In development in Australia, by a single parent

The co-parenting app for the whole journey

Like every other co-parenting app, Kindred has messages, a calendar and expense tracking. The difference is that it's being built around the reality that co-parenting is a journey, and that where you are on it changes what you actually need.

The vision

This is the philosophy, not another feature checklist

Kindred is in active development. All the features that the other apps have like messaging, calendars and expense tracking are built, now I'm focused on making them worth having in your situation. If this is the app you wish existed, join the waitlist and help shape it.

An app that adapts to your situation

During onboarding you answer some questions and let us know where you are at on this journey. On your own and just getting started, making agreements with your co-parent, finding a rhythm in your day to day life, parenting teenage children. The app changes based on your answers. High conflict? Stricter communication gating, cooling-off periods, mandatory review before message sends. Low conflict? More collaborative features, shared planning tools. If your relationship changes, the app changes with it.

Your agreements drive how things work

Most apps don't consider your verbal agreements, parenting plans, or consent and court orders. Kindred treats them as a core part of the app. Log a kitchen-table conversation, or upload a parenting plan or orders, and the schedule, the splits and the conditions become structured data. When you agree to a schedule change in the app, that's an amendment to the agreement. When your plan says "school holidays alternate yearly", the calendar knows.

What you say to each other drives the app

Instant messages for the urgent things, discuss for everything else. If you opt in, communication coaching helps you review a message before you send it, flags reactive language, and offers a calmer way to say the same thing. Next is tracking the conflict trend over time so the coaching can ease off on its own as things improve. Further out, the vision is for Kindred to recognise when a message is really a request - for money, a schedule change, an update to an agreement — and turn it into a proper proposal for you. That part isn't built yet. It's the direction.

Built for Australia

Focusing on Australia means we can use Australian terminology for day-to-day parenting matters and legal resources. Things like Parenting Plans, shared parental responsibility, equal decision making. We can work with local resources like 1800RESPECT, Family Relationship Advice Line, Legal Aid, and Parenting Orders Programs. In the future it means we could leverage Open Banking to provide automated expense reconciliation and work on smarter integrations with Child Support.

Doing this alone shouldn't cost you

Every co-parenting app is built on the assumption that both parents show up. Often that isn't what's happening. The other parent won't engage, or it isn't safe to invite them, or they've simply gone. Those parents still need the calendar, the expense record, the message history, the documentation that holds up if it's ever needed. Charging someone for the privilege of doing it on their own is backwards. So solo use is free, not a trial, not a crippled tier. You pay when your co-parent joins, because that's when Kindred is doing the work only a shared app can do.

The Story

Built from the inside

I'm Mischa 👋🏻

I'm a single dad based near Byron Bay, Australia. I have two kids and I co-parent with their mum.

We were together for 17 years. We managed a reasonably amicable separation, and then things went sideways about a year in. New partners, different ideas about what was best for our kids, lots of hurt and resentment that eventually led to a court process that took nearly two years and cost me over $80,000.

I'm not telling you this for sympathy. I'm telling you because if you're here, some version of this story probably sounds familiar.

After the dust settled, our consent orders required us to use a co-parenting app. So we did. And honestly the app was fine. Functional but clunky. More expensive than it needed to be. It felt like it had been designed by lawyers, for lawyers. Not by parents, for parents.

When the kids mum asked if we could find something cheaper, it sparked an idea.

I've spent over a decade working in tech. I thought: what if I could build something better? Not just cheaper. Actually better. An app that treats co-parenting as the rollercoaster journey it is. That works with your life instead of adding another thing to manage. That could really leverage the best technology has to offer to help make kids living across two homes just that little bit easier.

That's Kindred.

Here's the part that sounds wild: I want my kids mum involved in building this. Not because we're best mates (we're not) but because the best co-parenting tool needs both parents' fingerprints on it. If it only works for one side, it doesn't work at all.

Ironically she agreed to try Kindred, then I took too long to ship the first version to her (which probably felt reminiscent of our life together 😬) so now we're stuck with OFW for a few more months. I'm using the time to improve the solo app expereince and I'm still hopeful we're really going to get a chance to test this thing together.

I don't want this to be my app. I want it to be shaped by the people who actually need it. Dads, mums, step-parents, grandparents. The whole village.

Because they say it takes a village to raise a child. Most of us just didn't expect the village to look like this.

- Mischa

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Get involved

This isn't finished. That's the point.

Kindred is in active development. I'm sharing it early because co-parenting shouldn't be designed in a vacuum by people who haven't lived it.

Join the waitlist

Get early access when we launch. Free while we're building it, and your feedback shapes what ships.

Share the story

Know a parent navigating separation and co-parenting? Send them here. Sometimes knowing someone else gets it makes all the difference.

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Build with us

If you're a developer, designer, family lawyer, mediator, or a parent with opinions, I want you involved. Tell me what you'd want from this and what you'd never use.

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