Parenter was born from the co-founder, Hon. The personal experience of Sherrill A. Ellsworth and entrepreneur Jonathan Verk, who had himself been divorced.
Ellsworth had chaired the Riverside County Superior Court in California for 20 years and was a family law educator for 10 years. During this time, she saw first-hand how the families were destroyed by the current legal system.
"I saw countless families torn apart as they went through the family law system. I've seen how families argue over the simplest of disagreements, like where their child would go to school, which doctor they should consult and what their diet should be – everything about the house, not in an audience room, "she says.
Ellsworth also noted that 80% of the disagreements in the courtroom did not even require judicial intervention – but most of the cases she presided over involved parents who asked the judge to make a co-parenting decision.
At the end of her career, she realized that the legal system was not designed for this kind of situation.
She then met Jonathan Verk, former executive vice president of strategic partnerships at Shazam and now managing director of coParenter. Verk had just been divorced and had an idea of how technology could help facilitate the co-parenting process. He already had on board his longtime friend and serial entrepreneur, Eric Weiss, now chief of operations, to help build the system. But he needed someone with legal expertise.
That's how coParenter was born.
The application, also built by Niels Hansen, CTO, now exists alongside many other tools designed for different aspects of the co-sponsorship process.
This includes applications designed to document communication, such as OurFamilyWizard, Talking Parents, AppClose, and Divvito Messenger. those for sharing calendars, such as Custody Connection, Custody X Exchange, Alimentor; and even those that offer a combination of features such as WeParent, 2houses, SmartCoparent and Fayr, among others.
However, the coParenter team says that its application covers all aspects of coparenture, including communication, documentation, calendar and schedule sharing, localization tools for collecting and journaling deposits, tracking expenses and refunds, scheduling requests, tools for making decisions the same day. – Daily parenting choices such as haircuts, diet, allowances, use of media, etc., and more.
Notably, coParenter also offers a "single player mode", which means that you can use the application even if the other co-parent refuses to do the same. This is a key feature that is missing from many rival applications.
However, the most important differentiator is how coParenter puts a mediator in your pocket.
The application starts with the use of AI, machine learning and sentiment badysis technology to maintain the tone in the conversations. The technician will intervene to report accursed words, incendiary phrases, and names of offenses to prevent escalation of an animated conversation – much like a human mediator would do at the time of the interview. 39, an attempt to appease two warring parties.
When conversations go wrong, the app displays a warning message asking the parent if he is sure he wants to use that term, which gives him time to pause and think. (If only social media platforms had built such features!)
When parents need more badistance, they can choose to use the application instead of calling a lawyer.
The company offers professionals access to demand in the form of monthly subscriptions ($ 12.99 / month – 20 credits, or enough for two mediations) or annual ($ 119.99 / year – 240 credits). Both parents can subscribe for $ 199.99 / year, each receiving 240 credits.
"Comparatively, an average lawyer's hour costs between $ 250 and over $ 200 to file a single application," says Ellsworth.
These professionals are do not mediators, but licensed in their respective fields – usually family lawyers, therapists, social workers or other retired court officers with a strong history of conflict resolution. Ellsworth oversees the professionals to make sure they have the proper advice.
Any communication between the parent and the professional is considered confidential and not subject to admission as evidence, the objective being to stay out of court. However, any history and documentation elsewhere in the application can be used in court if parents find them there.
The application has been in beta for almost a year and was officially launched in January. To date, coParenter claims to have already helped resolve more than 4,000 conflicts and more than 2,000 other parents have used it for planning. 81 percent of litigants have solved all their problems in the application, without the need of a professional mediator or a legal professional, says the company.
CoParenter is available on iOS and Android.
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