How TalkingParents Supports a Texas Attorney and His Clients
Rick Mitchell is a Texas-based family law attorney with the Law Offices of Mark M. Childress. He has more than 25 years of experience across various disciplines and now specializes in family law cases, with expertise in high-asset and complex divorces. Trained in collaborative divorce, Mitchell often encourages alternative dispute resolution while also guiding clients through active litigation when court involvement is necessary.
- 4.5 min read
Streamlining communication
Mitchell says he learned about TalkingParents as one of a handful of co-parenting apps accepted by the Texas family law court system. Attorneys throughout the state and country recommend the app to help clients in situations ranging from especially contentious to relatively amicable. In his experience, Mitchell says it’s frequently ordered by the courts in high-conflict cases to help reduce tension.
“Parents can be pushed to emotional and mental extremes when they begin co-parenting and start to go through litigation, so several courts prefer TalkingParents over regular communication—whether or not the clients or attorneys ask for it. It’s better to be safe than sorry in adding those guardrails, and it’s a good service that helps streamline things between co-parents. Parents even behave a little better because they know that whatever they said or did can be printed easily and hold them accountable.”
While exact stipulations vary case by case, Mitchell notes that courts have often established login requirements and, in some cases, set guardrails around message frequency or length.
“Most courts in Texas prefer co-parents to sign into their accounts at least once a day to make sure there’s nothing urgent. I haven’t seen many judges mandate response times, but I’ve had extreme cases where limits were set on how much a co-parent could send in a message. If one parent sends pages’ worth of rants at a time, it can be daunting for the other parent to respond every 24 hours because of a court-ordered response timeframe.”
Mitchell adds that the courts will often approve a request to include TalkingParents in a parenting plan, even if co-parents have a good working dynamic, because it simplifies communication across the board.
“The ability to manage calendar events, billing issues, and other co-parenting responsibilities in one app is helpful for parents, the attorneys who represent them, and the judges who hear their cases. If we come into a hearing and have a proposed agreement with it included, a judge is practically guaranteed nine times out of ten to agree with the suggestion and approve the use of TalkingParents.”
Self-authenticating Records
When helping his clients prepare for alternative dispute resolution or litigation, Mitchell says that Records are an incredible asset for organizing and submitting evidence efficiently.
“TalkingParents simplifies my job because everything is uploaded, organized, time-stamped, and easy to access. The courts find these Records self-authenticating, so they’re much easier to admit into evidence than screenshots or other disjointed pieces would be. I can easily upload my clients’ Records into our system and start putting exhibits together. Instead of having to sift through random pieces of potential evidence, I can go through the Records and select conversations to submit, all while still having the full conversation available if more context is needed in an evidentiary battle.”
Mitchell says that the time saved by using Records makes it easier to be fully prepared for hearings, especially when court schedules are extremely tight.
“If you’re going into a temporary hearing, you’re on the court’s docket for 40 minutes to an hour tops. We just don’t have the time to go through the process of submitting evidence that isn’t self-authenticated. With Records, it takes me maybe 30 seconds to get information into evidence, and that’s a big deal when you’re limited to 40 minutes in the courtroom, and the judges want their dockets to run smoothly.”
While Mitchell says it’s rare for a Record to be construed as hearsay by an opposing party, the admissibility of the documentation itself is never a concern.
“If a client tries to submit a conversation that may include true hearsay, it’s up to me as their attorney to review everything, redact what could potentially qualify, and still have the original Record on hand for reference. Still, the courts don’t question that a Record is admissible in court even if the opposing party tries to claim it’s incorrect, especially if the parties were ordered to use the app.”
Mitchell emphasizes that the benefits of using Records are two-fold: they support attorneys in streamlining their court preparations and help their clients save money in the process.
Our clients pay us a lot of money per hour to help them prepare for court, and the money we save them on our end because of how this app’s Records organize everything is significant. It saves us so much time that would otherwise be spent uploading, organizing, and reviewing potential evidence. We can avoid all these background steps that take time and money, which our clients may not realize are part of our work, so it’s real money they’re saving by using TalkingParents—even if they don’t realize it. Whatever cost they pay for the app saves them an exponential amount in the time they save with their attorneys.
Advice
Mitchell’s main recommendation to his fellow attorneys and other family law professionals is to add TalkingParents to their clients’ custody agreements.
“By getting TalkingParents court-ordered, you get access to self-authenticated evidence, while your clients have a much more streamlined way to communicate. Beyond that, you should also go into detail about when accounts must be created and matched, whether they have an alternative way to communicate in true emergencies, and how the app should be used for shared parenting matters. The whole idea is to help co-parents in tense situations get along a bit better and be held accountable, and that can be easier if you work with the courts to set expectations both co-parents must meet.”
If a client is initially hesitant to get on board with the app, Mitchell says he reframes it as a simple habit change with financial and logistical benefits that become clearer over time.
“Some people are so into texting or using social media to send messages or manage their situation that they don’t want to make the switch, and they may be apprehensive about the cost. When my clients are of that opinion, I remind them that they’ll naturally get used to using TalkingParents—it’s just one more app you open at least once a day. It does so much more good than any inconvenience they may feel at first, from automatically organizing their interactions to saving money in attorney’s fees. Plus, their Records are stored forever, so even if they drop their phone in a pool and lose what’s saved on the device, their TalkingParents account with however many years’ worth of documentation is still there.”