The plan is the product

A parenting plan is a written agreement between separated parents about how they'll raise their children across two homes. Cafcass's version is now called Our Child's Plan. Most plans are agreed carefully, printed once, and never looked at again.

OurPath makes the plan the thing that runs the app. Your schedule, your holiday rules and your cost splits all come from it. When the plan changes, they change.

Two ways in #

Your mediator sets it up, with both of you there. At the end of mediation — the moment when both parents are in the room, in agreement, and willing — your mediator can build the plan in their portal and propose it. Both of you get an invite, review it, accept in one tap, and walk out with a live shared calendar. Cold start to working arrangement in under ten minutes.

This is the version that works, and it's why we built the professional portal first.

Or you build it yourself. A plain-English wizard, about five minutes. Who the children are, where they mainly live, which days with each parent, handovers, holidays and Christmas, how money is split, what you both expect about communication. Only the children and the basic schedule are required — everything else has a sensible default and can be skipped.

You propose it. Your co-parent accepts it. Then it's live.

Nothing is live until both of you accept it #

One parent proposes, the other accepts. That's the only way a plan becomes active.

Change something and it's a new version that needs accepting again. Old versions are kept — the record of what was agreed, and when, doesn't disappear because the arrangement moved on.

Whatever your plan is called #

Cafcass's Our Child's Plan, an NFM plan, your mediator's house template, or something you wrote yourselves. OurPath maps them all onto the same underlying sections — living arrangements, schedule, holidays, handovers, communication, decision-making, education, health, finances, travel, childcare, dispute resolution, safety — and relabels them to match the template you're using.

You can export a document in the format your mediator or the court expects.

When it isn't working #

Every plan should say what happens when you disagree. OurPath's does something about it.

Raise an issue, pick the part of the plan it relates to, optionally attach the relevant messages or records, and OurPath sends a structured request to your mediator with the facts already assembled. If you don't have one, we'll help you find one.

That's a mediation session, not a court application. It's usually cheaper, faster and considerably less awful.