My ex-husband insisted that we use this. I refused saying we could do the same with a dedicated gmail account and google calendar for free. He insisted so the judge ordered it, and ordered him to pay for it for both of us. What a waste of money, the only good thing is that it's not my money that's being wasted. My ex is still nasty, abusive and bullying in the messages. He still asks endlessly about when he has the kids, even though it's on the calendar. He still refuses to pay child support or medical bills, even though they're logged in the expense register. OFW Is not going to magically change things, and I didn't think it would. But the actual design is what gets me. It reminds me of something designed last century. It's not very intuitive or smart. Everything is just clunky.
This system was ordered by the magistrate presiding over our custody case for my ex-wife and I to use, and neither the magistrate or guardian ad litem appointed to the case utilized it. I had records of cell phone text messages and emails that served the same purpose of documented dialogue between my ex and I. I won my case and the first thing I did was get rid of this system... a BIG waste of money!
Hello - I hope that you were able to utilize the features of the app that were convenient for your own purposes while you were using the OFW app. OFW creates a secure space for parents to communicate and also maintain secure documentation of files, schedules, and much more.
I am in a child custody battle, due to my ex-wife having turned to prostitution and endangering our children by taking them to her places of prostitution. In Family Court her divorce attorney pushed for Family Wizard to record messages. However, her attorney's real reason was for her to log onto FW pretending to be my ex-wife writing messages baiting me to react, that they would use against me in Family Court. Family Wizard does not verify the identify of whoever logs in and has refused to share log in IP addresses without a Court ordered subpoena! Family Wizard is complicate with this abuse and does not use verification processes such as is used by gmail and other web platforms.
Family Wizard is a con job set up for abuse by dirty trick lawyers. Do not be fooled or forced by Family Court judges into being set up by dirty tricks attorneys.
Hi, Edward - Thanks for your comments. If you have concerns about your co-parent’s activity on OFW, you may want to bring those to the attention of your attorney. OFW does thoroughly document user activity within the app, and we have an official policy on how to obtain certain information about your co-parent’s activity. If you’d like to learn more about this policy or have any technical questions, our support team is available seven days a week by email at info@ourfamilywizard.com or by phone at (866) 755-9991. Support hours are as follows: Mon - Thurs: 7:00 AM - 10:00 PM CST, Fri: 7:00 AM - 7:00 PM CST, Sat - Sun: 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM CST.
The smarmy, dissembling customer service representatives responding to the criticisms on this website (and failing to handle the complaints of this company's customers) should be embarrassed and seek out worthwhile employment.
From stealing my money and applying it to some stranger's account then claiming to be unable to find the transaction, to canceling my paid-up account (on which I made a SECOND payment to stay current), to the obviously false marketing-department fantasies they parade on manipulable review sites, to their extortionate business model, this is nothing but a bunch of crooks feeding off struggling and broken families. No one working for this company has the capacity to feel appropriate shame or moral opprobrium, or they wouldn't be working there.
The idea behind this website is idiotic on its face. It saves your e-mails for you. You know what else saves your e-mails for you? YOUR E-MAIL SERVICE. All of the site's other features are of course also garbage in comparison to freely available versions.
If you and your ex can cooperate, just do so. If you can't, and you think an app will help, you're the crazy one.
Our Family Wizard created more problems between us as parents. Is it really designed to assist with co-parenting? At $100 a year, it's money not well spent. It's a terrible idea, and it is my belief that OFW is in bed with the family court system.
Hi Johnny - I’m sorry to hear that you found OFW to create problems in your co-parenting. We aim to provide co-parents with the best tools to help manage shared schedules, expenses, and other vital family information in one well-documented, secure space. If you have any questions about how to use different aspects of the app, our support team would be happy to assist. They can walk you through how to use various features in the app to help you get the most out of the toolset. Our representatives are available seven days a week by email at info@ourfamilywizard.com or by phone at toll-free (866) 755-9991.
120$ a year and you can't print from their app. Yiu need to physically fire up the ol' laptop and do it from the desktop version. About 5 years+ behind the present. Time to catch up and get with the now OFW. The said their tech department was working on it
If you're actually a good parent who pays their support and keeps the parenting times but you're ex is a narcissist who still thinks she's married to you... then you'll love this app. This app gives them the feeling like they can still contact you daily all day!
Hi, Tim - Thanks for your comment. OFW provides a way for your co-parenting communication to remain separate from other forms of communication you use every day, like texting or email. Keeping your co-parenting communication organized and secured within its own unique space allows you to decide when you wish to address these communications. Notifications on OFW are available but are entirely optional to use, and you can customize how and when you receive them. They can be sent to you right as new entries are created for you to view, or you can choose to receive a “Daily Digest” alert that will compile a list of all of the new activity for you to view on OFW from that day into a single notification. This provides another way for you to decide when you address the communications you’re receiving on OFW. If you have any technical questions or would like a walkthrough of any particular feature on OFW, please reach out to our customer support team. Representatives are available seven days a week by email at info@ourfamilywizard.com or by phone at (866) 755-9991. Support hours are as follows: Mon - Thurs: 7:00 AM - 10:00 PM CST, Fri: 7:00 AM - 7:00 PM CST, Sat - Sun: 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM CST.
Constant glitching, freezing and error messages, very slow. Even though my iPhone is new and everything else works great on it except of OFW (oh, friggin worst).
The tech support on this site is a joke. They will not assist you, they will however make you feel like you are the problem.
I've had to use this program for a few years. Something happened on their end and my bank account was labeled as "inactive". My account has not changed. However they insist that my bank account is closed. They refuse to even try to set it up again, and they refuse to refund my money. But they do insist that it's my fault.
Please use a different option than Our Family Wizard. This is a horrible experience.
Buyer beware. Try to avoid at all cost. Gmail is free and is 100 times easier to use when it comes to printing out email chains to use in court.
The only advantage would be that the emails are stamped when they are sent and opened. Even that is ruined by the horrible printing options of the the email chains.
Again, just use Gmail! You will be just as happy and save yourself $100 per parent per year.
Thanks for your comment, Gregory. The OFW message board does time stamp each message when it is sent as well as first viewed by your co-parent, which is a history that remains indefinitely with these messages. No message can be edited or deleted once sent. It also offers a unique feature called Tonemeter that analyzes the tone of any message you compose and flags emotionally-charged phrases which you have the option to edit before sending.
Using the OFW message board and other tools helps to assure that your communication is focus on co-parenting matters and is not confused among unrelated correspondence. Also, the other tools of OFW (calendar, expense log, information bank) help you to share information in an concise and organized manner without having to send lengthy messages. These features also have their own reporting tools for downloads and printouts of your information. If you have suggestions for how we might improve our message printouts or anything else, we’d like to hear your thoughts. You can reach out to our customer support team by email at info@ourfamilywizard.com or toll-free (866) 755-9991. They are available 7 days a week.
Do not use it. Do not get talked into it. Any positive review was made by a representative from OFW - or a member of the legal community that is getting paid to refer and endorse it. It's a privacy invading, money-trap nightmare. You have been warned.
It did not help anything in our situation and conversely made things more tenuous as it creates barriers to communication.
So you can add other "Professionals" - Lawyers and people involved with your case. N To view your account. Except here's the catch - your EX can add ANYONE and you would never know it. And it's all Legal. As an example, your EX could add your Auto-Mechanic as user, who could then view every piece of info located on the site about your account, and the only way to determine this is Via Subpoena! Beyond useless this site is not by any means secure, and I would advise you use it as little as possible and leave all personal info off of it. Who knows who is looking at all of YOUR business? Guess what - you don't know.
There's a FREE app, AppClose that does the exact same things but does not force parents to pay. Just think that $100 per year for each parent with a 4yr old means they will be spending over $2,800 that could otherwise be spent on their child? I asked our judge to use the free app and they said "Well I'm familiar with OurFamilyWizard" except the judge works for the community. Maybe the judge should get familiar with the free version so the parents can spend that court ordered money on their child's school supplies instead of $200 each year on an app that does nothing more than group texting. Just a thought.
Hello, thanks for your feedback! Unlike free apps and other services, OFW offers a full suite of features for co-parenting communication, including expense registers, GPS-verified check-ins, messaging with documented first-viewed times, and more. Also, unlike other free apps, OFW will maintain a complete record of all your co-parenting communication indefinitely. Our customer support team is available seven days a week to answer your questions and walk you through using any of the tools available in the application. They can be reached by email at info@ourfamilywizard.com or by phone at (866) 755-9991. Support hours are as follows: Mon - Thurs: 7:00 AM CST - 10:00 PM CST, Fri: 7:00 AM CST - 7:00 PM CST, Sat - Sun: 8:00 AM CST - 8:00 PM CST.
A great tool that your children can see and relate to adding to the division of families. Now one parent can say to the other how they have to use a parenting app because the other parent is non cooperative. Great Idea to hurt the kids more!
Hi John - Thanks for reaching out. All of your communications on OFW are protected by your username and password, firewalls, and multiple levels of encryption. Allowing children to access the child accounts in your family on OFW is entirely optional and only provides them with limited access to the app. They can only view the calendar, create journal entries, and send and receive their own messages. All of your communication directly with your co-parent is private and not viewable to your children or other family members on OFW. We’d be happy to walk you through how child access works, explain account security settings, and answer any other technical questions you may have. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. Our customer support team is available seven days a week by email at info@ourfamilywizard.com or by phone at toll-free (866) 755-9991. Support hours are as follows: Mon - Thurs: 7:00 AM - 10:00 PM CST, Fri: 7:00 AM - 7:00 PM CST, Sat - Sun: 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM CST.
This application was useless to me and the other party never signed up so I wasted $120 so I figured let me try and reach out to customer support, if that's what you want to call them. They were so rude and short with me. Never asked who I even was when I called them. I will not be using this application in the future nor recommending them to anyone. I will also tell the court this application is terrible and to not recommend it to other parties. USE A DIFFERENT APP!
Hi, Nicole - Thanks for your comments. We strive to provide the best customer support, so I’m sorry to hear that you did not have a positive experience. We only offer refunds on parent subscriptions within 30 days of purchase. Our policy on user fees and refunds can be found in our Terms and Conditions, which are agreed to upon registration. Even if your co-parent has not signed up, you can use OFW to record parenting schedules, maintain an expense register, document important family information, and more. You can also invite other family members as child or third-party users so that they can view your calendar and message with you on OFW. If you have any questions about using OFW without your co-parent, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at info@ourfamilywizard.com or by phone at (866) 755-9991.
Horrible service and customer support.We stopped using the app for about a year and they still recently charged my account for another year's service. The app is horrible and when I contacted customer support for a refund, they were horrible as well. Heres what they said:
"Our terms and conditions are very clear when you sign up. When we receive a dispute such as the one you are suggesting, we explain that to the credit card company as well. Thank you, ShaleenCustomer Support"
Hi Manuel - While auto-renew for subscriptions is an optional feature we provide, we make sure to email our customers three days before the auto-renew would take place to give them a chance to update their settings in case they don’t wish to auto-renew. Even if the account is renewed and you wish to cancel, we offer refunds within 30 days of purchasing a subscription. We do not offer partial refunds after that time has passed. You can read about this on our Terms & Conditions and our refund policy page which can be viewed here: https://www.ourfamilywizard.com/plans-and-pricing/refund-policy
Waste of time and money, even if order by the court good luck trying to get it enforce. If you see there own reviews not one single bad one review and I happen to give it one, and a co work also rated it a negative. I had to give it one star but thats even to high. Just in case this gets filter I also rated it on ripoff.com
OFW feels like a website transported straight out of the 1990's, or to be generous, perhaps the early 2000's. Functionality (or lack thereof), feel, bugs, inconsistencies, and un-intuitive features (extreme un-intuitiveness!) remind me of all the fun (and pain) of my internet experiences growing up in the '90s and as a young adult in the '00s. There are a million times I wish there was a functionality of some type, and I think, "gosh, the software engineers ought to be able to solve this one very easily, after all, it's 2022!" And then I think, "And they're getting paid *how much money* every year from their massively expensive subscriptions?" Complete sham of a website.
I've got so many examples. One of the best is when selecting a time to start/stop and "event", the list of times, in 30-minute increments randomly starts somewhere in the day, so sometimes, the scroll list starts at 1:00 am, and other times 1:00 pm, and other times 7:00 pm. Adds about 3 layers of complexity onto picking a time, completely needlessly—even for an early 21st century app.
It's a waste of time. Email is email. People like to get court orders for ofw and then if you don't check email for a week you get threats because your "not following a court order". No one cares about ofw. Someone here already stated you can't "Change" the user. Ofw won't fix the co-parenting with a narcissist issue.
Hello - Compared to traditional email, OFW will thoroughly document your communication and protect it indefinitely from being edited or deleted. You can also easily download and print entries on OFW to share with practitioners or help you prepare for court if need be. If you have any technical questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our customer support team by email at info@ourfamilywizard.com or by phone at toll-free (866) 755-9991.
When I 1st started using myfamilywizard I thought it was going to be a joke. Another thing the court asked me to do and pay for. But I've been using it for years with my Ex, and it's been well worth it. Our kids are always the focus on the app. We don't get into the weeds everytime we change the schedule or deal with money. I get what people are saying who give it negative reviews because they don't like having to do it, but speaking from experience, USE IT! It will save you and your kids (and maybe your ex) a lot of headaches. I think the iPhone app is simple and works well for me. I've called help line a couple times over the years and a real person answered and helped me out. I'd say it gets a bad wrap because people aren't happy about having to use it, but it's really invaluable. I just don't worry about the game playing anymore like I did years ago. I think familywizard is a big part of that.
Hi Howard - Thank you for your review. I’m happy to hear that the OFW app has been an invaluable tool for you for several years! Just as you mention, the OFW app is built to keep the focus on your children and reduce confusion when handling matters like scheduling or expenses. I’m delighted that this has been what you have experienced using OFW over the years. Thanks again for sharing your comments!
This site has made the difficult task sharing time and expenses with my Ex WAY WAY easier. I don't know what I would do without it. Every divorced parent should use this website!
I use family wizard as court ordered to Help with communication and keeping things civil. It does not alert half the timea message is sent. It does not store and orginize in a manageable manner. Not happy at all with the service.
Hi SJ - Thank you for reaching out! I’m sorry to hear that you have had issues with notifications. We want to ensure that you are receiving notifications and that you are getting the most out of the other tools within the application. Our customer support team is available seven days a week to personally walk you through any aspect of the app and troubleshoot your issue with notifications. They ca be reached by email at info@ourfamilywizard.com or by phone at toll-free (866) 755-9991. Support hours are as follows: Mon - Thurs: 7:00 AM - 10:00 PM CST, Fri: 7:00 AM - 7:00 PM CST, Sat - Sun: 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM CST.
Overview
OurFamilyWizard has a rating of 1.3 stars from 111 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers dissatisfied with OurFamilyWizard most frequently mention customer service, court order and high conflict. OurFamilyWizard ranks 24th among Divorce sites.
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- Sitejabber’s sole mission is to increase online transparency for buyers and businesses
- Sitejabber has helped over 200M buyers make better purchasing decisions online
- Suspicious reviews are flagged by our algorithms, moderators, and community members
Hello - Thanks for your review. Compared to free services, OFW offers a variety of features that can help you keep your communication organized and well-documented all in one app. Tools within these features are built to encourage clear information exchanges, maintaining requests and other entries down to just the facts. Secure messaging is available, but many information exchanges are facilitated by other features in the Calendar, Information Bank, and Expense Log. Histories of all entries you add to OFW are maintained and able to be reported on. This can be helpful if you need to demonstrate the status of any requests you’ve sent or other activity on OFW. You can also invite any legal or mental health professionals you work with to oversee your communication. We are continually considering new ways to improve our technology, and we’d appreciate hearing your feedback on how you think we can make the app work better for you. If you have any comments, please share them with us at info@ourfamilywizard.com or call us at (866) 755-9991. Our customer support team is available seven days a week to offer assistance and receive your feedback.