Help Us Help You
Have your own psycho ex? Get a FREE Report on "Why Co-Parenting Doesn't Work", or learn how to win child custody with a custody coach.
Hey Nons, DW here, I’m taking over the blog for a day 
Having dealt with a PEW for over 4 years now, I sometimes feel as if I’m losing my mind, and I’m sure many of you can relate. I begged LM to do this blog for quite some time before he finally agreed, and I’ve had a few ideas for creating a business around this whole mess for awhile now in order to change the system from the outside. Some of you may know that I work in Search Engine Marketing, so I’ve been thinking of creating software that will help high conflict divorcees get through the situation without losing their mind, and with the ability to track everything going on. I have a legal background so we had an advantage with documenting everything in a manner that was useful to our attorney (and should have been to custody evaluators if they took the time to read everything), so we want to put this experience into use for everyone else, while at the same time hopefully getting attorneys and evaluators that aren’t aware of high conflict personalities to understand what is going on.
What that means is we are currently developing a web application that will allow you to sign in and keep a private journal of events, custody calendar, track phone calls, custody time and interferences, save files and emails, track child support sent or received, track other expenses, among other things. The software will allow you to give access to certain areas (like the calendar) to your ex-spouse with the ability to message back and forth without giving them your normal email account, as well as access for attorneys, counselors, evaluators, and teachers so that all information pertaining to custody and children will be stored in one place that will be accessible from anywhere. (All with the ability to keep sections private when needed, or allow access to read only such as for your attorney.)
If you can, imagine going to one place to update the fact that your ex-husband or wife didn’t return calls with your children for 10 days in a row. When your attorney needs proof of this, you simply run a report and print a handy table that shows the court that 75% of your phone calls that are court ordered have been denied. Or imagine being able to do a search for every email that contains foul language, false accusations, or some other issue, and being able to print them with one click and hand them to your attorney.
Without going into too much detail, since this is obviously a work in progress, we are interested in hearing what you would like to see in software that would help you stay organized through court battles. Once we have a first edition of the application we will be asking for beta users to test everything and give us feedback about problems or suggestions to improve it, and if you send us ideas you will be the first on the list to have free access - so shoot us an e-mail with your ideas to thepsychoexwife@gmail.com, we would especially love to hear views from attorneys/counselors/evaluators on what would help you with clients. We will also be creating an affiliate program for the software once it launches, so if you have a blog of your own or website, you will be able to sign up and sell the software earning commissions and helping others at the same time.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
we used something similar when going through our custody process. The software is called “Optimal” and can be found here:
http://www.parentingtime.net/
While we thought it was great, it didn’t help us any in court because no one wanted to see any of the information. I think that it would be helpful if you’re lucky enough to get an evaluator who will take the time to look at these kinds of things.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
This is a sound concept and I wish something like it had been available when I was going through my divorice and custody battle, but I am going to play “devil’s advocate”. First, it is questionable whether a court would accept the statistics and documentation. That is one thing that the individual’s attorney would need to clarify. The other potential issue, which may be a court’s argument also, is the possibility that one of the ex-spouses could enter false or misleading information to make him/herself look good or the other party look bad. If this application and information were monitored by the attorneys it could be very useful in eliminating some of the face to face/voice to voice contact that can make some divorces so contentious. I’m definitely interested in seeing the final product and the results. Good luck!
October 6th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Yes, that is definitely the difference we want to make with the software, the entire process has to involve the attorneys and evaluators. The problem with most documentation that you bring to court is that it can’t be verified or there is too much of it. Courts do hear contempt cases and will look at evidence, we’ve been there, but being able to show what has happened is difficult because you can’t get phone records, etc. Keeping detailed notes that are easy to look at at a glance is helpful.
As for entering false/misleading information, that is done everywhere whether it’s a printed email or something from a system, which we’ve all seen with our PEW’s. It’s their job. Our job is to show, with proof that “actually here are the emails that were sent, as you can see she DID agree to such and such as I have stated.” It becomes less of a she said, he said, when we have a system that people IN the system approve of, which is why we want attorneys and evaluators to have access to and use this program.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Here is experience from my former life as a systems engineer and human factors engineer:
Systems engineering - make your database searchable, indexable, and configurable. As you mentioned, one of your software client objectives will be to initiate a search/sort feature that allows you to quickly find documentation by date, topic, keyword content, etc. That will be up to the back-end engineering (e.g., You) to figure out.
Related to this: your goal of making the right information accessible to different individuals. Attorneys will want to see certain types of summarized info, counselors will want to see something else; and judges, something altogether different. This is a worthwhile goal, I would encourage you to put the needed energy into it to really make it come up to your vision.
Human factors engineering - make it usable. Create lots of wizards and walk-throughs, and automated pop-ups. Walk the process yourself, many times, and ask “what would a user need to see right now, in order to accomplish X?” If your system is not usable, then no matter how wonderful all those functions are, you won’t get the average person in to access them. I’ve seen several “parenting access calendar” systems, including one that was sponsored by one of my affiliate companies (children in the middle), go unused because they were just so difficult to interface with.
Lastly, your system security will need to pass standards that will keep the information at the correct level of protection. With your legal background, you know that there are different levels of information and the ability to access it: privileged, private, confidential, common. Some is discoverable, some is not. You wouldn’t want someone to accidentally put some information into your system that should have been protected as “privileged”, and by using your system they have de facto waived their rights and the information becomes discoverable. So… be careful about that.
And finally - I would be delighted to bring my unique combination of former systems engineer and human factors engineer, and current collaborative divorce coach to bear on your project and would be quite willing to beta test it for you. I have experience at beta testing software (the most recent thing I personally beta tested was the “Neverlost” system first fielded by Hertz rent-a-car; and of course I was an engineering manager on the test team of a well-known aerospace company testing a very well-publicized jet fighter currently in development), and I know how to give specific and detailed feedback from a test situation.
Best of luck to you!! I am proud of you for taking this step in making a difference in the horrid mess-up aka “the family court system”.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Wow, I had no idea that this kind of thing was out there (or going to be out there soon). Is there a version for current parents having trouble, I mean that could be used to try and re-negotiate custody/visitation time?
October 7th, 2008 at 3:44 am
this would be a great idea and I would love to be a beta tester. I have been fighting for custody for the last 8 years and I have 4 years left. So when you need someone to test please let me know.
thank you very much,
October 7th, 2008 at 3:51 am
Thanks for the ideas so far everyone!
JB, absolutely fabulous points and ones that are HIGH on my list. You are definitely on my list to speak with at length very soon
October 7th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
To everyone:
Great suggestions and thanks to all of you who have submitted email suggestions, too.
There have been many and I didn’t want it to appear that anyone is being “blown off” if we don’t answer them all.
Thanks for sharing your experiences and your expectations as we work on this project.
AND KEEP THE SUGGESTIONS COMING!
October 8th, 2008 at 2:03 am
I think this is a fabulous idea. I found something similar a while back, but it was very confusing. I don’t even remember the name. I don’t know a lot about what would be considered relevant or provable (is that a word?), but I think that if one parent is documenting whatever it may be and the other parent has access to it, or vice versa, lying won’t really work. For example, I (or my hubby) document that EX dropped off child 30 minutes late. If EX disagrees, she can document otherwise. Further, if it’s documented that child was dropped off 30 minutes late and EX does/says nothing, EX can’t deny it later on. Maybe I’m wrong, but it sounds like a great idea to me!
October 8th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I think this sounds like an interesting but as others have stated, potentially an issue with ex’s claiming invalid information was entered. For my husband and I, we have resolved our selves to documenting our issues in the following manner: Each and EVERY phone call that we have with his ex is followed up with a synopsis e-mail sent to HER. We put dates, times, discussion matters, everything–basically a verbatim e-mail that covers everything that was stated on the phone regardless of whom said it. Not once has she contested anything we have said was said..Although I question wether she realizes this is our method of documenting the phone calls that do occur. Other than that, all other communication is via e-mails which are subsequently saved in a folder in a year month date format with a tag indicating who it was from or to and then a brief subject line. Within two minutes I can find exactly whatever e-mail I am looking for…and I have it all….every e-mail from her or to her or to the kids or from the kids. As for the courts//mediators not wanting to see documentation that someone may have…most courts will accept all documentation provided it is given in at the same time as the court paperwork. As the authors of this post are sure to agree, save everything and document the world.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I’m in the project management field and there are several web-based tools out there that do similar things. Google ‘workgroup collaboration’ or ‘project management software’ and you might get some ideas. They may not be directly applicable to what you have in mind, but they’ll get the mental juices flowing.
Scheduling, assigning tasks, tracking tasks with email notifications, message boards with assignable read-write priviledges, etc. We use stuff like this all the time.
Good luck!