Hi, I’m Matthew Brickman, Florida Supreme court mediator. Welcome to the Mediate This! Podcast where we discuss everything mediation and conflict resolution.

I’m excited to share what I have been up to for the past number of months. So uh let’s go back to May of 2026 when I had a mediation and uh it lasted about six hours, and unfortunately, we spent uh almost half of that time with two attorneys arguing back and forth about the calculation and the number of overnights based on the parenting plan negotiated. And I have had this conversation numerous times, um, but never to the point where we spent hours and it cost the mother and father hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars, being that the two attorneys couldn’t agree on the numbers. And so when I was done with mediation, I was actually quite upset over the whole thing because I really hate when people are wasting money in a negotiation. As a mediator, my goal is to help people get through mediation as quickly, as inexpensively, and as peacefully as possible. Um, unfortunately, with this one particular mediation, the inexpensive was not what happened. We did settle it, but um it was not uh inexpensive to get there. So when I was done with that mediation, I was like, there has got to be a tool out there somewhere where I can calculate overnights for a parenting plan. And so I got online and I started to Google and couldn’t find anything, and so then I decided to engage AI. And I don’t engage AI that often, but I decided let me see if AI can help. And I just couldn’t find anything out there that would really give me what I was truly looking for. So I decided to utilize the AI that I had and start building my own time-sharing calculator. And I did so. It took a number of months, but I did so. And so I am excited to share with you uh what I did, give you a little behind the scenes on how I did, uh, create it, and give you a little bit of a walk to uh walkthrough. But um what I first did was uh I engaged an AI platform that I was able to just use plain language and just talk to it and say, look, this is what I’m looking for, this is what I want to do. Are you able to do this? And then um I was able to explain from a mediator standpoint, not from a computer programmer standpoint, but from a mediator saying, This is what I do every day. I need to be able to create a calculator where I can help the parents choose a time-sharing schedule based on weekdays and then weekends and then holidays, whether it’s a particular day or whether it’s an academic break. And then I went through 18 years of parenting plans and all the different ways that I have helped people negotiate how to divide up or alternate or split uh a holiday or break, and I started to compile those and started to build out then options using the AI generator to create my time-sharing calculator. And so um what was really great was then how I made it um user-friendly, made it um customizable for so many different various options. And so when I was done building, and I’m never completely done building because always still, you know, finding new ways to make things uh work better, whether it’s a workflow, whether it’s a layout, or even adding options. I mean, you know, people are creative, and I’m mediating every day, and people are still having really creative options that they like when it comes to their time sharing. And so I’m like, that’s a really great option. And so then I add it to the calculator. So it’s constantly being added to the calculator as I mediate every day. And um, as of the date of recording this podcast episode, um, which is September 2026, I have already done 155 mediations this year, and we’re only in the beginning of September. I still have all of September, October, November, and December left. And I’ve already mediated 155 cases. And so I have been using my calculator since May when I built it, and it has just saved so much time and money for the parties because I can just quickly go through, we can look at the options for the time sharing, and then get an exact number of overnights for the parents for the child support purposes. And that’s where the parenting plan and the numbers are so important because it affects child support. And we don’t want to double-dip numbers, we don’t want to add numbers or subtract numbers where they shouldn’t be. We need to actually get an accurate number count so that the child support is accurate for the courts and for the parents. And so there’s two points there’s a parenting plan component and a time-sharing calculation that I really wanted to integrate in this app. And so what it has developed into is not just a time-sharing calculator, but also a parenting plan builder. And so, based on what has been created, um the analyzation of the number of decision points in this scheduling application is inexhaustible. Um, if I was going to run a unique schedule configuration, then what the AI has told me is that on a conservative lower bound estimate, the application can create somewhere between ten to the eighteenth power to ten to the twentieth power, which equates to somewhere between one quintillion and one hundred quintillion possibilities. So basically what that means is if you generated one unique schedule variation every single second, it would roughly take you 31.7 billion years to exhaust all of the various possibilities. And that is more than twice the age of the universe. So it is quite an exhaustible, effective co-parenting tool to not just give you an accurate number of overnights for child support purposes, but also to look at options and build out a parenting plan. And so how it works is this what do you get when you use this tool? Number one, you get the calculation for time sharing. You get a weekly schedule builder, it assigns the weekends, it assigns the holidays and breaks, you get a time-sharing summary with statistics, you get a printable annual calendar, and then you also get a schedule summary that is attached to the calendar. You can save schedules, you can also save multiple scenarios per schedule, and then you can even export and import schedules between users. And there’s an entire section in here for creating a customizable weekday weekend uh schedule, which is commonly called a 223 schedule. So when we generally have really young children from like birth until about four, maybe five years old, or until a child has a schedule, we call that a 223. You can do a week-on, week-off schedule. You can also do specialized schedules for firefighters or police or EMS that might have a specialized schedule that just isn’t going to fit a normal 223 or a 225 or a 7.7 uh schedule. And so we’ve got a complete customizable rotation schedule. And so there’s a lot of different features and customizable options in the iMediate by Matthew Brickman Time Sharing Calculator that can be found on my website, iChhatMediation.com. It’s right at the top. So when you log in, or not when you log in, when you go to iChatMediation.com, right at the top it says Time Sharing Calculator. And when you click that link, it’ll take you to a plan page that says choose your plan. And there’s a video that you can click on to see how it works. You can also see the schedule engine that I just described of how many different unique schedule possibilities you can use. And then it’s really simple to use. You configure, calculate, and then you can compare different time-sharing schedules. I do have currently at the time of recording this, I’ve got two options. I’ve got a try before you buy option. Um, and then I also have a go premium option that you can either do monthly or annually. And monthly it’s $10 a month, and you get all of the features. And so you can select which plan that you would like to try, and then you can go into the calculator. And when you first go into the calculator, you’re met with a greeting that says, Do you want to start a new calculation? Do you want to access a saved calculation, or do you want to import a saved shared schedule maybe from somebody else? So if you’re going to create a new calculation, then you can simply name your calculation and create a schedule, and then it starts off at the top with the parents, parent A and parent B. You can go in and type in your names. You can say that Sally is parent A and John is parent B. And so then all throughout the calculator, it will now assign who is Sally and who is John, and everybody is color-coded. And so you first start off with your weekday weekend schedule. As you go to the next section, you can create your weekend schedule. So whether it’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, a Friday, Saturday, or a Saturday, Sunday. And then you’ve got then options for is it alternating weekends, are we doing a fixed weekends per month, or is one parent getting all the weekends? And so you get your options for then creating then your weekends. Like I had said before, there is a space for a custom rotation schedule if you need to really get customized and look at weekday weekends and set up rotations. And so there’s a toggle switch to simply turn it on and off if you want that, and that’ll override the weekday weekend schedule right above it, and then make the custom rotation schedule then your weekday weekend schedule. As you then go to the next section, you’ve got your breaks. So you’ve got spring break, summer break, thanksgiving break, and winter break. And for each of these, you can simply define using the calendar what is the start date and end date. So, you know, every single jurisdiction, every single school has their own school calendar for every district. And so it’s real simple wherever your child is going to school, or if you’re a practitioner, wherever your uh party or whether your client is going uh to be living. For example, if they’re in Palm Beach County, you would pull the Palm Beach County school calendar. If they’re in Davy County, you pick Davy. If they’re in Manatee County, you pick Manatee. So you just pull the school calendar and it’ll tell you how that particular school calendar and that county define spring break, summer break, Thanksgiving break, and winter break. And so you can simply then put in the start date and the end date there to then define what is spring break. Then you’ve got all of your different options for how you want to deal with spring break, whether it’s following your regular schedule, alternating even in odd years, and then you’ve got some options for splitting time or one parent gets every spring break. You then go to the next section, which is summer break. You can define your summer break, and under summer break, you’ve got lots of different options, whether it’s following the regular schedule, alternating a week on, week off, two weeks on, two weeks off, dividing the summer in half, however, you wish to then define the summer break. You go then to Thanksgiving break. Just like the rest of them, you would define the dates, and then you’ve got lots of different options for Thanksgiving break and for winter break, same thing. You would define that, and you’ve got multiple options then for dividing up then the winter break. If you need to add a break, say for example, maybe you live in the Northeast and there might be an extra break, maybe there’s a fall break that is not listed here. You can always add multiple breaks. So you can customize it, uh, define it what uh whatever you want to define the name of the break, and then put in your start and end date, and then you’ve got then different options for how you want to deal with that particular break. The next section is miscellaneous holidays, and that’s where we would have like Martin Luther King Day and President’s Day and Memorial Day. You might have Easter and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and then Halloween, and you can always customize and add more holidays whether it’s a certain uh religious holiday that maybe you or your client observes. You can always add that holiday, define the dates for that holiday, and then pick your options. Once you build out all of that, you’ll get an overnight summary saying, okay, well, this is how many weeknights, weekend nights, break nights, and holiday nights Sally has, and this is how many weeknights, weekend nights, break nights, and holiday nights John has. And it’ll tell you right there, you’ve got a color graph, plus you’ve got your percentages that can tell you, well, based on your scenario, you have a 50-50, 55-45, 80-20, whatever that percentage actually comes down to. And it gives you an exact number of overnights per year, and that’s then what we can use then to determine what the child support is going to be. Now, right underneath that, there are two buttons for save the scenario or view the annual calendar. So if you want to run, if you want to save that particular scenario, you just hit save scenario, and then you can go back to the top and create a completely separate scenario and say, well, wait a second, what if instead of you know Sally having Mondays and Tuesdays and John has Wednesday, Thursday, what would it look like if Sally had Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and John only had Thursday? And maybe you leave all the other variables the same, and then you go to the bottom and it says, well, it’s maybe it’s a 6436 split, but you get an exact number. It’s 234 overnights for Sally, 131 for John. So then you can save that scenario. So you can save multiple scenarios, and then you can choose which scenario finally in your negotiation. You can pick your scenario that you finally want to land on, and you can always view annual calendar, and it will show you then how many overnights Sally has and how many John has, and you’ve got a color-coded calendar that then shows you the weekday weekends, the spring break, the summer break, the winter break, the Thanksgiving break, whatever other customized breaks, and then you’ve got your holidays, whether it’s Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, whether it’s Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day, all of those are then based on what you chose as your options. You will see that then on a printable color-coded calendar that you can attach to your agreement. You can print out and hang on your refrigerator, but you’ve got an annual calendar showing you all 12 months. And when you then print and save that calendar, you will also then see on page two of the calendar that then it gives you a breakdown of what options you just chose for weekday, weekend, your breaks, and then your miscellaneous holidays. And those should match up then to the parenting plan that is created. And so this is just an amazing tool that I have found to really help me as a mediator be able to provide the best service and the most accurate numbers for the parties, but it also helps in the negotiation process because you can see all the different options for whether it’s weekday, weekend, holidays, or breaks. A lot of people come in and they don’t even know what they don’t know. They don’t even know all the different options. And so the time-sharing calculator and parenting plan builder that I’ve created using AI gives me that ability to help negotiate and create parenting plans and create accurate child support guidelines worksheets. And so I really encourage you go visit iChatmediation.com, click on the time sharing calculator, and start using it for yourself. I know that it’s a great tool that you will really love. Occasionally I will be releasing Q&A bonus episodes where I will answer your questions and give you a personal shout out.

If you have a comment or question regarding anything that we discuss, email us at info@ichatmediation.com that’s info@ichatmediation.com and stay tuned to hear your shout out and have your question answered here on the show.

For more information about my services or to schedule your mediation with me, either in person or using my iChatMediation Virtual Platform built by Cisco Communications. Visit me online at www.iMediateInc.com. Call me at 561-262-9121, Toll-Free at 877-822-1479 or email me at MBrickman@iChatMediation.com.