How Can OurFamilyWizard Help Even if I Have Full Custody of My Child?

Since 2001, OurFamilyWizard has offered tools to help divorced or separated parents improve communication and maintain a shared log of their child's most important information. Parenting time calendars, secure messaging, expense registers, e-payments, and file storage are only a few of the features that make OurFamilyWizard a unique and effective all-in-one solution for co-parent communication. However, not all divorced or separated parents are actively involved in shared parenting. This may leave some wondering how OurFamilyWizard can be a useful tool for those who are raising their child on their own or who have full custody.

Parents with full custody are faced with many challenges particular to their situation, and similar to co-parents, they also can benefit from a toolset that helps to manage all of their family details to keep things running smoothly. So what challenges to parent with full custody face, and how can OurFamilyWizard help to improve their parenting and family information management?

What is Full Custody?

Having full custody may look different for every family touched by this situation. Otherwise referred to as sole custody, full custody might mean something different, depending on where you live. In some states, full custody refers to both legal and physical custody of a child being awarded to only one parent. In other states, one parent may be awarded full legal custody and both parents will share physical custody or vice versa.

Being granted full legal custody or full physical custody is certainly a big responsibility, yet being granted full legal and physical custody is a huge role for one parent to take on entirely on their own. In certain cases, a parent may desire full custody for various reasons including to keep their child safe if their other parent could put them at risk. In other cases, it may be the only option available due to the absence of one parent.

Tools to Support Parents with Full Custody

No matter how one arrives at having full custody of their child, this can be a life-changing situation for any parent. Managing all of the important details surrounding their child's life requires organization, yet spreading different information across various platforms can become confusing even the most organized of parents. In a moment where you need to find particular details in a flash, sifting through paper documents or searching through different apps can be confusing and waste your time.

Many co-parents use technology like OurFamilyWizard to assist in managing schedules, communication, and much more between homes. Similarly, parents with full custody can also benefit from using these same tools. For parents with full custody, OurFamilyWizard can help keep information organized, secure, and well-documented, as well as help to keep extended family members in the loop.

One Secure Platform for Your Family Vital Details

OurFamilyWizard creates a central hub for your most important family information. From schedules to expenses, OurFamilyWizard has features that let you document all sorts of data within a highly secure space. Tools like these are excellent not only for families who need to share information, but they can also be a massive support to parents with full custody.

Having full custody means that a parent must take on everything related to raising their child, which also means that there will be a large amount of information to manage on one's own. Instead of trying to manage calendars, expenses, medical data, and so much more with different tools, OurFamilyWizard offers a solution for overseeing all of these details.

OurFamilyWizard's main features include a calendar to document your child's schedule; an information bank to house your child's most important data like medical histories, clothing sizes, insurance details, and school schedules; and an expense log to document and categorize spending on your child. These features help you to intuitively keep different details organized by topic so that you can spend less time working out a game plan for keeping everything organized and more time to focus on your child.

A Digital History of Milestones & Memories

Many parents strive to keep track of all the different milestones that their child hits as they grow up, like when they lost their first tooth or won their first contest. While some parents may already be great at remembering these details offhand or enjoy keeping a baby book full of these details, that doesn't mean that every parent excels at this. If you happen to fall into the ladder but are not parenting with anyone else to help you manage a memory book of these details.

With OurFamilyWizard, it doesn't matter which end of the spectrum you fall into because simply entering information helps you build a digital record of milestones and achievements for your child. A complete history of every entry you create on OurFamilyWizard is saved indefinitely. Instead of hold onto paper calendars for years, you can quickly look back to previous months or years on your OurFamilyWizard Calendar to see what was on your family agenda or specifically on what date your child's soccer team won their championship game.

Similarly, the OurFamilyWizard Journal will save a history of every entry you create for you to revisit without having to sift through old papers and hope that you find the entry you need. This makes it incredibly simple to jog your memory on different events that occurred in the past since the notes will be right there for you to review.

Family photos are another essential item for many parents that can be difficult to manage if they are not uploaded to a secure space. On OurFamilyWizard, uploading pictures, report cards, school projects, and more to your MyFiles section of the Info Bank will keep those files safe and readily available for you to view, download, and print anytime.

Connect with Extended Family

Whether a parent with full custody is communicating with their child's other parent or not, they may be communicating with other family members on their side or the other parent's side. OurFamilyWizard creates a safe space for family communication by providing optional third-party access for individuals who want to be kept in the loop of what's new with your child without giving more details than they need.

Third-party accounts provide limited access to entries on OurFamilyWizard to grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, as well as other child caretakers like babysitters, nannies, therapists, and others involved in your child's daily routine. A third-party user can view the calendar, view and create their own journal entries, and send and receive their own messages. This lets a parent share the details they want to share with these individuals without worrying about anyone digging into information they don't need to view, like expense histories.

Although many co-parents use OurFamilyWizard to handle shared parenting communication, the features it offers can genuinely help any family wanting to improve the way it manages information. A parent with full custody can benefit from the OurFamilyWizard toolset for various reasons, but the advantage of simply keeping vital details organized, secure, and available whenever they need them is indeed a perk not to be overlooked.

NOTE: Many state and federal laws use terms like ‘custody’ when referring to arrangements regarding parenting time and decision-making for a child. While this has been the case for many years, these are not the only terms currently used to refer to these topics.

Today, many family law practitioners and even laws within certain states use terms such as ‘parenting arrangements’ or ‘parenting responsibility,’ among others, when referring to matters surrounding legal and physical child custody. You will find these terms as well as custody used on the OurFamilyWizard website.