The Washington Post called Our Family Wizard “an online link to sanity” for families of divorce. Originally designed as a site to help parents with joint custody manage the scheduling complexities of separate households, Our Family Wizard now also serves any family that could benefit from its organizational tools. The website facilitates “interactive family scheduling and information management. It allows parents to quickly store and access important family information.”
The program’s been around for several years and I see the company frequently at ADR conferences, marketing it to mediators and family law professionals who do divorce and post-divorce work.
I don’t do divorce work, so have never had reason to try the program. Have you used it? If so, please consider leaving a few comments below so that others can benefit from your experience with it.
Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.
Is this site down right now? I haven’t been able to get in since Sunday 8/26/07. Thanks for your prompt attention to this matter.
Lisa
I am having the same problem. There is always something wrong with the OFW website. Many times I will log on and type stuff on my calendar or journal and it will kick me out and make me sign in again, losing all that I just typed. Now I can’t sign in to check for messages. OFW is an awful site to be forced to use. A
Folks, I think you’ll have to contact Our Family Wizard about your access problems. The article above is a review of the site I wrote a couple of years ago and I don’t have any connection with or use OFW to be able to assess its current state…sorry not to be able to help! It’s helpful to Mediator Tech readers, though, to know that you’ve experienced some problems.
It is interesting that the site was originally to help families with scheduling but does not even accomodate more than one schedule.
This is 2009 and they still do not offer families with different schedules the capability to input a second or third child’s schedule. If children are different ages sometimes the schedule is not the same. For example a 15 year old boy and 8 year old girl do not have the same needs.
They seem very behind with their technology. Perhaps because we are required to use “their product” they don’t have to try to make it the best it should be.
There seem to be many problems with this sight that baffle the owners for more time than seems necessary.
It would be nice if someone else came up with a competitive site we had a choice to use that may give us better service. For $100 a year, they have a pretty good thing going with the court system.
We will hopefully adding the ability to have multiple calendars.
I am sorry you feel like our technology is not up to par. We have made several major releases this year with more to come down the road. We have added a drafts feature for messages, text and email notification and more.
We have greatly increased our development resources in the last year. But like everyone else, we must work on a budget.
I suggest you check out our testimonials page to see that not everyone feels the way these frustrated few do:
http://www.ourfamilywizard.com/ofw/index.cfm/about-us/testimonials/
You might want to check out ParentingTime.net, they have an application that I’ve used for a couple for years, and I’d recommend it to any divorced parent (or couple). It seems to have a lot more features than OFW, the site is stable (I’ve never had a problem getting to it) and most of all, it WORKS.
http://parentingtime.net
Make no mistake the OurFamilyWizard website works and has worked since 2001.
We have over 10,000 families using the site because it actually leads to less conflict. Tools that claim to help you “win” your child custody will only lead to more expensive custody battles. Our focus is always the well being of your child first.
The OurFamilyWizard website is the only site that is being ordered in contested cases in over 35 states because of its effectiveness.
But don’t take our word for it, check out our testimonials:
http://www.ourfamilywizard.com/ofw/index.cfm/about-us/testimonials/
Why is it that the only person defending our family wizard is the guy who is in charge of it?
Makes you wonder…
I think this website is incredible! After sending almost 200 emails in a year via regular internet–then being taken into court constantly because “they didn’t have the information”–this website is INCREDIBLE! It truly shows who is really doing what, who said what, and if the information was really there–If your former spouse doesn’t read the emails or postings on the calendar–that is no longer your problem as long as you conveyed the information via the Wizard. You cannot delete things once they’re sent and once a date has passed you cannot go in and then change it. There is no cutting and pasting of fake emails that were never sent or “phone calls” that were never made. If you have a high tension custody case–including with Domestic Violence or someone who does not have the children’s best interests at hand, THIS IS THE WAY TO GO! If it’s not on the Wizard—IT WAS NEVER POSTED! Make sure you get it as part of your Child Custody Agreement as an enforceable order of court because it will save you the he said/she said.
I am very happy to have joined OurFamilyWizard and have a way to communicate with my ex-wife regarding our daughter. She can no longer get a way with not informing me of our daughter’s education and health. She will now have to provide me with all the contacts that I need to continue to be involved in my daughter’s life since I live in a different state. I also like the fact that I can contact my daughter on here too.
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Jai just posted two testimonials, taken straight from his site, into this forum — LIKE THE PEOPLE HAD POSTED IT HERE THEMSELVES.
However, they didn’t. Jai did.
If Carol would have posted it herself, why would she have said “this website” is incredible. Does she mean makingmediationyourdayjob.com? Because that’s the website it was posted on.
Jai is the only one trolling the internet trying to post positive things about his service.
Do your research and don’t believe his hype.
Joe, thanks for the conspiracy theories.
I did contact some of users and ask them to put up a post after you posted your comment.
if you want to see what our users think, our users have left testimonials on our site,
Joe, by the way is that even your real name?
Makes you wonder why you are so apt post negative comments about our site?
We need to get you a hobby.
Excuse me Jai? I’ve been through a custody situation. I’m posting my comments on this page because I know how awful a custody battle is. I’m trying to inform people so they can avoid some of the pain I went through.
Oh, and thanks for being so condescending to me. You must have a real top notch service so you can troll around all day and personally attack people (go get a hobby?) who talk about your product.
Guess what else? Blogs store the IP addresses of each comment. Dr. Tammy Lensky could very easily show that it was the same IP Address from Jai, Carol, and Carrie. *cough* Flame on and see if the owner of this site exposes your needless lie…
She can check them, they are not from the same ip address.
I don’t mean to be condescending, but we have many competitors that have and are engaging in spreading lies about our site. I sincerely apologize if you are not one of them.
Jai seems a bit tightly wound, if you ask me. I post *one* comment daring to suggest that people look at a similar service and all of a sudden he’s on the warpath, insulting people and filling the blog with “faithful users” who swear that his program is the greatest thing in the universe. I think maybe it’s time for Jai to switch to decaf.
Also, Jai’s claim that using The Service Who’s Name Must Not Be Mentioned (parentingtime.net) will “only lead to more expensive custody battles” seems a bit odd, since parentingtime.net and Our Family Wizard appear to do a lot of the same things. So maybe using Our Family Wizard will “only lead to more expensive custody battles” too, if you use Jai’s line of reasoning.
Cue the conspiracy comments from Jai in 1…2…3….
Deanna,
I believe that your comments were written with sincerity.
I found this post searching on google, my only goal originally was to respond to what looked to be users who were having issues.
Ok, folks, time for me to step in. You need a mediator. Since I AM one and this is my site, I’m stopping this bickering now.
Jai, the two testimonials left by “Carol” and “Carrie” both came from the same IP address. Odds of that happening by accident seem pretty slim to me. My advice to you: Stop defending and start listening to the customers that are unhappy and working with them to sort out their concerns. You are not helping your brand doing what you’re doing here.
Joe, you seem to want to spend your energy attacking instead of getting things addressed. That’s your call, but you’re not going to be able to use my blog to continue the whine fest. My advice to you: Stop attacking and name calling and, if you are looking for real help, let Jai know what would get your concerns addressed. You are not helping your own case.
Both of you and everyone else stepping into the fray, time to move on. Several of you are now in violation of my blog commenting policy which is easily findable just above the “submit comment” button, so this ends here. I will be deleting further comments from you because future readers of this post will gain nothing from your bickering.