Written like a conversation with a friend who already pays for it. No marketing, no hedging. If a question isn't answered here, email help@compassfamily.app.
No. About a third of members are post-decree — co-parenting with a difficult ex, dealing with constant boundary tests, or preparing for an eventual modification. Another portion are still pre-filing and trying to figure out whether they have a case at all.
Compass is useful any time you have to communicate with a person who turns ordinary parenting into a fight.
Yes. If you cancel within 7 days of your first paid charge and you genuinely got nothing useful out of it, email us and we'll refund. We don't do dark patterns. Cancellation itself is two clicks inside the app, no phone call required.
Most people are productive in their first session. The interface is one screen: paste the message, get back a structured analysis. The harder part is emotional — getting used to the idea that your reply doesn't have to be written from your gut at 11 PM.
The Playbook articles take about 20 minutes total to read and will save you from making the most common mistakes.
No. Compass explains the framework it's using every time it uses one. We also publish a plain-English glossary of every term.
That said, most people who pay for this end up wanting to understand the names. It helps you talk to your attorney, your therapist, and yourself about what's actually happening in your case.
Whatever the other side sent. A text. A long email. A passage from a court filing. A voicemail you transcribed. A series of messages from OurFamilyWizard or TalkingParents.
You can also paste your own draft reply and ask Compass to pressure-test it before you send.
Three things, every time:
You can ask follow-ups. You can ask for a softer or harder version. You can ask "what would my attorney say if they read this?"
Yes — the BIFF format is intentionally voice-neutral. It strips the emotional volatility that high-conflict communication thrives on. People often tell us their first reaction is "this is so flat" — and then their second reaction, two weeks later, is "this is the only thing that actually works."
You can always edit before sending. Most members do. The point is to start from a calm baseline instead of a reactive one.
Yes. Compass is a mobile-first web app. Most members use it on their phone, often in a parking lot or at 11 PM. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like a native app.
No native app. The web app works in any browser on any device. We chose this on purpose — it's faster to ship updates, and it doesn't leave a Compass icon visible on your phone if you share a household.
Yes. Every paid account gets a private capture address that looks like yourname-h7xq@in.compassfamily.app. Forward any email — from the other parent, from OurFamilyWizard, from your attorney — to that address and it lands in your Compass inbox automatically, ready to read, tag, and draft a reply for.
You'll find your address inside the app under Settings → Email-in, or on the empty-state of the Messages screen. We also send it to you in the welcome email after onboarding so you can copy it into your phone contacts as "Compass."
Forwarded messages get the same pattern-read, tone-shifted drafts, and locked-draft cooldown as anything you paste in by hand.
You can use the messages you sent in court — those are your words, sent from your phone. Judges read parent-to-parent communication all the time, and BIFF-formatted messages are exactly what looks reasonable on a printout.
The Compass Premium tier ($89/mo) produces a Hearing & Attorney Handoff Pack — a structured PDF summarizing your case timeline, key incidents, and pattern documentation in the format attorneys actually want. Premium also includes the new Parenting Plan Builder and a Custody Evaluator / GAL prep pack. That's designed to be shared with your lawyer or, if you're pro-se, used as a personal exhibit binder.
Compass itself is not a witness. The AI's analysis isn't admissible. But the documentation, timelines, and your own carefully-written messages absolutely are.
No. Compass is not a law firm. It does not provide legal advice. It can help you communicate, document, and prepare — but it cannot replace a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction.
If you can afford one, get one. If you can't, Compass helps you walk in more prepared than 90% of pro-se litigants — but it's still not a lawyer.
Not from us. Compass doesn't send messages, contact your ex, or appear anywhere on the receiving end of your communication. The other side just sees a calmer, shorter, more factual reply than they used to get.
If you want extra discretion, the web app has a "stealth" home-screen option — generic icon, generic name, no Compass branding visible.
It is significantly better than walking in with nothing — but "enough" depends on your case complexity, your jurisdiction, and the other side's representation.
The Compass Premium tier is built for pro-se litigants: structured exhibits, pattern documentation, hearing prep checklists, witness/credibility framing notes, custody-evaluator interview prep, and a Parenting Plan Builder that produces court-format output. Members consistently report that judges respond well to organized, specific, low-emotion presentations — exactly what Compass produces.
If a custody evaluation or contempt motion is on the table, hire a lawyer for at least the limited scope of that proceeding. Compass + a few hours of attorney time goes much further than either alone.
The communication frameworks (BIFF, gray rock, pattern recognition) are universal. The legal and procedural framing is US-centric — references to family court, custody evaluators, GAL/parenting coordinators, etc.
Members in Canada, the UK, and Australia report it still works well for the communication side. We're not currently localized for civil-law jurisdictions.
An average family-law attorney bills $300–$450 an hour. The first hour is mostly you explaining what's happening. Compass costs less per month than ten minutes of attorney time — and is available at 11 PM on a Sunday, which your attorney is not.
Compass doesn't replace your lawyer. It makes the time you do pay for dramatically more efficient. Members regularly tell us their attorney bills dropped by 30–50% after they started showing up to meetings with structured timelines instead of pages of unfiltered narrative.
Yes. Two clicks inside the app. No phone call, no retention specialist, no "are you sure" forms. You keep access until the end of the billing period you already paid for.
If you cancel within 7 days of your first paid charge and you genuinely got nothing useful out of it, email us. We refund without making it weird.
Beyond that, we don't refund partial months — but you also won't get billed again after you cancel.
Annual saves about 20%. Most active-divorce members start monthly because they don't know how long they'll need it, then switch to annual once they realize this is a multi-year relationship with the other parent and the case isn't ending soon.
Post-decree co-parents on the cheaper Compass Lite tier almost all switch to annual within 90 days.
Yes, at any time. Upgrade is immediate. Downgrade takes effect at the end of your current period so you don't lose pre-paid days.
A common path: start on Compass during active litigation, step up to Premium for hearings or a contested modification, then downgrade to Lite for ongoing post-decree communication management.
Yes. Quietly. If a high-conflict separation has wrecked your finances and the price is the only thing keeping you out, email help@compassfamily.app with a sentence about your situation. We don't make people prove anything. The founder has been there.
They're stored encrypted, scoped to your account, and never used to train any model — ours or anyone else's. They're not sold, syndicated, or shared with third parties for marketing.
You can delete any individual conversation, or wipe your entire history, at any time from your account settings.
You. That's the design. Internal access is restricted to a small engineering team, only for diagnostic support, and only with your explicit per-incident permission.
We do not preview your data for marketing, "user research," or AI training. The full policy is in the privacy page.
Honest answer: any service can be subpoenaed. We do not voluntarily hand over user data, and we will fight overbroad requests. But if a court orders disclosure of specific records related to a specific case, we comply with the law, like any business.
The practical implication: don't write things in your Compass session you wouldn't want a judge reading. The replies you actually send are the only thing that matters in court anyway.
No. Never. Compass is funded by member subscriptions. Selling your data would burn the company.
As long as your account is active, plus 30 days after cancellation (so you can re-activate without losing context). After that, it's deleted from primary systems within 90 days, and from backups within 12 months.
If you want immediate deletion, request it and we'll process it within 30 days.
It's a fair question and it gets asked privately a lot. Two honest answers:
One — sometimes the "high-conflict" label is weaponized against the parent who's actually setting reasonable boundaries. If you suspect that's you, Compass will help you communicate in ways that look unimpeachable on a printout.
Two — sometimes the label is accurate and the user is genuinely escalating. In that case Compass will still help, because the BIFF framework forces a kind of communication discipline that produces better outcomes regardless of who started it. People who use it consistently report that their own emotional regulation improves.
We don't moralize about who deserves which label. We help anyone communicate better in court-adjacent contexts.
Yes. Custody and paternity cases between never-married parents follow the same procedural patterns as divorce, often with the same judges and the same evaluators. The communication challenges are identical.
Genuinely fine. Two people on Compass communicate better with each other than two people winging it. That's not a contradiction — it's the goal.
If both parties write in BIFF format, exchanges get shorter, calmer, and cheaper. Some of our most successful co-parenting outcomes are couples where both sides ended up using it independently.
It's not a substitute for safety planning, a domestic violence advocate, or a protective order. If you or your children are in danger, call 911 or 1-800-799-7233 (National Domestic Violence Hotline).
That said: many post-separation abuse survivors find Compass useful for the long tail of court-ordered communication that no protective order eliminates. The pattern recognition validates what they're seeing, and the BIFF format provides a documented record of their own measured replies.
Yes, and many do. We don't pay referral fees and we're not a multi-level operation. If you want a clean way to send a client, the simplest is just to email them compassfamily.app with a sentence about why you think it would help.
If you want bulk pricing for a clinic or firm, email us.
If it isn't here, email help@compassfamily.app. Real human reply, usually within a day.
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