Insights for California Family Lawyers
Can family law software handle child custody and divorce cases?
Family law software that only does billing cannot. Uncontested California dissolution software must cover children when they exist: FL-105 (UCCJEA), custody attachments FL-311 and FL-341, and child-support figures that still come from a Judicial Council–certified calculator — Xspouse, Family Law Software, and the rest — not from the form filler. Contested custody litigation is a different product.
· FamilyLawyer.software
Lawyers type that question because half the “family law software” listicles are Clio billing pages and the other half are consumer divorce websites that print an FL-100 and call the children a checkbox. Neither is an answer. A California dissolution with minor children is a jurisdiction problem, a parenting-plan problem, and a guideline-support problem sitting on top of the usual petition and disclosure set. Software that cannot see that is not family-law software. It is a matter number with a practice-area tag.
There is no public market-share data for who “handles custody” better, and I am not going to invent one. The test is a form inventory plus a certified printout, not an adjective on a homepage.
Billing software cannot. Stop asking it to.
Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, and the rest will open a matter called “dissolution with children,” store the kids’ names, and bill against it. That is practice management. It is the Layer B job in the 2026 stack. It does not produce an FL-105. It does not know whether this court has home-state jurisdiction under the UCCJEA. It does not attach a current FL-341 to the judgment. If your comparison demo never leaves the matter screen, you are shopping for billing, and the answer to this query is no.
Smokeball’s California form suite is the honest exception inside a PMS: a large FL library if you live in that system. It is still not a client interview that walks a parent through custody facts, and it is still not a certified calculator. Keep it if you already bought it. Do not pretend the form folder is a custody practice.
Uncontested California dissolution with children is a packet, not a petition
When the parents agree — or when one of them is defaulting into an agreed judgment — “handle divorce and custody” means the work-product layer emits the children set, not just the caption. Minimum, for a 2026 California file with minor children:
| Form | Job | Why software that skips it is not “custody-capable” |
|---|---|---|
| FL-105 | Declaration under the UCCJEA (Family Code § 3400 et seq.) | Jurisdiction over the child is a fact pattern: home state, six months, other states, pending cases. A petition that names the children without FL-105 is incomplete. |
| FL-311 | Child Custody and Visitation (Parenting Time) Application Attachment | This is the request. Revised 1 January 2026, including virtual visitation and abuse/substance sections. Last year’s version is a clerk problem. |
| FL-341 and lettered attachments | Child Custody and Visitation (Parenting Time) Order Attachment | This is the order that rides the judgment or the RFO order. Revised 1 January 2026; revised again effective 1 July 2026. |
| FL-342 / support attachments | Child support order attachment and related notices | The figures still come from a certified calculator. The form filler prints what you tell it. |
| FL-351 (new 1 Jan 2026) | Mandatory Findings for Child Custody and Visitation (Parenting Time) Orders | Hearing-findings form when Family Code §§ 3011, 3044, 3100 and related findings are in play. Not an uncontested parenting-plan substitute. |
Add the rest of a real dissolution — FL-100 or the 2026 FL-700 joint petition, summons, disclosures, locals, judgment — and you have a file. Subtract FL-105 or the custody attachments and you have a petition mill. Consumer B2C tools do that subtraction constantly. They sell “divorce papers.” They do not sell a UCCJEA analysis. If you are the attorney of record, you do not get to skip Family Code section 3421 because the website’s questionnaire never asked which state the child lived in last year.
The 1 January 2026 revisions are not optional flavor text
The Judicial Council’s publisher list effective 1 January 2026 is the primary source. Confirmed on the court’s own latest-changes page:
- FL-311 revised — Child Custody and Visitation (Parenting Time) Application Attachment. Practitioner write-ups of the new version flag a public-policy box on page one, a cleaner visitation schedule, virtual visitation, a section for allegations or history of abuse or substance abuse, and holiday-schedule fields that used to live on separate attachments. Use the current PDF.
- FL-311-INFO new — What Are Visitation or Parenting Time Orders?
- FL-341 revised — the order attachment. Revised again effective 1 July 2026. If your software last touched this form in 2025, it is two cycles behind.
- FL-351 new — Mandatory Findings for Child Custody and Visitation (Parenting Time) Orders. Six sides. Optional form, but the findings it captures are not optional when the statutes apply. Family Code sections 3011, 3020, 3040–3044, 3048, 3100, 6340, 7604 are on the face of the Judicial Council page. This is a hearing-findings instrument, especially around domestic violence and substance abuse. Uncontested interview software should know the form exists. It should not pretend it replaces a 3044 analysis.
Gavel publishes a “California Family – Child Custody” workflow. That is a named option on Layer 2, not a certified calculator and not a trial OS. CEB Essential Forms and SuperDocs will have the current JC PDFs if their updaters did their job on the 1 January and 1 July cycles. Ask to see the revision date in the footer of FL-311 and FL-341 before you buy. “We have custody forms” is not a date.
Child support figures still come from a certified calculator
This is the sentence vendors hope you will not read. Filling an FL-342, or dropping a number into a marital settlement agreement, is not determining guideline support. Family Code section 3830 and California Rules of Court, rule 5.275 require Judicial Council certification of software used to determine child or spousal support. The Council’s Guideline Support Calculators table, last updated 10 August 2026, recertifies five names through 31 March 2027: Xspouse, Family Law Software, CalSupport / CalSupport Pro, FamilySoft SupportCalc, and the DCSS California Child Support Guideline Calculator. Title IV-D must use DCSS. Non–IV-D must be permitted to use any certified program.
The form filler is not on that list. Online Divorce Lawyer is not on that list. Gavel is not on that list. Clio is not on that list. You run the certified tool, you put the printout’s numbers on the support attachment and in the MSA, and you keep the printout. Low-income adjustment threshold as of 1 January 2026 is $2,929 per month. If the number on the form did not come from a certified run against current tax parameters, you are guessing in a robe’s direction.
Family Law Software (familylawsoftware.com) is the confusing name in this sentence. It is a certified calculator that also produces some I&E and A&D declarations. It is not “family law software” as a category, and it is not a 58-county uncontested interview. Do not use the brand collision as an excuse to skip UCCJEA.
Contested custody litigation is a different product
An uncontested engine can capture an agreed parenting plan, print the attachments, and hold the file for lawyer review. That is a real job. It is not:
- an RFO for exclusive use, move-away, or supervised visitation after a blow-up;
- a 730 evaluation workflow;
- a Family Code section 3044 burden-shifting memo;
- a trial binder, a hearing notebook, or a child-interview protocol;
- juvenile dependency, guardianship, or a DVPA with a CLETS order — those have their own form families (DV-105 / DV-140 / new DV-150 as of 1 January 2026 on the domestic-violence side).
If the parents are litigating custody, you need a PMS, a certified calculator, a forms library that includes the 2026 RFO set (FL-300, revised FL-311, FL-305, FL-351 when findings are required), and a lawyer. You do not need a consumer interview that thinks “custody” is a radio button. Gavel’s Child Custody workflow is closer than Clio billing. It is still not a trial product. Neither is Online Divorce Lawyer. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling a caption, not a hearing.
Consumer tools that skip UCCJEA are not a lawyer’s children set
Hello Divorce, DivorceWriter, CompleteCase, 3 Step Divorce, and the rest compete for the uncontested client. Some of them will generate a petition. Some of them will mention children. The failure mode that shows up in lawyer inboxes is a consumer who arrives with an FL-100, no FL-105, no current FL-311, and a child-support number that came from a website, not a certified calculator. Tyler Guide & File is the court’s free SRL interview; clerks already point people at it. Useful for self-represented parents. Not your letterhead, and not a substitute for reviewing UCCJEA facts.
If a B2C packet is petition-only, it has not “handled custody.” It has postponed it until a judge or a lawyer notices. That postponement is the product. Do not buy it for a firm.
A worked California example (proof, not the headline)
Online Divorce Lawyer, the work-product tool behind FamilyLawyer.software, is uncontested California dissolution software that the vendor describes as handling cases with children — and cases without. The interview asks the client the children and property questions; time-to-complete is advertised as 30–90 minutes depending on those facts. The lawyer or paralegal reviews the batch. The client cannot download. Judicial Council and local county PDFs come out, plus an MSA in Word. Those are vendor claims. An independent form-coverage audit was not done for this article, so I will not recite an FL-105 / FL-311 / FL-341 inventory I have not verified line by line. The architecture is the point: uncontested including children, lawyer-gated, California-native.
Two things it does not do, and that I will not let a comparison post imply:
- It does not replace Xspouse, Family Law Software, CalSupport, or SupportCalc. Child-support figures are a separate certified-calculator layer. Put the printout’s numbers on the forms. Do not ask the interview to be rule 5.275 software.
- It does not handle trial-level custody litigation. If the case needs an RFO, a 3044 hearing, or a 730, you are out of the uncontested product. The vendor FAQ says the tool was designed for uncontested work and “works remarkably well in contested matters too” because you still have to prepare the forms. That is a forms-prep sentence, not a litigation-OS sentence. Read it that way.
Pricing is $50 per client account, billed in arrears, no subscription — vendor terms. It sits beside the PMS and the calculator, which is the only honest place for this layer. For the interview-to-packet definition, see plug-and-play. For cloud intake versus emailed FL-150s, see secure client portals. For who to compare when the brief says automation and e-sign, see the three-layer comparison.
Questions California family lawyers actually ask
These are the queries as typed, including the one the answer engines are already tracking.