Kidmate: Kidmate was written in 1996 and its age shows. It was one of the first attempts in child custody software, and when it came out it probably looked quite impressive. It isn't impressive anymore. The purpose of the program is to create a custody and visitation schedule that is then printed out in documents--the bare bones of a custody agreement. The program is extremely difficult to figure out--I read almost the entire help folder just to create a basic calendar. The user interface is complex and not intuitive whatsoever.

The program opens up and you type in the children's names. You can have multiple children--I don't know if there is a limit (I typed in 10 names and it still let me put in more). You can then create a custody and visitation schedule for each child.



After you put your kids names in the Family Data tab, you move on to the Timesharing tab. This is where you make your calendar and visitation schedule. I put in three children and you can see the lines for all three of them.

And, this is where the confusion starts.

Notice that there are four tabs on the top and four tabs on the side. This isn't all you need though--you also have to use the tabs at the very top (File, Edit, Calendar, etc).

The first thing I tried to do was create a repeating pattern. In order to do this, you have to use the Calendar button at the top. After taking a few attempts to figure it out, you'll be able to put in the pattern that you want. You can choose from a list of patterns there or make a custom pattern.

The custom pattern (you'll notice this common theme…) was confusing. You can click on the days that you want to change the custody, but you need to be careful about how you've specified your plan. On the bottom of the screen you can see that the kids all have two weeks by them. This means that the days you click on will repeat every two weeks. After some time, I learned that you can have a one week, two week, or four week schedule.



Here's a pattern for three kids. The default times are set at 7:30 am and pm. You can change them by lining up the curser on the sides of the days. (I only knew that because I read the help file). You can click on the day to change what parent has custody, but it is frustrating because you have to click in exactly the right spot on the square or the days adjacent are highlighted.

You can view the repeating pattern in a year or month calendar format by clicking on the tabs on the side of the screen.



You highlight the child at the bottom to see the schedule you made for them (every schedule can be different).



The frustrating thing about the calendar is that the dates are very small at the bottom of the custody time. It makes it very difficult to read as a calendar.

The next thing I wanted to do was add the holidays. Kidmate isn't very advanced with their holiday schedule. Under the Holiday tab you can choose a group of holidays for your calendar.



You can choose from United States, Jewish, Canadian, or Christian holidays.



When you choose a set of holidays, all it does is print the name of the holiday under the day. So, the holidays up above are the ones that will show up on your calendar. You can also add other holidays or special events. However, you can't do anything about scheduling the holidays or the special events for your visitation schedule. You can manually put them in on the calendar, but the program doesn't do it for you or give you an easy option of how to do it. This is a major lacking feature in the software. It doesn't make coming up with a holiday visitation schedule any easier--it's no better than going through a calendar and writing in the times of custody manually.

An important feature in the calendar is the time-share and overnight percentage. Kidmate calculates the time-share and overnight percentage for each parent and keeps you updated as you change the schedule. This is a good and necessary feature. It also shows you the day count (based on overnights) and allows you a quality time tracking--you can choose to track time for a certain time period that's important to you.



There is a Record Keeper tab that allows you to keep notes about your visitation. The pages under this tab are just like the Timesharing tab.



Under the Record Keeper you have to re-enter your repeating cycle of custody and visitation. This is an area that demonstrates how the software is outdated. I just entered in all of the information and it should just transfer over. Once you have your pattern entered, you can click on the calendar. You can choose the length of time the calendar shows--it has to be time that has already passed. When the calendar comes up, you can double click on any day of visitation and write a log entry about it.



This is a good thing for custody software, but it is obviously one of the first programs to come out. It seems very basic and I feel like there should be more to the tracking feature.

The last tab is the E-screen tab. This allows you to keep track of expenses.



This is only the top part of the expense list--there are over 30 types of expenses.

This is a good thing for a custody software to have, but Kidmate doesn't do a very good job at the tracking. It isn't anything more than a basic spreadsheet that does some addition. It would be just as quick--and easier because you don't have to navigate through the complicated software--to keep track of your expenses in a spreadsheet in Excel. This is another example of how the software is outdated.

You can print out the calendar and the records into a form to use for your custody agreement. This is done by clicking on the Print tab on the side. Once this tab opens up, there are even more tabs on the side. There are too many tabs in this program. You can do some modifications in the reports and then print them. There is a box for the holiday schedule, but if you want any information in it, you need to type it out. That's a pain.



 

 

 
These forms print out to a very basic custody agreement. The schedule is written out and the time-share and overnight percentages are reported. You can also print out copies of your calendar.



The reports are nice to have, but they are so basic that any parent using them would need supplemental materials. It's a good start, but it doesn't quite deliver.

Custody X Change: Custody X Change lets you create an entire parenting plan or custody agreement. The interface is very user friendly, and the program is built on layers so it's easy to make a custody and visitation calendar. The first layer in the program is deciding what type of repeating cycle of custody you want



The program has many options to choose from. You click the one you want and it applies it to however many years you want to see. You can also make a custom schedule.

You can create as many calendars and parenting plans that you want. The program doesn't allow you to add more than one child per plan, but this is actually an improvement over Kidmate. Having all the schedules right by each other was confusing. With this program you simply create the schedule you want, and if you need a different schedule for a different child you make another plan.

As you can see in the above picture, after the repeating cycle tab you can move on to vacation time and then holiday time. With vacation time you can enter in the dates of your vacation as a specified vacation or put in an unspecified vacation clause into your agreement





















This is a great feature in the program. It is so easy to add vacation days, and if you don't know what days you want to take a vacation, you can easily put a clause into your agreement saying you get 7 days of vacation sometime during the year.

The program also lets you easily add holidays and divide them between the parents. Under the holiday tab a list of all the common holidays comes up. You check on the box of the holiday and them you can put what parent has that holiday and the times the holiday lasts.



This is wonderful! You have your comprehensive list of holidays all in one place and you assign custody right then. You can also add any holidays that you want. The holiday schedule then transfers right to the calendar and the custody time is all figured out. This is how it should be done.

The great advantage of the program being built in layers is if that you ever need to make a change in the calendar you can easily do so without disrupting anything. Like, if you change the rotating schedule to start a week later, it doesn't change the holiday schedule or anything else you've put in.

Along with holiday and vacation time, you can add any type of special event. The program's interface really shines here. You can simply click on any day and drag to the times you want the event or visitation to last. You can also type in the times. It's so easy! If you click on a certain part of the day, a different time for visitation comes up. This makes it very easy to click on the day you want. The events immediately show up on the calendar. The calendar is very clear and easy to read. It looks like how a custody and visitation calendar should look.



You can see here how I've added special events--and the special event bar off to the side. This is fantastic.

At the bottom of the calendar, the program keeps track of the time share percentage of both parents. This is nice to know while you're creating your visitation times because you always know exactly how much time you have with the child.



Custody X Change does more than allow you to create a calendar. You can also create your entire agreement and print it out in legal terms. The program includes a long list of parenting provisions that you can read through and check if you want included



(these are just the first few provisions--there is quite a long list to choose from, and you can even add your own)

Once you check the provision, it prints out like this:



Custody X Change then allows you to print off your entire parenting plan. You can choose if you want the plan to use the terms custody/visitation or child lives with (some states really care about this). The finished parenting plan is a nice, professional document



The documents are so clear and easy to read. They also contain all of the information you need in your agreement. The calendar has all of the events clearly labeled and looks great when you print it. You can print out multiple copies of the calendar and use them for references.

Kidmate: Kidmate provides some of the documents that you need in court. You need to have the custody and visitation schedule and you can print that out. In order for you to have a complete calendar, you would need to enter in all of the holiday information. The documents have the basic information. It explains the custody schedule and provides a visual calendar for it. Unfortunately, the calendar can be difficult to read--especially if there are multiple children on it. The boxes are small. There are also more papers because the schedule prints out on a different sheet and isn't integrated into the whole agreement.

Kidmate really lacks because there aren't any provisions or anything else you can add to your custody agreement. You would have to look those up and type them out on your own. The time-share and overnight percentages are important to have, but there still needs to be more.

You have to print out the documents in the Kidmate style. They also offer to print them in Kidrun. From what I understand, this is a way to print the documents in color if you don't have a color printer. Essentially the program will save your information to a disk and you can print it at a copy center. The fact that the program touts this as such an amazing feature definitely shows how ancient it is.

I wouldn't feel confident going to court (or mediation) with the print outs from Kidmate. They don't look as professional as they need to for something so important.

Custody X Change: Custody X Change is better overall for parents who are preparing for court (or mediation or just a meeting with a former spouse). This is because of the phenomenal parenting plan that you can print that I discussed above. Parents can bring in a whole year of a custody and visitation calendar complete with holiday, vacation, and special event times. They can also have a list of provisions and stipulations to show the court. They even have an exact time-share percentage to show how much time each parent has with the children.

Custody X Change allows you export your plan into PDF and Microsoft Word. So, if you need to make any personal changes you can do so.

The parenting plan you can create is the thing you need in court--it shows that you have thought through your case and that you have professional documents to prove it. Custody X Change gets high marks for this. I would feel confident and prepared to present my case before the judge with the documents from Custody X Change.

Kidmate: Parents could work together to make a custody agreement in Kidmate. Although, the software is so frustrating that it might increase the tension. Computer programs are generally useful for dealing with custody because you can make a calendar based solely on the numbers and time-share percentages and that takes out a lot of the arguments. There isn't really a way to share your schedule with the other parent--from what I can tell, you can't email your information--so that is a drawback.

Custody X Change: Custody X Change is beneficial to parents who try to work together because it is so easy to make changes to the calendar. You can create so many plans--and it's so easy to make them--that it is easier for parents to find something they agree on. You can also export the information to PDF and Microsoft Word so you can easily share the information with the child's other parent.

Custody X Change is also working on adding integrative tracking. This is planned to come out at the end of the summer 2009. This is will a big benefit for parents to collaborate.

Kidmate: Kidmate provides a time-share and overnight percentage which is vital because almost every state uses one of these numbers to calculate child support. These numbers are also extremely difficult to calculate. Many courts and attorneys don't even bother to come up with the right amount. They make a guess. That's why every child custody software should provide them. The problem here is that Kidmate offers a rudimentary version of time-share tracking and doesn't produce court documents that prove it.

Custody X Change: Custody X Change also calculates the timeshare and overnight percentages. And, you can easily experiment with different custody and visitation schedules (which will impact the time-share percentage) so you can lower your support payments. This is a great feature.

Here's a blog post by an attorney in California about what he had to say on this feature of Custody X Change. (click here).

Custody X Change also produces reports that can be used in court that show how these numbers were calculated.

Kidmate: Kidmate costs $95.00.

Custody X Change: Custody X Change has several versions and ranges in price from $147-297. There is an option to pay in installments--you can choose 1, 3, or 5 payments. Although the program is more expensive than Kidmate, it is also a lot better. For just a little bit more money you can have quality software that will save you time and money.

Kidmate: Kidmate does not provide an online demo of the product or offer a free trial version. This makes it very difficult for people to know if they want to purchase it. They give an overview of the software on the website, but there are only a couple screenshots and other examples of what the software actually does. In fact, the screenshots I've taken from my version of Kidmate are the most comprehensive overview of the program I've seen. I was thinking when I wrote it that it would have been nice to have had that information when I started using the program--I could have saved a lot of time.

Kidmate provides a tutorial disk with the program, a user manual, and a help folder in the program. You'll need all of them to figure it out. The website also gives a telephone number, email address, and fax number for questions.

Custody X Change: Custody X Change lets you download a free 30 day trial of the software. This is plenty of time to investigate the program and see if it does everything you want it to do. You can create and save one plan in the trial (you can create multiple plans when you own the software) but if you want to print anything you need to buy the program.

Custody X Change offers video instruction, a FAQ and help page, a help tab, and an email address and phone number for questions.