A Norwegian district court mandated that two parents communicate exclusively through a startup's platform. Here's what that moment means and how it came to be.

Earlier this year, a district court in Eastern Norway ordered both parents in a child custody case to conduct all communication through a specific app. Not as a suggestion. As a legal condition. The app was Time4Kids , built by Norwegian startup Foreldreplanlegger AS. Shifter covered the story when the ruling was announced.

The reason was straightforward: the need for clear, traceable documentation. In high-conflict separations, what was said, agreed upon, or ignored often becomes contested ground. Having everything structured and searchable in one place removes a layer of ambiguity that can otherwise drag families into prolonged litigation.

A problem bigger than it looks

In Norway, around 15,000 children experience their parents separating each year, according to Barne-, ungdoms- og familiedirektoratet. The real number is likely higher since not all separations between cohabiting parents are officially recorded. Most families find a way through it. But a significant number don't.

• ~15,000 children affected by parental separation in Norway each year
• ~2,500couples end up in district court annually (Domstoladministrasjonen)
• 30+ experts and lawyers collaborating with Foreldreplanlegger

Grethe Andersen, CEO and co-founder of Foreldreplanlegger, isn't approaching this as an outside observer. She went through a difficult separation herself, communication broke down, the family ended up in court, and she came away convinced it didn't have to go that way. Her son Felix inspired the idea. Time4Kids is what she wished had existed.

"I had challenges with communication about the children with my ex-partner, and we ended up in court. It could have been avoided with a better solution for communication."
Grethe Andersen, CEO & Co-founder, Foreldreplanlegger AS

What the platform does

Time4Kids is built for co-parents, mediators, and lawyers navigating custody and family mediation. The goal is to make a genuinely difficult process more manageable for everyone involved.

• Case management: All documentation and case progress in one place, accessible to all relevant parties.
• Session scheduling: Integrated calendar for planning and managing mandatory mediation sessions.
• License management: Mediators can manage and share licenses across their team for collaborative work.
• Agreement creation: Drafting and managing agreements between parents, tracked within the platform.
• Progress tracking: Monitor case and session status over time, reducing back-and-forth and costs.
• Communication log: All parent communication in one place: structured, verifiable, and retrievable.

Lisbeth Synnøve Bøhler, a lawyer with 28 years of experience and around 500 parental conflict cases, is both an advisor and a shareholder in the company. Her view is grounding: the problem isn't that parents don't want to cooperate. It's that they don't know how or where to do it.

"My experience is that people struggle with communication, how to communicate and where. It is also striking how long it can take to reach simple agreements, both inside and outside the courtroom."
Lisbeth Synnøve Bøhler, Lawyer & Board Member, Foreldreplanlegger AS

The road ahead

Foreldreplanlegger is based in Hitra, Trøndelag, and has received close to one million NOK across four grants from Innovation Norway. A research project with NTNU Samfunnsforskning is currently underway to measure the societal effects of the platform.

The ambition is European. Competitors exist in Sweden, Belgium, and the US, but none are tailored to Norwegian legal and family welfare norms. The team is also developing a simpler version of the app for parents sharing custody without active conflict, covering everyday logistics rather than legal documentation. Longer term, the goal is for Time4Kids to be accessible through the Norwegian family welfare system so that cost is never a barrier.

Daxap as a partner

Daxap is the technology partner behind Time4Kids. The vision, lived experiences, and professional foundation behind the platform come from Grethe Andersen, Mari Johanne Olsen, and the broader Foreldreplanlegger team. Our role has been to design and build the technology that makes the solution secure, stable, and reliable in practice.

This is not simply an app for everyday coordination between parents. The platform handles highly sensitive information related to children, families, and conflict situations — often in cases involving lawyers, court-appointed experts, and the legal system itself. That creates an entirely different set of requirements around security, traceability, privacy, and operational reliability.

Because of that, information security has been a central part of the development process from day one. Our work includes GDPR-focused design principles, access control, secure infrastructure, communication traceability, and the continuous development of internal security processes and frameworks aligned with standards such as ISO 27001.

Much of this work is invisible to the end user. But it is exactly this kind of foundational work that becomes critical when technology is used in situations where trust matters deeply.

For us, the fact that a Norwegian court considered the platform suitable for mandatory communication in a parental conflict case is more than just a validation of the idea behind Time4Kids. It is also a strong validation of the importance of building technology where security, robustness, and responsibility are part of the foundation — not something added later.

Originally reported by Shifter, May 11, 2026.