Co-parenting app questions, answered

Braidly is a co-parenting app made by Braidly Technologies LLC in Greenville, South Carolina, for separated parents in the United States and Canada. It puts a shared custody calendar, AI tone-coached messaging, split expenses, a kids' view and court-ready records in one place, and one subscription covers both parents. It is in private beta as of September 2026.

It depends on the situation. OurFamilyWizard has the longest courtroom track record and is the default when a court order names an app. AppClose is free and widely court-ordered. Braidly is the better fit when cost matters (one plan covers both parents), when a reluctant co-parent needs a free way in, or when the conflict itself is the problem — its AI Tone Coach rewrites a heated message before it sends, and a neutral AI Mediator can be invited into a thread. Braidly's own comparison page lists where each app wins.

Agree the ratio your parenting plan specifies (50/50 or income-based), then keep one shared ledger rather than two sets of receipts. In Braidly one parent submits the expense with a photo of the receipt, the split applies automatically, the other parent approves or queries it, and a single running balance shows who owes whom. Braidly records the settlement but does not move money; you pay each other however you already do.

A co-parenting app is a shared workspace for parents raising children in two households. It replaces scattered text threads, screenshots and spreadsheets with one custody calendar, one message thread, one expense ledger and one document store that both parents can see. Braidly adds AI that helps rewrite heated messages before they send, and records that can be exported for court if it ever comes to that.

No. One Braidly subscription covers the whole family — both parents and both households — and parents can split the cost between them. This is the main way Braidly differs from OurFamilyWizard and TalkingParents, which bill each parent separately, so a two-parent family there pays twice.

Braidly still works for one parent. The calendar, journal, expense records and document vault all function solo, and everything you log is timestamped from the day you write it — which matters if you later need to show a pattern. When your co-parent does join, they see the shared schedule and expenses from that point forward, and your private journal stays private.

Yes, there is a permanently free plan that includes the custody calendar, basic messaging, up to two children, the handoff log and limited expense tracking. Every new account also gets a 14-day full Premium trial with no credit card required. Paid plans are $12.99/month (Standard) and $24.99/month (Premium) for the whole family, not per parent.

Braidly exports produce a complete, timestamped record of messages, journal entries, custody history and expenses, with a SHA-256 content digest so a later export of the same period can be checked against it. Once legal hold is active, neither parent can edit or delete the underlying records through the app. Whether any given record is admitted is always the court's decision, and no co-parenting app can promise admissibility; what an app can do is make the record complete, attributable and change-evident, which is what Braidly does.

Yes. You can grant an attorney, mediator, therapist, grandparent or caregiver read-only access scoped to the records you choose, without exposing either parent's full account. Access is granted and revoked by you at any time.

The AI Tone Coach analyses a message you are composing, on your device's request, and offers a calmer rewrite before you send. It suggests only — you always choose which version sends, and nothing is sent automatically. The AI Mediator only ever joins a thread when a parent explicitly invites it.

Children get their own simplified view showing where they are staying and when, on their own device or through a link a parent shares. They see the schedule, not the parents' messages. The point is that a child never has to ask either parent where they sleep tomorrow, and never carries a message between two houses.

Braidly is available in the United States and Canada. European signups are not accepted yet because data residency and Standard Contractual Clauses are still outstanding, and accepting them without those in place would be a GDPR problem rather than a feature gap.

About five minutes. You pick your rotation pattern — 2-2-3, week-on/week-off, or a custom schedule — set the date it starts from, add your children, and invite your co-parent with a code. Holidays are pre-seeded and school breaks can be imported from a school calendar.

Not unless you choose to show them. Each entry is private by default and appears only in your own court export. You can mark an individual entry "shared" if you want your co-parent to read it, and you can formally release your journal for litigation — that release is dated, recorded, revocable, and shown to both of you. Absent one of those two deliberate acts, your co-parent never sees an entry, and nothing is released to them automatically.

Records are protected by row-level security so each family's data is isolated at the database level. Once legal hold is active the database rejects edits and deletions by either parent, Braidly staff do not alter records, and any change to an exported period would show against its SHA-256 digest. Access for support purposes is limited and logged. Full detail is in the privacy policy.

Children see a simplified view of the custody schedule — where they are staying and when — and nothing else. They cannot see the parents' messages, the expense ledger, either parent's journal, or any documents.

Cancelling drops you to the free plan rather than deleting anything. Your calendar, messages and records remain. If you delete your account outright, deletion follows the schedule set out in the privacy policy, except where a legal hold is active and records must be preserved.

Braidly is available in the United States and Canada. European signups are not accepted yet because data residency and Standard Contractual Clauses are still outstanding, and taking EU signups without those in place would be a GDPR problem rather than a feature gap.