Child Custody & Visitation Blog

Custody X Change version 3.15 has been released. This update changes the principle interaction with the repeating cycle and vacations.  The new interactions are:

Left Click: Does nothing (previously it swapped up to a 24-hour period).
Left-Click & Drag: Swap time between parents (same as before)
Right-Click: Open the new “Day Magnification”.
Right-Click & Drag: Does nothing (though it will be used to add 3rd-party time when I finish that)

This new Day Magnification feature makes it easy to get the exact time you want without the frustration of mouse precision.

This feature had been requested by a customer, and I think it adds a lot to the ease of use of the software.  And if you have any feature suggestions, please send me an email and let me know.

If you haven’t tried Custody X Change, download a free trial of the program by filling out the box on the right. You’ll quickly discover that that program makes it easy (especially with the new feature in 3.15) to create your parenting plan and custody agreement.

NOTE: If you did not qualify for the version 3 upgrade (parents who purchased before July 11th 2009), do not install this update.  It will invalidate your old key and you will have to login to create a new one.

There are some exciting new features in Custody X Change!

In case you haven’t heard, Custody X Change is great custody software that lets parents set up their parenting plans and custody agreements. The software makes it easy to create your ideal custody and visitation schedule and add provisions. Then you can print out professional documents with your entire plan. And, you can export all of your information to Word, Excel, and PDF. After you make the plan, you can also use the program to track visitation time and keep a custody journal.

And, now you can do more. In addition to exporting to Word, PDF, and Excel, the parenting time calendar can now be exported to be sync’ed with external programs and devices. This uses an established calendar standard, so it should work with pretty much anything, including:

• Google Calendar
• Yahoo! Calendar
• Windows Live
• Outlook
• iPhone
• BlackBerry
• Palm / PDAs
• Excel

Once you export it, just follow the instructions from whichever program / device on how to import a calendar file. (This feature is available to the Deluxe / Professional versions only.)

And, you can now get the perfect holiday schedule with holiday localizations. During the install, you can now pick what holiday set you want loaded.  The current options are: United States, Canada, & Australia.  (This is available to all versions of the software.)

You can download a free trial of the software to find out how it can help your situation.

One other thing, I upgraded the programming platform and some components.  This looks like some things should be running faster (most notably the provisions tab), and I’ll be tweaking some things to come to get all the horsepower out of it (I have a few ideas to get some more juice out of things).  This upgrade should also kill any rare compatibility problems with the latest Windows 7, if there were still any lying around.

If you had uninstalled the software because you didn’t think it had some feature, now would be a good time to try it out again. I’ve noticed that quite a few people had wanted features that were already available, but just weren’t clearly enough explained.  I’m hoping these new in-software help features will cure those ills.

Download your free trial by filling in your information on the right.

-Ben

P.S. I’m running another usability test – tomorrow, in fact.  So if there are some more ease-of-use problems to be found, hopefully they’ll turn up then.

We’ve released a new version of Custody X Change.  This version is noteworthy for the following new features:

Here are two testimonials from family law professionals.

The first is from Julie Allender,

“I no longer am in a situation of Custody Visitations as I was awarded sole legal and physical Custody in October but I am now entering into a different phase and studying to become a Paralegal and possibly more and I will push your product at every opportunity I can as it is a valuable time and stress savor!”

The second is from Carrie Howell,

“I have been researching family law for a long time. You’re software is by far the most superior out there. Any of my (I can’t use clientele because I research for free) that asks for help has been and will be recommended your software. Thank you for allowing me a thirty-day trial of it so I could check it out for myself to recommend to others.”

We want to pass on two stories that moms have recently emailed.

The first is from Leslie Conn,

“Having a child with special needs (autism) can be overwhelming. Trying to work out a custody schedule in the midst of a divorce can be tiring and expensive. we needed everything to be spelled out in simple terms. The money we saved using your user friendly custody exchange went to extra’s for my sons therapy. There was no confusion on where and when each of us had him. There isn’t a lot my ex and I agreed on but the user friendly program you provided worked for both of us. Thanks, Leslie”

The second is from Hannah Anderson,

“The man I am divorcing was hardly ever involved in my child’s day to day activities for 5 years (TV was more important).  The minute I asked for a divorce he told me that he wants joint custody.  I used Custody X Change to put together a schedule that I could live with.  Then I used the tips to make his time look as high as it could.  I think I have convinced him to agree to my schedule and save us both lots of hours fighting through our attorneys.

I used the tip about adding school and daycare hours into his times so that it looks like he gets about 5% more time.  I also used the tip about holiday schedules and the tip about starting the report on a date that gives me the percentage that looks the best.”

I thought I’d pass these two stories on.  Hope you liked them.

These are just two examples of mothers using Custody X Change to help their custody case. Try out the software and see if it can help you.

The child-sharing arrangement is a point of conflict for many divorced couples, but it can (and should) be avoided.

How can this conflict be avoided?

The easiest way is for the parents to sit down together and hammer out a fair parental custody arrangement.  If both of the parents are involved in creating the arrangement, they will be much more likely to uphold it.  And if they both agree that the arrangement is fair, it will likely persist for years to come.

The Custody X Change software lets parents sit down together and easily hammer out a fair child-sharing arrangement, thus reducing the conflict. It can be a great child custody help for any situation.

Two ways it does this is:

• Both parents can see the time-share / overnight percentages at all times, which provides clarity into the fairness and increases trust.
• Both parents can walk away with an identical printed calendar, which eliminates any scheduling confusion (all too common around birthdays and holidays).

This process has an added benefit of reducing the legal fees surrounding a custody battle.  It also provides the children, if they are old enough to read a calendar, an easy way to know where they will be spending the holidays.

Not all parents are willing to sit down together (and it does take both to be willing), but those who have done so have sent raving testimonials.

Here are a few general Frequently Asked Questions I get about the Custody X Change software.

Q: I live in (some state), does the software calculate the correct numbers for the child support software here?

A: Yes.  The time-share and overnight percentages the software calculates aren’t based on any state laws.  These numbers are, however, used in most jurisdictions’ child support formulas.

Q: Can I use the reports as legal attachments where I live?

A: The software doesn’t have anything to do with state laws.  A Judge in Idaho, Judge Day, said in regards to the Custody X Change attachment, “Because it accurately and clearly states all the terms, there is no problem using it as an attachment to the decree.”  Because it produces professional parenting plans using clear legal language it’s ideal to submit to the court.  You will likely have additional forms to file, but the Custody X Change parenting plan attachment should be one of them.

Q: How does this certain feature work?

A: If you’re just getting started I’d suggest you watch the how-to videos I created: http://www.custodyxchange.com/videos/.  More complicated questions could be answered by the help file inside the software, although it hasn’t been updated in a little while. If neither of those options turns up any good results, or if you’re having a difficult time, feel free to let me know.

Q: I have a legal question – can you help?

A: Sorry.  I can’t give legal advice and I can’t return emails or calls that ask for it.

Q: How’d you get started with this software?  Did you go through a nasty divorce?

A: I was approached by a family law attorney in California who wanted to be able to calculate time-share percentages.  I’ve only recently been married and don’t even have kids.  But I’ve continued to work on the software, even after the attorney and I parted ways, because I’ve seen the hurt caused to the families of divorce, and I want to continue to help.  As far as my background, I have a BS in Computer Science from a state school in California and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I wanted to pass on two stories that dads have recently emailed about how they’ve used Custody X Change in their child custody cases.

The first is from Steve Capaul,

“About four months ago I received the sad news that my wife wanted a divorce. Almost immediately I was focused on where our two girls would spend their time. In fact, within 48 hours I was documenting every minute of my time with them to assist my case in a potential custody battle that my ex-wife had threatened.

The divorce got contentious, as many do. Where the girls would spend their time was a major source of conflict. With Custody X Change, I was able to show my ex-wife graphically with two years’ worth of calendars how, if her proposed schedule were reversed, it would be unacceptable and a complete travesty of the notion of parenting time.

Suddenly the trajectory changed and within two weeks I had a written agreement to a grudging but somewhat amicable 50/50 physical custody split.

Thanks, the calendar printout was a great and effective tool.”

And the second is from a guy named David (he didn’t give his last name),

“The new reports look  great, and would have been very useful in my divorce.  My divorce was final Aug 10th, I can see how this program would be very helpful for someone in the process of divorce.

I had a “happy divorce”, there was no battle, and we split everything including parenting time and custody.  The custody exchange program helped me create a much more realistic parenting plan, that helps us visualize and plan.  I am utilizing the program to keep track of holidays and vacations as well.

Thanks to your wonderful program, I was able to create a better plan, present it to the kids’ mother and we are able to agree to disagree from the ordered plan.”

These are just two of the many stories that people have about how Custody X Change has helped them with their situation. Download a free trial of the software and find out how it can help you.

Parenting provisions are an important section in a custody agreement, but oft times they are completely or partially neglected. That could spell disaster for the parents down the road.

What exactly are parenting provisions?

Parenting provisions are what’s left over in a parenting plan when you take out the scheduling pieces.  These are the all the additional statues that both parents have to abide by or they are in violation of the court order.

A few of the common topics covered in parenting provisions are: health-care, travel, phone contact, moving, transportation, clothing, school records, and child care.

The bottom line is this: if it’s in the agreement, both parents have to abide by what it says; and if it’s not in the agreement, both parents can do however they please.

How can Custody X Change help?

Custody X Change includes a long list of parenting provisions that you can just click to include.  This makes it so great, since you can use the software to discover provisions you otherwise wouldn’t have thought of ahead of time.

I’ll give two short examples.

First, let’s say either parent wants to have the kids during the other parent’s time if they are in daycare.  All you have to do is check the “Right of First Option of Child Care” box, and type in the number of hours it applies to.  Now it’ll be included in the agreement.  However, if it’s not in the agreement, and the parents disagree… there’s no recourse.

Second, let’s say the either parent wants to prohibit the children from having passports (or taking the children out of the country, for that matter).  If it’s not in the agreement, one parent might find out about it after the fact.  However, if you click the box and include these provisions ahead of time, both parents are legally protected from this type of malfeasance.

So if you haven’t already done so, please take a look at the Parenting Provisions section of the Custody X Change software. It’s a big time-saver in creating an agreement or parenting plan, and could also help you to discover some of these common provisions for your own use.

Do you know why many child support orders are incorrectly calculated?

First, child support is based primarily on two things (depends on where you live though):

• How much the parents make
• How much time each parent gets (timeshare percentage or overnight percentage)

It’s easy to figure out how much money each parent makes. You just ask the employers. The tricky part of the formula that gets messed up is the time-share percentage / overnight percentage.

The reason being is that custody schedules can be complicated. A typical schedule can look like this:

• 1st, 3rd, and alternating 5th weekends;
• Tuesday night with the parent who has the weekend, Wednesday night with the parent who doesn’t;
• Alternating weeks during summer and winter break;
• Ten or so holidays that each gets swapped even/odd, and each has their own times for drop-off and pick-up;
• And, special events and birthdays that are swapped every other year.

Without software to accurately compute all of those times, courts, mediators, and even attorneys usually just short-hand guess at it.

But plugging an estimated time-share / overnight percentage into the child support formula can make the child support order incorrect.

That’s why you need Custody X Change in order to use your state’s child support software.

With Custody X Change, you just put all that scheduling information into the software, choose your dates, and the software computes the percentages precisely and accurately.

And it goes one step further than just computing the numbers. It lets you see which small tweaks to the schedule can make a large impact to timeshare. This can help lower your child support, or help you get the fair money to raise your child.

The trial version of the Custody X Change software will let you input your schedule and it will show your plan’s percentages. Please try it out.

Custody X Change makes it easy to create your personal, customized child custody schedule. With Custody X Change, you can choose from a list of common repeating cycles, or you can create your own. After the schedule is applied to the year, you can look at the time-share percentage that each parent has so you know exactly how your visitation schedule will go in real life. Here is the way to make a custom repeating cycle of custody and visitation in Custody X Change.

If you click on the tab that says Repeating Cycle, this is what the screen looks like.

The first step is to pick which parent the child lives with. If you have a joint custody schedule, or if the child spends equal time with both parents, then pick yourself.

Next, choose the cycle type (under the default parenting plans). You can choose how many weeks your repeating cycle lasts. You can choose from one to ten weeks for your schedule. For this example, we’ll pick a a two week schedule with the father as the parent the child lives with.

Now, you can choose the start date and the time of exchanges. If you have different exchange times for every visitation, just use the default time and we’ll change it when we put in the visitation.

Next, you can put in any type of custody schedule that you want. You do this by clicking on the day that you want to change the custody and then clicking on the edge of the time to change the times.

After you put in the child visitation schedule, you can click on the Calendar tab to see how it looks when it’s applied to the year. You can also see the time-share percentage at the bottom of the screen so you know how much time each parent has with the children.

With this schedule, the mother has 50.14% and the father has 49.86%. If you don’t like the percentages, it’s easy to go back to the Repeating Cycle tab and tweak the schedule. You can experiment with as many options as you want until you find the perfect schedule for you and your child.

In that last post we discussed why it’s important to keep track of visitation. Here’s the new feature in Custody X Change that makes tracking easy.

The first step is to enter in your custody and visitation schedule. Once you have that completed you can track the visits that have happened. You click on the tracking tab in the software and then you put in a starting date. The program imports your child custody schedule. It’s important to not change your schedule after this because any changes you make in the original schedule will show up as custody deviations in the tracking. This will give you an erroneus report. Here’s what it looks like.

From here it’s easy to track the time. If there was a change in the actual visitation, you merely left click on the day and put in the actual time the visit lasted. You can hold the mouse down and drag to quickly change the time.

In the bottom right corner you can see the updated time-share percentage that each parent has. This will change as your visitation schedule changes.

You can also right click on the day to type in the reason the visitation was changed. This can help you take notes.

You can then print out a report that shows the time-share difference in the scheduled time versus the actual time. You can use this to show the other parent or the court.

If you want to try out Custody X Change, you can sign up for a free 30 day trial and explore all of the features.

Last week we revealed the new tracking feature that Custody X Change offers. We’re excited to have this additional feature in the software and we think it can be very useful for parents and their child custody.

Tracking is important for child custody arrangements because parents should be aware of how much actual time they’re spending with their child in comparison with the scheduled time. Let’s say a mother is granted custody of the children and the father has visitation one overnight a week and every other weekend. Once the agreement is in place, the mother calls and asks if the father can babysit the children an extra night a week. He’s happy to get the time so he agrees. Then the one extra night a week turns into two extra nights…then three. The mother is also dropping the kids off early for the weekend and letting them stay later.

Should the father just be happy he’s getting more time with the children? Well, that is probably the case. The father should also be aware of the fact that he is paying child support for all of the extra time he has with the children because the child support is based on the time-share percentage. And, if the father is the primary caretaker of the children, he should be the custodial parent–that should be the legal arrangement. If the father keeps track of all the extra time he has with the children over a few month period, he will be prepared to go back to court and show the difference between the scheduled time and the actual time (Custody X Change provides this convenient number and gives you an easy way to keep track of the changes).

Tracking is also very helpful in the reverse situation. Let’s take the same custody agreement from above,  only this time the mother frequently forgets to drop off the children for their overnight visit or she schedules things for the children during this time. And, she always has excuses and reasons for dropping the kids off late for the weekend visit and needing to pick them up early. If the father keeps track of all the missed visitation, in a few months he will be prepared to go to court and show how the custody agreement isn’t being honored. He can even let the mother know he is keeping track–usually if a parent knows the other one is tracking things, they are more likely to follow the rules.

In the next post we’ll look at the specific feature in Custody X Change that makes it easy to track.

If you are paying or receiving child support, you want to make sure that the amount being paid is accurate. It can be difficult to know if the amount is correct, because every state has different laws about how child support is calculated. Fortunately, every state now uses child support software to figure out how much child support should be paid. This software is available to parents so they can do the child support calculations.

It’s great that the states now use software to caluculate the amount of child support. This drastically reduces the number of errors in those calculations. However, there is something you should watch for as you enter your numbers into your state’s child support software.

Pretty much every state bases some part of the child support on the time-share or overnight percentage that the child has with each parent. It is vital to have the correct time-share and overnight percentage for these calculations. You would think that the courts would find a way to get the right percentages so the child support is correct. However, the courts don’t do that. Many courts make a guess and estimate the amount of time-share percentage the parents have with the children. They do this because it is too time consuming to do all of those calculations. But, doing those calculations can save you money or get you more money in child support.

To make sure the child support software helps you get the right amount, you need to figure out the time-share percentage. Fortunately, there is now a program that figures this out for you. Custody X Change gives you the time-share and overnight percentage that each parent has with the children after you put your custody schedule in. You can then use this with your child support software to get the right amount. You can also give this correct number to the court to make sure the calculations there are right. And, if you are looking for ways to lower your child support, you can experiment with different time-share percentages that lower your support. If you know that you need a certain amount more of time with your child, you can use Custody X Change to come up with a new schedule.

So, Custody X Change is the software to have in conjunction with your child support software. This will help you know you’re paying or receiving the right amount of money to support your child.