How OurPath records work

This page explains, in plain English, why a record in OurPath is worth more than a screenshot. It's longer than it needs to be, because if you're going to rely on this, you should understand it.

The problem with screenshots #

A screenshot of a WhatsApp thread proves almost nothing on its own. Messages can be deleted before the screenshot. Phones can have their clocks changed. Threads can be edited. Any competent solicitor can point all of that out, and a court is entitled to treat it accordingly.

What's needed instead is a record that neither party controlled.

Four things, together #

1. We timestamp, not your phone. Every record is stamped by our servers at the moment it's created. Neither parent can influence it.

2. Records are append-only. There's no edit and no delete. This isn't a setting we chose in the app — permission to update or delete these records is revoked at the database level, for every account including ours. The capability doesn't exist.

3. Each record is chained to the last. Every entry carries a cryptographic hash (SHA-256) computed from its own contents and the hash of the record before it. Alter anything, however small, and every hash from that point on stops matching. Tampering isn't prevented by trust; it's detectable by arithmetic.

4. Exports are sealed and publicly verifiable. When you export, we re-verify the whole chain and print a seal on the document. Anyone — your solicitor, your mediator, your co-parent, a judge's clerk — can go to ourpath.app/verify, enter the export reference and the seal, and confirm the document is genuine and unaltered. No account. No fee.

What this means in practice #

What we don't claim #

We don't say OurPath records are "court-admissible". No app can honestly say that. Admissibility is decided by the court, case by case. What we can say is that these records are complete, neutral, independently verifiable, and not in the control of either parent — which is the thing a solicitor, a mediator or a Cafcass officer is actually trying to establish.

What we can see #

Our staff cannot read your messages in the normal course of business, and we don't use message content for analytics. We use anonymous funnel data — did someone finish onboarding, was a plan accepted — and never child data or message content. Security and data →

This page describes our technical design. It isn't legal advice about evidence. If records matter to a live case, speak to a family law solicitor.