Practitioner's guide

The Solicitor's Guide to Clean Court Evidence with Beacon

A one-page reference for Irish family law practitioners · app.beaconparenting.ie

How it works — three steps

  1. 1Your client taps “Invite my solicitor” in the app — you get a secure, view-only link by email. No account, no setup.
  2. 2Open the link to review the full record — messages, calendar, handovers, expenses — time-stamped and unedited.
  3. 3Need it for court? Your client generates the Court-Ready Record PDF in seconds (standard price €129 — price confirmed before purchase).

The problem

Clients arrive with hundreds of screenshots, forwarded emails and out-of-order WhatsApp exports. Sorting them into an affidavit is hours of low-value billable work, and the result is still open to challenge: screenshots can be selective, cropped or edited.

What Beacon gives you

  • A record nobody can rewrite. Both parents are photo-ID verified, every entry is time-stamped, and messages can never be edited or deleted — by anyone, including administrators.
  • View-only client access for you. Your client can email you a secure, time-limited, read-only link to their record — messages, calendar, handovers (including late arrivals), expenses and maintenance — no account needed, no more screenshot piles.
  • A Court-Ready Record on demand. One tamper-evident, chronological PDF covering the most recent 12 months (or the full history with the Historic Archive add-on), carrying a data-integrity fingerprint and formatted for the Irish family courts. If a hearing is adjourned, a Gap Refresh addendum covers only the new months. Your client generates it in seconds — standard price €129 for a record covering up to 12 months, add-ons available for older history and gap refreshes. Price confirmed before purchase. A fraction of the billable hours it replaces. (Admissibility remains, as always, a matter for the court.)
  • Statement of Means support (Form 51A / Affidavit of Means). The app includes a free, structured Statement of Means Folder that maps directly to the District Court form sections. Clients organise their own supporting documents by section — proof of income, savings and assets (Section C), housing costs, utility bills and liabilities (Section B) — scanning bank statements and payslips directly from their phone camera into each category. The app then auto-generates a Form 51A Financial Exhibit: a court-formatted summary of child expenses and maintenance payments drawn from the app's tamper-evident records (one-off €49). The whole folder is protected by an additional biometric or authenticator lock — so sensitive financial documents are secure even from a shared device. Your client arrives organised, section by section, rather than with a folder of loose papers.

See a sample Court-Ready Record (PDF)

Generated from a fictional demonstration family and watermarked as such.

The app itself is free for both parents — no subscription. The paid items are optional extras: the Court-Ready Record download (€129), the Form 51A Financial Exhibit (€49), Gap Refresh addendums (€19/month since last download), and additional moderator contacts.

Copy-paste clause for agreements & orders

Model wording for separation agreements, mediation terms or draft orders — to be adapted on your own professional judgement and, where relevant, subject to the approval of the court:

“Save in cases of emergency or where a child's immediate welfare requires otherwise, both parties agree to conduct communication with each other regarding child scheduling, handovers, shared expenses and maintenance via the Beacon Co-Parenting App (app.beaconparenting.ie), which maintains a time-stamped record that neither party can edit or delete. This does not restrict either party's communication with their legal advisers, the court or any statutory agency, and is subject to any direction of the court and to the availability of the service. Either party may produce the record, or a Court-Ready Record generated by the application, in any subsequent proceedings.”

Getting a client started

Send them to app.beaconparenting.ie. Sign-up takes minutes, both parents verify with photo ID, and one parent can build a verified record even before the other joins. Built in Ireland and supported by professionals experienced with the Irish family courts, including Section 32 (Voice of the Child) reports.

Free directory listing: parents in the app look up family law solicitors by county in our Recommended Solicitors directory. If you'd like your practice included, apply online in two minutes — there is no charge.