Two true things, pulling apart
This year Ireland got its first official Child Maintenance Guidelines and a free calculator that hands both parents the same starting number. Dull on the surface, and quietly a big deal.
Meanwhile the co-parenting app world is in a race to build cleverer ways to watch what your co-parent types. The message is where a row shows up. It is rarely where the row began.
A row about money usually starts with a figure nobody agreed. A row about a handover starts with a date nobody wrote down. Watch the message all you like, the argument was already lost upstream.
Take the facts off the table first
Agree the boring things once, in a place you both see. A number, a calendar, who has them when. Put it somewhere neither of you has to remember it right.
A shared calendar is not admin. It is the row you both stop having, because the school trip was on it three weeks ago and neither of you found out at the gate.
The calmest co-parents are not the ones who argue well. They are the ones who agreed the ordinary things once, so there is little left to argue about.A shared number. A shared calendar. Less to reconstruct, less to dispute.
One calm, private place
ParenThing keeps the calendar, the messages, the handovers and the money in one shared, dated record both homes can open. Maintenance tracked from requested to agreed to paid, so the figure is never a memory contest.
Not a way to catch anyone out. A way to have fewer of the arguments that were never really about you.
Start free at parenthing.ieSources
- Child Maintenance Guidelines for Ireland, Department of Justice, gov.ie https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-justice-home-affairs-and-migration/publications/child-maintenance-guidelines-for-ireland/
- Minister launches new child maintenance calculator (childmaintenancecalculator.ie), Department of Justice, gov.ie https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-justice-home-affairs-and-migration/press-releases/minister-jim-ocallaghan-launches-innovative-new-child-maintenance-calculator/
- TCD study of Irish separation agreements finds shared parenting trend, Trinity College Dublin, tcd.ie https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/tcd-study-of-irish-separation-agreements-finds-shared-parenting-trend-emerging-among-separated-couples/