Co-parenting after separation
The relationship ended. The co-parenting didn’t.
It isn’t separation that harms children — it’s being caught in the conflict afterwards. Sameside is built to lower that: messages that don’t escalate, handovers that work, arrangements you both recognise, and the children left out of what isn’t theirs to carry.
Works on your own if they aren’t ready. Adults only. Not a court tool, and not legal advice.
How it works
Step 1
You answer alone, in about twenty minutes
How things are arranged now, how you communicate, how handovers go, and — the question that matters most — how much conflict the children see or hear. No questions about the relationship that ended.
Step 2
The coach forms a picture, and picks an approach
Co-operative if you can still problem-solve together; parallel if you can’t, or if contact is best kept minimal. It tells you which and why, and it never adjudicates the past.
Step 3
Eight weeks, one small thing at a time
One channel and one tone. Handovers. The children out of the middle. The week written down. Money, separately. Two homes, two routines.
Step 4
And the tool you’ll use most
“Send it better”: paste the message you were about to fire off, get it back brief, informative, friendly and firm. Most of the damage after a separation is done in messages written while angry.
Two ways of doing it, and both are respectable
Co-operative
You can still sort things out between you. The plan includes conversations, shared decisions and a parenting plan you write together, one section at a time.
Parallel
Contact is minimal and every attempt to co-operate escalates. The plan drops joint conversations entirely: one written channel, clear protocols, each home running itself. Children do well in this arrangement — what they can’t do well with is being in the middle.
What it won’t do
- Take a side, or decide who was right.
- Produce anything for a court, or keep a log as evidence.
- Give legal advice — that’s a solicitor or a mediator.
- Ask your children to carry a message, or to choose.
- Suggest getting back together.
- Show either of you what the other wrote.
If there has been abuse or coercive control, this is not the tool for you and we will say so inside the product too. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline is 0808 2000 247, and 999 in an emergency. Our safety page has more.
Does the other parent have to join?
No. This is the one place where doing it alone genuinely works: half of a co-parenting relationship is entirely yours — how you write, how handovers go at your end, what the children hear from you. The plan is written for your half and doesn’t wait for anyone. If they join later, the coach reads you both and rewrites it.
Can they see what I wrote?
No. Separate logins, separate answers, and the coach is the only reader. Anything written for both of you is checked before either sees it, so it can’t quote you or reveal who said what.
What if we can barely speak?
Then the plan is built for that. Parallel co-parenting — low contact, one written channel, each home running its own routines — protects children better than forcing co-operation. The coach chooses that approach when your answers point to it, and it isn’t a failure.
Can I use this in court?
No, and deliberately so. Sameside produces nothing for a court, keeps no message log for anyone else to read, and gives no legal advice. Software built to be evidence changes how people write in it. For legal matters you need a solicitor; for arrangements, a family mediator.
What do you store about my children?
Their ages, and anything you tell us the plan should take account of — a child who finds change hard, for example. Never names, never anything identifying. It shapes the advice and nothing else.
How much is it?
£7.99 per person a month, so £15.98 if you both join, or £7.99 if it’s just you. Or buy the eight-week programme once for £69. The assessment, your personal plan and the first week are free.
Free to start. Private by design.
Free to start, and it works whether or not they join.