Everything you might want to know before signing up — what the app does, how your data is protected, and what it costs.
The Beacon Co-Parenting App is an Irish app — live now at app.beaconparenting.ie — that helps separated parents and guardians coordinate the practical side of raising their children together — in one calm, structured place rather than across texts, emails and apps. Its whole approach is built around one idea — communication with boundaries — keeping co-parents in touch while keeping things calm and structured, to reduce conflict and keep a clear, shared record.
Beacon is built in Ireland for Irish families and the Irish courts, and it's designed and supported by experienced Section 32 Report (Voice of the Child) professionals with decades of experience in the area. Crucially, there are real people behind Beacon — Irish professionals experienced in Irish family law and the family court system, who have written Section 32 reports themselves — overseeing communication, not just self-serve software. Unlike OurFamilyWizard — an American app with no free plan, where you pay a subscription to use it at all — every tool in Beacon is free for both parents, with a professional support and moderation team on hand throughout. The only thing you ever pay for is generating a Court-Ready Record download — a purchase (price shown in the app), only when you actually need one. No subscription, no locked features.
Beacon is trusted by families and professionals alike, with over 150 five-star reviews from parents and solicitors.
The Statement of Means Folder is a free, guided organiser built into the app to help you prepare your Statement of Means (Form 51A) or Affidavit of Means for court. It walks you through each section of the District Court form and gives you a dedicated place to store your supporting documents — payslips and employment contracts (Section B — Income), bank statements, pension documents and property evidence (Section C — Assets), housing and utility bills (Section B — Housing & Utilities), and details of liabilities and debts (Section C — Liabilities).
You can upload files from your phone or tap Scan / Photo to photograph a document with your camera and upload it straight away — no separate scanning app needed.
The folder also includes a download of the official blank Statement of Means form and a one-tap link to the District Court's family law guidance. The organiser itself is completely free.
Inside the folder, you can also generate a Form 51A Financial Exhibit — a court-formatted summary of child expenses and maintenance payments drawn automatically from your Beacon records, covering Section B (Child Expenses & Maintenance). This is the one step the app does for you — it's a one-off€49 purchase. Everything else in the folder is free.
Because the folder contains sensitive financial documents, it is protected by an extra security step — Face ID, fingerprint or your authenticator code — before it opens. It auto-relocks after 15 minutes.
You'll find the Statement of Means Folder under Expenses / Maintenance in the menu.
Yes — with your co-parent's agreement. The Access schedule sets your regular routine (a whole-day rotation with a default handover time and place you fill in once — and, only if the time or place varies during the cycle, you can give each changeover its own time and place, which repeats every cycle; with more than one child you can also set a per-child time and place so each child's handover is created separately). To move a single one-off handover, open the Handovers page, find that handover and tap Request change. You propose the new time and/or place with a short reason, and your co-parent approves or declines it.
Nothing changes until they approve — so every change is agreed by both of you. Every request and its outcome (approved or declined) is recorded in your Recent Activity with the requester's name, so there's a clear, shared history of who asked for changes. This is free, and works whether the handover was created automatically from your access schedule or added by hand.
Planning a trip with the children? On the Calendar page, propose the dates with a short note about the trip. Your co-parent approves or declines — and once approved, the holiday goes straight onto your shared calendar. Every request and its outcome is kept on record, and it's free for everyone.
Yes. The Handovers page shows a free parenting-time summary for the year: each night is counted for the parent the children were handed over to, so the split reflects what actually happened — not a plan. You can look back at previous years too.
Before a message is sent, Beacon quietly checks the wording. If a draft reads as heated, the sender gets a private nudge with a calmer suggestion — they can edit it, use the suggestion, or send it anyway. The nudge is never shown to the other parent and never blocks anyone from communicating. It's free, and it helps keep the permanent message record calm and constructive.
When you log a shared expense you can choose the split — how much of the cost your co-parent owes. It's 50/50 by default, but you can pick another share (like 60/40 or 70/30) or mark that one parent covers it fully. Either of you can then tap Record payment on an expense to log money paid back toward it, with an optional note, and the expense shows how much is still owed.
At the top of the Expenses screen a “Who owes what” summary nets everything off and shows who owes whom overall. When an expense is fully paid back, the parent who originally paid it can mark it settled. Settling is permanent — a settled expense becomes a final record that can no longer be changed, stops counting toward the balance, and no further payments can be recorded on it, so your running totals stay clean. (If one was settled by mistake, contact support.)
On the Expenses / Maintenance screen you can keep a running log of maintenance money paid directly between you and your co-parent — separate from shared expenses (which are costs you split and approve). To add one, tap Log Payment and record whether you sent or received it, the amount, the date it was paid (you can backdate it), an optional frequency label (one-off, weekly or monthly) and an optional note.
Your co-parent then confirms the entry or marks it disputed. Disputed doesn't mean the money was refused — it simply means they don't yet agree with what was recorded. A disputed payment can be confirmed later once the two of you resolve it. Only the other parent (never the person who logged it) can confirm or dispute, so a confirmation is a genuine agreement between you both, and only confirmed payments count towards the “confirmed sent / received” totals.
What you can change or remove: entries can't be edited — if something is wrong, simply log a new, correct entry. You can delete a payment only while it's still awaiting confirmation; once your co-parent has confirmed or disputed it, it's locked and can't be deleted, so the shared record stays intact. Every payment and its outcome appears in your Recent Activity, and the full log is included in the Court-Ready Record download.
Yes. Alongside the co-parenting app we also offer an accredited Parenting When Separated course (online or in person), Family Mediation (available in every Irish county), and Supervised Access (booking supervised child-contact visits). You can explore these from the home screen after signing in.
New to supervised access? Our guide supervised access in Ireland explained covers how it works, who it's for and what to expect at a visit.
Yes. Each child's profile is a shared Child Info Bank — school and school contact, date of birth, allergies, medications, GP details, clothing and shoe sizes, interests and activities, and emergency contacts — so the important information is in one shared place for both parents, rather than scattered across phones.
It's a space to connect with other separated parents across Ireland using a nickname — your real name is never shown. As well as ordinary discussions, there are “Am I Being Unreasonable?” posts where the community votes on a situation, so you can get an honest, anonymous second opinion.
Yes. When you add the app to your home screen you can turn on notifications, so you're alerted about things like new messages and upcoming handovers or events — even when the app isn't open. You're always in control and can switch them off at any time.
Separated or divorced parents and legal guardians in Ireland who share the care of one or more children. You must be at least 18. Children do not have accounts.
One parent signs up and creates the Co-Parenting Hub, then invites the other parent by email. Your co-parent joins using that secure link — there's nothing to set up twice.
That's really common — and you don't need to wait for them. You can start on your own today: your calendar, handover records, expenses, documents and evidence log all work solo, and everything you record builds a clear, dated history that still forms part of your court-ready record. Messaging naturally needs both parents, but your invite stays open — your co-parent can join whenever they're ready, and they'll see the shared record from that point on.
Many parents do join once they see it's a neutral, secure space — everything is kept factual and overseen, so there are no arguments about who said what. And because the core app is free to use, there's no cost barrier stopping your co-parent from signing up.
If communication is a real difficulty, many parents raise the use of a co-parenting app in mediation or through their solicitor — courts in Ireland can and do direct parents to communicate through a dedicated platform. In the meantime, your own consistent record often speaks for itself.
For practical strategies that work even when only one parent is being reasonable, see our guide on communicating with a difficult co-parent.
Protecting your data is central to how the app is built. Every request is checked on our servers so that one hub can never see or change another hub's information. No internet-connected service can promise it is impossible to hack, but we apply strong, layered protections and follow Irish/EU data protection law (GDPR).
Yes. All traffic between your device and our servers is encrypted (HTTPS), and your information — including documents and ID photos — is stored on encrypted, professionally managed Google Cloud infrastructure. Passwords are never stored in a readable form — they're put through one-way scrambling, so nobody (including us) can read them.
Your co-parent can see the messages you exchange. For child safety and oversight, our moderation team may also review messages that are escalated to them for review. The app is intentionally not anonymous to its operators, because flagging, moderation and court-ready records all depend on a human being able to review content when needed.
To confirm the adults using the app are who they say they are, every parent uploads a photo of a valid ID. It is stored privately and is visible only to you and our safeguarding team — never to your co-parent.
Messages form a shared record that may matter for important family decisions and, where relevant, legal proceedings. So no one can delete messages — not either parent, and not our staff. Please consider this before sending one.
Yes. On a supported device you can set up fingerprint or Face ID sign-in so you don't have to type your password each time. Your fingerprint or face never leaves your device — it's only used to unlock the login on that phone.
Yes. You can turn on two-step verification using an authenticator app, so signing in needs both your password and a one-time code. You can manage this any time under Settings → Sign-in & security.
Yes — it has two layers of protection. First, it is behind the normal app login (all data is encrypted in transit and at rest on Google Cloud infrastructure). Second, the folder itself requires an additional confirmation before it opens — your Face ID or fingerprint (if you have one set up for the app) or your authenticator app code. It auto-relocks after 15 minutes of inactivity, so even if you leave your phone unlocked on a table, the documents inside stay private.
Crucially, the documents you upload to the folder are personal to you only — your co-parent never sees them, and neither do Beacon staff. They are strictly private financial evidence for your own court preparation.
The app keeps a clear, timestamped record of your hub's messages, calendar, handovers and expenses — and messages can never be edited or deleted, so your history stays intact. You can generate a Court-Ready Record yourself at any time: a complete, tamper-evident PDF of your family's record, carrying a data-integrity fingerprint, ready for your solicitor or the court. You'll find it under Court record in the menu. Generating one is a paid download (price shown in the app), and re-downloading the same record is free for 24 hours afterwards — after that, a new download is a new purchase. Whether a record is admissible is a matter for your legal advisor. Everything else in the app is free, and because messages are never deleted your history is always there to download later if you need it. If you'd prefer, our team can still produce a record for you — just contact us. If your solicitor would like a quick overview of how Beacon records work, send them our one-page solicitor's guide. For a fuller explanation of what makes a record court-ready and why screenshots fall short, see our court-ready records guide.
We'd love to hear from you. Go to Settings → Send feedback, write your note and tap Send — it goes straight to the Beacon team and we read every one. For account-specific issues you can also email us directly.
Your full expense and maintenance history — along with messages, calendar events, handovers and documents — is included in the Court-Ready Record, a complete, tamper-evident PDF you can generate any time from Court record in the menu. It's a paid download (the price is shown in the app), and it's the one document designed to hand to a mediator, accountant or solicitor.
Every tool in the app is free for both parents — secure messaging, the shared calendar, handovers, access schedule templates, smart reminders, shared expenses and maintenance, the incidents log, document storage, the Statement of Means Folder organiser, and more. There's no subscription, no trial, and nothing is locked.
There are two optional paid items, only when you need them:
The exact price is always shown clearly before you pay — you are never charged without confirming. A solicitor can charge €150–€300 an hour to sort and prepare comparable evidence by hand.
Yes. We believe no parent should have to pay just to communicate about their kids, or lose access to their family's records because money got tight. So every feature — messaging, the calendar, handovers, expenses, reminders, records and the rest — is free for everyone, with no subscription and no locked features. The paid items are the Court-Ready Record download (paid each time you generate one) and, if you ever need more than your free monthly moderator contact, an optional top-up pack of extra contacts — child-safety contacts are always free and unlimited. Both are entirely optional: you can use every feature of Beacon forever without paying anything. Beacon earns its keep from those downloads and our professional supervised access service — not by holding the essentials hostage. We never sell your data or show ads.
Tapping Flag message on any message is always free and unlimited for everyone. It records your concern and gives you instant automated guidance for your topic — clearly marked as an automated response, not a person. Both you and your co-parent see a small neutral “Flagged” marker on the message, but your co-parent never sees your reason and gets no alert.
After flagging you're asked (yes/no) whether you'd also like to escalate it to a real human moderator. Unlike self-serve apps such as OurFamilyWizard, a qualified Irish family-support professional reads your message and replies to you personally — that real human reply is what sets Beacon apart.
Flagging is always free; only the escalation step can use an allowance. Escalating about a child's welfare or safety is always free and unlimited for everyone. Escalating about anything else is free too, limited to 1 contact per month for everyone — shared across flag escalations and direct moderator contacts combined. There is no per-contact charge, and this free general contact resets every month.
Yes. Everyone gets 1 free general contact each month. If you use it up, anyone can buy a one-off top-up pack of 2 extra general moderator contacts — a single payment, not a subscription. The price is always shown clearly before you pay. Unlike the free monthly contacts, any unused pack contacts carry over from month to month, so they're never wasted. (Safeguarding contacts about a child's welfare or safety stay free and unlimited for everyone and don't touch your pack.)
You don't need a pack to stay in touch: reaching a human about a child's welfare or safety is always free and unlimited for everyone, and your free general contact refreshes every month.
Payments are processed securely by Stripe, a leading global payment provider. We do not see or store your card details.
No. There's no subscription and nothing renews — the only charge is when you choose to generate a Court-Ready Record download, and the price is always shown before you pay. You can permanently close your account any time from Settings → Sign-in & security → Delete account. Except where required by law, payments already made are non-refundable.
Your personal details — name, email, password, profile photo and ID document — are removed straight away, and we cancel any active billing. Because nobody can delete messages, shared hub records (messages, calendar, expenses, handovers) are kept but anonymised, so your co-parent's history stays intact. Routine encrypted backups age out within about a month. Full detail is in our Privacy Policy.
Yes. The app works in your phone's browser and can be added to your home screen so it feels like a normal app, with optional notifications.
Yes, and it's free. On the Calendar page, open "Add to your phone calendar" to get your personal link, then subscribe to it in Google, Apple or Outlook calendar. Your events and handovers then appear alongside your own calendar and stay up to date automatically. Keep the link private — you can reset it any time if you share it by mistake.
Email us any time at support@beaconparenting.ie and we'll be glad to help.
If something isn't right, email us at support@beaconparenting.ie and we'll work to put it right. Our full Complaints & Refund Policy explains how we handle complaints and the timeframes you can expect, in line with Irish consumer law.