With kids, after divorce or separation, setting up a color-coded calendar can make sharing custody a lot easier. It can become easy to make mistakes if you don’t have a master calendar. It may seem simple to calculate in your head or by simply hand counting the weeks, however; the simple reality is that if you miscount one weekend, an entire year’s worth of planning may become inaccurate.

Lists are great, but again they just don’t do the job. When the parenting schedule is set by a rule (like every other week or every third week) and events are usually just a date, matching things up becomes a little less intuitive. The old adage that a picture can say a thousand words couldn’t be truer than with post-divorce, co-parenting schedules.

Before software tools became readily available, parents would have to color in by hand on a calendar which days belonged to which parent. This process takes a lot of time and if a mistake was made they would have to start all over. Additionally, if they agreed upon a change to the schedule, they would have to start all over again.

Create visitation schedules in minutes.

The first custody software tools to help you create parenting schedules appeared in the late 1990’s. These were a big improvement from the hand drawn schedules and made it possible to provide copies of the calendars to others more easily. But, once again, if an agreed upon change happened, you would have to make the changes and resend copies to everyone. Not a very efficient process, especially if changes occur frequently.

In 2001, the OurFamilyWizard website was born. The OurFamilyWizard website provides the ability to create stunning parenting plan schedules or custody calendars just like the software products, but unlike the custody software products your calendar isn’t fixed and doesn’t get stale and outdated. Parents can make updates to the schedule and all changes are recorded so there is no question about how the schedule got into its current form.

In addition to creating the parenting time schedules, the OurFamilyWizard website goes a step further than software solutions by giving you the ability to setup events and activities. This can make coordinating parental responsibility a lot cleaner and easier for parents. If it is your night with the kids, it may make more sense for you to pick them up and drop them off from practice. But, until you see everything together in one place, this isn’t always clear.

Add events to your visitation schedule

A feature that you will find exclusive to the OurFamilyWizard website is the ability to trade or forfeit parenting time. For example: If it was my weekend to have the kids but I needed to go out of town for work, I could simply request that the other parent take my parenting time in exchange for a weekend in a few weeks. The other parent can either approve or refuse this request and possibly provide a counter offer if the weekend I requested doesn't work.

There are a lot of companies that claim to be as good or better than the OurFamilyWizard website, but the simple fact is that the OurFamilyWizard website is the only site being recommending and ordered by court throughout the USA and Canada. With 10 years of helping families under our belt, we can assure that your information won’t disappear as many competitors have over the years.

Having a clear picture of co-parenting responsibilities that everyone has access to is becoming the new standard in effective co-parenting. Courts throughout the USA and Canada have ordered high conflict parents to use the OurFamilyWizard website to help coordinate and document co-parenting custody exchanges. If the site is able to help the most difficult cases, imagine what it can do for your family. After all, communication between former spouses can be one of the biggest factors in your children’s outcome after divorce.

The best part is the calendar is just one of the many great features included with your OurFamilyWizard subscription.

Author's Bio: 

Co-parenting, shared parenting and joint child custody tools for divorced or unmarried parents. Parenting time calendars, custody calendars, visitation schedules, shared expense management, messages, information storage and more to help with child custody relationships.