Our story How we began

The birth of TalkingParents is similar to those we’ve heard for many technology startups - an idea born as a solution to a problem brought to life in a homegrown environment. However, it is a story that quickly took the family law and parenting communities by storm.

As an attorney running his criminal defense and family law practice, almost every case that founder, Stephen Nixon, worked on involved poor communication between co-parents and a lack of comprehensive, reliable records. In 2010, Stephen had a particularly frustrating experience in court. The need for a service that allowed co-parents to keep a single, complete, and unalterable record of communications designed for use in the courtroom was palpable.

As was often the case, Stephen once again found himself working with a set of co-parents who were constantly in and out of court litigating various disagreements regarding custody and parenting decisions. He spent days wading through pages of haphazardly gathered texts, emails, letters, and social media messages to find relevant information to present to the judge.

On the day of the hearing, Stephen and the opposing counsel spent hours presenting from messy stacks of unorganized messages and incomplete conversations - it was almost comical. One side would present a document claiming to prove something, and the other side would say they “never received that message” or “did reply and why don’t you have it.” The presiding judge finally threw up his hands and said the only conclusion he could draw was that both parents had awful communication. He then tasked both counsels with devising a plan that the court could order to resolve this issue. Stephen returned to his office and searched for a service to fit the bill. His search was futile, so he took matters into his own hands. With the help of a friend with some web development experience, TalkingParents.com was born.

After a few years of rapid success, it was time for TalkingParents.com to expand. The service was quickly outgrowing its current infrastructure and additional expertise was needed. In 2012, Stephen approached Vince Mayfield and Louis Erickson, owners of Bit-Wizards, a software engineering company. Impressed with the mission and potential of TalkingParents, Vince and Louis agreed to partner. The trio formed Monitored Communications LLC and combined their expertise and experience to rebuild and engineer TalkingParents in a way that scaled and laid the foundation for the addition of the mobile application.

TalkingParents is now a leader in the space where technology and the law intersect and continues to look toward the future and develop new ways for co-parents to focus on what matters most - raising their children.