A NEW mobile application to help divorced couples co-parent has been launched by the Community Justice Centre (CJC), in hopes of reducing miscommunication and conflict.
This comes in light of social service agencies seeing more people seeking co-parenting support and a high volume of divorce cases assisted by CJC’s social and legal services. CJC is targeting 500 users in the first year.
Besides calendar scheduling functions, the app will allow divorced parents to keep track of their child’s financial expenses and attach receipts as proof.
It will also let users share documents and exchange messages through a chat without needing to reveal their phone numbers.
Logs from the app, such as requests for time with the child in the calendar and message exchanges, can be exported for official purposes like court submissions.
CJC said the new app was designed to prioritise accountability and transparency in co-parenting.
Dr Leonard Lee, executive director of CJC, said the centre has seen a consistently high volume of divorce cases involving maintenance and child access issues, assisted by its socio-legal services.
Data from CJC’s Maintenance Record Officer (MRO) shows that on average, about 70% of MRO cases per year were assessed to be likely due to an unwillingness to pay maintenance despite the court order, even though the respondent could afford to do so.
“This obviously demands some interventive measures for better monitoring and out-of-court ‘enforcement’ to support affected families,” Lee said.
Divorce is a life-changing event and children can carry the effects of it as they grow up, he added.
“It is timely to provide stronger support for divorced families to mitigate the lingering effects of divorce on children,” he added.
A total of 7,118 marriages ended in a divorce or an annulment in 2023, according to data from the Department of Statistics. This was a 0.2% increase from 7,107 in 2022.
Family service centres previously said in August that co-parenting is a big concern for those who seek divorce support there.
Thye Hua Kwan Moral Charities saw an average increase of 20% in the number of cases where co-parenting support was sought from 2019 to 2023.
Functions of CJC’s app, like a template to request to reschedule events or access arrangements, aim to minimise conflict if there are last-minute changes, Lee said.
Usage of the app is currently on a voluntary basis, but will be encouraged by third parties like mediators, social workers and family lawyers to their clients.
Head lawyer Gloria James of law firm Gloria James-Civetta & Co said issues that crop up in co-parenting include sending the child back home later than the agreed timing after visitation, parents blocking each other on WhatsApp and insisting on a third party, like a domestic helper, to facilitate communication.
She said CJC’s app will be helpful in resolving some of these issues, as it can allow both parents to have a record of whether their former spouse has complied with court orders to provide access to the children, as well as maintenance or financial arrangements.
Other forms of communication, like WhatsApp, can be easily manipulated and deleted in the log thread. The app’s log can serve as reliable evidence that can be tendered in court, she added. — The Straits Times/ANN
