I am the single mom who wrote Kidmate a Joint Custody Program for Family Law Specialists www.kidmate.com. Kidmate is now the program many courts rely on to accurately and clearly represent custody schedules. Kidmate automatically shows percentages of time that each parent spends with their children. It shows you a calendar, you click on the desired schedule (or make up one of your own) and then it translates it over an entire year in both a calendar form and in text. If you want to make any changes you just click on the day and it will change color making it the day of the other parent. Simple huh? It's simple because it took three years of my life and most of my savings to make it that way. I must really be determined or crazy.

In April of 1993 I was sitting at my desk surveying the usual assortment of stuff that collects there. An overdue video, a barbie, a few tangled hair ties and the aforementioned calendar sheets, colored pencils and calculator. I was a single mom, the editor of a great and unfortunately now defunct national newsletter called Solo a Guide for the Single Parent and about to become the west coast editor of Divorce magazine. I had no time to count the hours and minutes or overnights that my then four-year-old daughter was going to spend with her father.

But if I didn't count them my attorney and for sure my husband's attorney were going to. We live in California where the amount of time you have your child is reflected in the amount of money you receive/give for their support. Ugh. So count, color, flip, count, color, flip it was making me nuts! Surely there had to be an easier way. Wasn't that what computers were for? I typed on mine but surely they must be able to do all this repetitive stuff. I knew there was a computer program for all the money involved in getting a divorce. Dividing the property, dividing the assets and probably even one for furniture and great aunt Martha's silver. So why when it came to your most important asset, your children, were you on your own? So fed up and very naive I decided that I would make a computer program that scheduled, counted percentages and produced a calendar that we could all use. After all how hard could it be?

That should have been the big warning light question. After all it was 1993. I graduated from school in 1978. There was not a computer in sight. I took languages, history and typing. So couldn't I hire a computer guy? Sure there are lots out there. Couldn't be that difficult, after all there are lots of computer programs so there must be lots of computer programmers. Well there are and they, like all professions, come with many different ethics and many different pay scales. I know because I went through many of them until I found an honest straightforward guy who understood what it takes to make what is now Kidmate.

Here's what I wanted: open to a screen which tells you who makes up the family at present. The parent, the co-parent and if you need it an additional caretaker like a grandmother, nanny or boarding school, then add the children. Then click to the next screen and make up a weekly/monthly pattern that works for you or access a pre-programmed visitation plan that I could research from the psychologists and judges I knew. Then go to the next screen and see what that pattern will look like over and entire year or for the next 10 years. Add the holidays. Presto you'd printout a calendar, hit printouts text and it will write out for you what the calendar says so that you can admit both into court. Wonderful and simple and eventually what I got.

I also got all the perils of creating a new business. Some of those included deadwood partners, dishonest programmers, trademark paperwork that would drown a forest and a new awareness of that most powerful tool, the internet. The quest for the perfect Kidmate became my focus for the next three years. Those preprogrammed parenting plans? There are twenty of them. The judges and psychologists? Turned out that they were all smart, concerned and connected across the globe. Plus they were thrilled that SOMEONE was FINALLY putting a program like this together. I received input from over 100 of the best.

For the next five years, when my daughter was not with me, I travelled to every family law legal conference that would have me. I am not a lawyer. I found that legal professionals were leery of someone helping them to do their jobs who wasn't a lawyer. Gradually Superior Court judges especially in New York, Minnesota, Texas and South Carolina became supporters of a program that they could rely upon to give consistent information regarding parents and children in their courtrooms. Someone who became a dear friend, the late Honorable John Montgomery, said to me he was thrilled never to have to see another Kinko blowup and pie chart. I was pooped but Kidmate had become the market standard. Reliable, concise and worth every minute to help clear the "custody confusion" of divorcing families.

Now at last I am able to give to single parents the program we need. Kidmate for single parents is a straightforward computer program that calculates custody, shows percentage of time each child has with each parent and produces a calendar and a text to show everyone concerned just where their children are as well as who pays for what. We all know that these things change so the program gives you years to change the plan as your family changes. The courts will accept Kidmate, the lawyers, mediators, custody evaluators and facilitators are finally embracing technology that will eliminate their own calendar sheets, colored pencils and calculators. The $75 single parent Kidmate is available now by emailing kidmate@lapag.com and requesting the single parent version. It can also be ordered from our legal web site www.kidmate.com by simply putting in single parent version on the order form. It's bigger legal brother will continue to help courts internationally and I'll get to stay home for a few of those weekends and return those late videos on my desk.