TalkingParents' Free Tier Is Gone — Your Options

TalkingParents ended its free plan on 30 March 2026. If you were relying on that free tier to hold your co-parenting history, you have a decision to make — and the right answer depends on something specific: whether you need a shared channel, or your own record.

First, protect the history you already have

Before you compare anything, export your records while your account still works. Access to history is normally tied to an active account, and the moment to discover that is not the week before a hearing.

• Export message history with timestamps, across the full date range.
• Export expense and payment records, including what was actually reimbursed.
• Export calendar and parenting-time history.
• Download attachments separately if they do not come through in the main export.
• Open every file and check the oldest entry, the timestamps, and the end of the file.
• Keep a copy somewhere that is not your phone.

Only once that is done and verified should you cancel or switch.

The question that actually decides this

Almost everyone approaches this as "which app is cheapest now." That is the wrong first question. The right one is: what are you actually using it for?

You need a shared communication platform if…

• A court order names a specific platform, or requires that communication happen through a monitored channel.
• Your co-parent genuinely uses it and real conversation happens there.
• You need an unalterable record of messages between you both, which only works if you are both in it.

If any of those apply, stay on a shared platform. Nothing else covers it.

You need your own documentation tool if…

• The other parent never signed up, stopped using it, or refuses to participate.
• You were the only one entering anything — you were paying for collaboration software and using it as a diary.
• What you need to show is what happened: exchanges, lateness, missed visits, expenses, who took the child to appointments.
• You want records organized into something you can hand an attorney without a week of assembly.

This is a different category of product, and it is usually cheaper, because it does not have to host a second person.

What good documentation looks like, regardless of tool

This matters more than which app you pick, and it is free:

• Write facts, not characterizations. "Pickup scheduled 5:00 PM. Arrived 5:42 PM. No notice." carries weight. "He is completely irresponsible" does not — and it can be handed back to you.
• Write it the same day. Contemporaneous records are treated differently from reconstructions.
• Never rewrite history. If you got something wrong, add a dated correction and leave the original. A record that visibly changes is a record someone can attack.
• Attach the receipt to the expense it belongs to, not a folder of loose photos.
• Note who else was present. A witness turns your account into something corroborated.
• Assume it may be read by others. Journals like this can be requested — including entries you would not have chosen to share.

A note on "court-admissible"

You will see apps market themselves as producing court-admissible or court-certified records. Treat that carefully. Admissibility is decided by a court, case by case, under your jurisdiction's rules — it is not something software can confer on itself. What good software can honestly do is timestamp entries, preserve originals when you make corrections, keep an audit trail, and format everything into a document that is easy to read. That is genuinely valuable. It is just not the same claim.

Start today, even on paper

If you are between tools, do not let the gap become a hole in your record. We publish a free printable custody log template — exchange, expense and incident sheets, no email required.