Designed for families where trust has broken down

OurPath assumes two households that don't always trust each other. Sometimes it's worse than that. These are the choices we made because of it.

Defaults, not settings #

No location sharing. At all. Not off by default — not built. A co-parenting app that knows where a parent is, is a stalking tool waiting for a bad relationship. We decided this is a line rather than a preference.

Phone numbers are never exposed. Communication runs through OurPath. Neither parent gets the other's number from us.

No GPS check-ins at handover. They've been requested. The answer is no, for the same reason.

Professional access is always visible to both parents. If a mediator or solicitor has access to your family's records, both of you can see that, see who they are, and see what they can do. A solicitor acting for one parent is labelled as acting for that parent, to both of you. There is no quiet access.

Neither parent can see the other's drafts, private notes or payment details. Ever.

What the tone assist is and isn't #

Tone assist suggests calmer wording before a heated message sends. It's a prompt, not a filter, and it fails open — if it's unavailable, your message sends normally.

It never tells the recipient that anything was flagged. Turning "your message was moderated" into information the other parent can see would be a new weapon, and we're not building one.

Honest limits #

OurPath is not a safety plan. If you're frightened of your co-parent, a better record is not what you need first.

If there's a non-molestation order or a bail condition in place, the arrangements in it override anything you agree in an app. Talk to your solicitor before setting anything up here.

If you need contact to be supervised, that's a contact centre, not an app. The National Association of Child Contact Centres can find one: naccc.org.uk.

The hardest thing we designed against #

The obvious failure mode for a product like this is that it becomes a tool for building a case against someone. Provoke, record, export, repeat.

We can't fully prevent that. What we've done is make the record symmetrical — every message you send is as permanent as every message you receive, and an export contains the whole thread, not the parts you liked. A record that only works if you behave well is a record that quietly encourages behaving well.

If you find a way to misuse OurPath that we haven't thought of, tell us: hello@ourpath.app. We'd rather hear it from you.