The co-parenting app for divorced parents who just need the schedule to work
After a divorce a co-parenting app really only has three jobs: tell you who has the children on any given day, keep a record of what actually happened, and help you split the costs. SplitDay does those three and stops. One parent can run it alone — the other does not have to install anything — and the free plan is ad-supported with no time limit.
The rest of this page is those three jobs, what changes once your order is signed, and how to translate the wording in that order into a calendar you can actually read on a Tuesday morning.
SplitDay is a custody calendar app for iPhone (iOS 15.6+) and Android (7+), published in 65 in-app languages, that tracks who has the children on each day, logs every exchange and splits child-related costs between two households.
- Works solo?
- Yes — the other parent needs no account, and nothing is sent to anyone unless you invite them
- Price
- Free plan, ad-supported; Pro $8.99/month, $44.99/year ($3.75/month billed annually) or $99.99 once
- Exports
- Custody history as CSV (free); expense report and chat transcript as PDF
Prices in US dollars, verified against the shipped app on .
General information, not legal advice. Custody rules differ by state and country; check with a family-law professional about your own situation.
Job one: know who has the kids on any given day
Set your custody pattern once and every future day is already assigned to one household or the other, including the holidays. Here is why that matters. It is a Tuesday in October. The swimming club emails to ask who is collecting your daughter on Thursday, and the honest answer is that you would have to count backwards through three swapped weekends to be sure. That is the problem this solves.
You set your pattern once — alternating weeks, 2-2-3, extended weekend, 4-3, every third week, the 1st, 3rd and 5th weekends, odd and even calendar weeks, or a custom week you build yourself — and every day after that is coloured for one household or the other. Holidays come from a preset for your country, and an assigned holiday takes precedence over the regular pattern on that day, so Thanksgiving does not quietly stay with whoever the rotation happened to land on. One-off changes are day overrides: the pattern stays intact underneath, and the exception is visible as an exception.
All of that is on the free plan, and none of it needs the other parent's cooperation.
Job two: keep a record of what actually happened
Log each exchange as it happens and the app keeps a running count of the time each household actually had — not the time the order says they should have had. That gap is the thing memory gets wrong. He kept them an extra night in March because of a flight. You covered two of his weekends in June. By the time anyone asks — a mediator, a lawyer, a review hearing, or just the two of you trying to be fair about summer — both of you remember it differently, and both of you are sincere.
Logging an exchange takes a few seconds at the door. The scoreboard then keeps a running total of the time each household actually had, not the time the order says it should have had, and the gap between those two numbers is the only honest basis for a conversation about make-up time. The on-screen history list shows the last ten exchanges on the free plan; the CSV export is not capped and contains every one you have logged.
If you want a longer read on what is worth logging, start with documenting custody and how to track custody days.
Job three: split the costs without an argument
Log a shared expense with a photo of the receipt and the balance between the two households becomes a number instead of an argument. The school trip was $84, the winter coat $60, the dentist $130 after insurance. None of those is worth a fight on its own; three months of them, unrecorded, absolutely is.
You log a shared expense with a photo of the receipt — the AI receipt scan reads the amount and date so you are not typing it out — and the balance between the two households is a number rather than an argument. The free plan covers 3 expenses and 3 AI receipt scans a month, which is enough to keep the big-ticket items honest. Pro lifts the expense limit and raises receipt scans to 50 a month, and adds the expense-report PDF you can send on to a lawyer or mediator.
Related reading: tracking child-related expenses and documenting child expenses.
During the divorce vs after it
The same app does two fairly different jobs on either side of a signed order. Before, you are testing options and building a picture of what already works; after, you are running a fixed pattern and noticing when reality drifts from it.
| What changes | While the order is being negotiated | After the order is signed |
|---|---|---|
| The question you are answering | “Which schedule could we both actually live with?” | “Did this month match the order?” |
| What you set up | Try patterns side by side and read the day counts before you commit to any of them | Lock the agreed pattern in and let deviations show up against it |
| Holidays | Load your country's preset to see which dates you would actually be negotiating over | Assign each holiday once; the assignment takes precedence over the regular pattern that day |
| Money | Start logging expenses now, so the first year is a record rather than a guess | Keep logging; the expense-report PDF (Pro) summarises a period on one page |
| What you can hand over | A CSV of what happened under the interim arrangement | A CSV of your full custody history, plus the chat transcript if you are messaging in-app |
Your custody order, translated into a calendar
Orders are written in a legal shorthand that rarely matches the way a calendar app names things. This is the mapping most people need. In our custody-split study of 804 separated families (April–July 2026), 42% chose a 50/50 split and, across the 665 schedule choices in the 2026 data, 46% ended up as a fully custom week — so if your order does not match a template exactly, you are in the majority.
| What the order says | What to set in the app | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| “Alternating weeks” / “week on, week off” | Alternating Weeks — one full week each | Alternating weeks explained |
| “2-2-3 rotation” | Two days each, then alternating three-day weekends | The 2-2-3 schedule |
| “Every other weekend, Friday 6pm to Sunday 6pm” | Alternating Weekends, with the handoff time set to 18:00 so reminders fire at the right hour | Every other weekend |
| “1st, 3rd and 5th weekends of each month” | 1st, 3rd & 5th Weekends — a monthly rather than fortnightly cycle | 1st, 3rd & 5th weekends |
| “Approximately 60/40” | A weekday base with extended weekends, or 4-3 | 60/40 schedules |
| “Reasonable visitation” / nothing fixed | No fixed pattern — log what actually happens and let the record build itself | What “reasonable visitation” means · Co-parenting without a fixed schedule |
If your order uses a term you have not met before, the custody glossary covers the vocabulary in plain English, the study figures above are in our custody-split statistics, and the parenting plan template shows how the clauses usually fit together.
One parent, or both
Sharing is optional: one parent can run the whole calendar alone, and nothing is sent to anyone unless you invite them — the other parent never needs an account. Plenty of divorced parents never get the other household onto a shared tool, and that is a perfectly workable way to use this. Your calendar, your log, your export — on your own phone, working offline, with nothing to negotiate.
If the two of you do want one calendar, Pro opens a shared household: one subscription runs your shared calendar. The co-parent you invite views it and messages you for free — editing needs their own plan. Viewing, sync and notifications never cost the invited parent anything for as long as your subscription is active, and the in-app chat has an AI tone meter that labels a draft friendly, neutral, harsh or hostile and offers a calmer rewrite before you send it.
What it costs
The free plan is ad-supported and has no time limit: full calendar, every pattern, the scoreboard, exchange logging, unlimited helpers, all twelve country holiday presets, 3 expenses and 3 AI receipt scans a month, and CSV export of your full custody history.
Pro is $8.99 a month, $44.99 a year — $3.75 a month, billed annually — or $99.99 once for lifetime access. It removes the banner ads and adds household sharing, co-parent messaging, cloud backup and sync, the printable kid-friendly calendar PDF, the expense-report PDF and higher AI limits. Prices in US dollars, verified against the shipped app on ; local store prices vary. Full detail on the pricing page, and a free-plan deep dive on the free co-parenting app page.
Records you can hand to a lawyer
Three things come out of the app in a form somebody else can open: your custody history as a CSV file, which opens in any spreadsheet and holds every exchange you logged; the expense report as a PDF, on Pro; and the chat transcript as a PDF, if you are messaging in-app. In short: timestamped PDF & CSV exports you can share with your lawyer or mediator.
We make no claim about what any court will accept — that depends on your jurisdiction and on how the record was kept, and our terms say so explicitly. What we can say is that a contemporaneous log is worth more to the person advising you than a reconstruction from memory. What a co-parenting app can and cannot document goes through this properly.
Two more reads for the year after a separation: two homes, one childhood on keeping the two households feeling like one life, and co-parenting communication on keeping the messages short.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best app for divorced parents?
It depends on how much conflict you are managing. If a court has ordered a specific platform, or you need tamper-evident message records for a contested case, OurFamilyWizard and TalkingParents are built for exactly that and you should use them. If what you actually need is a shared schedule, a record of what happened and a way to split costs — and especially if the other parent will not install anything — a calendar-first app that works solo is the better fit. Our 2026 comparison sets them side by side.
Is there an app that tracks custody days?
Yes. SplitDay's scoreboard keeps a running count of the time each household actually had, including the nights that did not follow the pattern, and it is on the free plan. The full history exports as a CSV file. See how to track custody days for what to record and how often, and the most common custody schedule for what 804 separated families actually chose in 2026.
Can I use a co-parenting app before the divorce is final?
Yes, and it is usually the better time to start. During negotiation you can try patterns side by side and see the day counts before agreeing to anything, and a log of the interim arrangement is a far more useful thing to bring to mediation than a memory of it. Nothing you set up has to be shared with the other parent.
How do divorced parents split expenses in the app?
You log a shared expense, attach a photo of the receipt, and the AI receipt scan reads the amount and date for you. The free plan covers 3 expenses and 3 AI receipt scans a month; Pro lifts the expense limit and raises receipt scans to 50 a month, and adds the expense-report PDF you can send to a lawyer or mediator.
Do I need my ex's permission to use it?
No. It is your own calendar on your own phone, it works offline, and nothing is sent to anyone unless you send an invite. The other parent does not need an account. Sharing only happens if you deliberately invite them into a household, which is a Pro feature and entirely optional.
Get the schedule out of your head.
Set up your custody calendar in five minutes on the free plan — no account, no card, and the other parent does not need to do anything.
New to the free plan? See exactly what is free, or compare the options in our 2026 co-parenting app roundup.
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