How does BestInterest determine if a message is urgent?

BestInterest is designed to help you manage coparenting communication efficiently and on your terms. You can elect to receive batch message notifications daily or weekly. However, certain messages—such as emergencies or last-minute changes to custody exchanges—may need your immediate attention. Our AI identifies potentially urgent messages so enabled alerts can bypass the Smart Silence digest schedule. It does not override disabled notification channels or your phone’s notification permissions.

Here’s how our system detects urgency and what you can expect:

How BestInterest detects urgent messages

Our AI analyzes the content of each message to determine whether it may be urgent. Common scenarios that the system flags as urgent include:

• Last-Minute Exchange Requests: Messages related to immediate schedule changes, such as a request to swap pick-up times or locations, are prioritized to ensure you have enough time to adjust plans if needed.
• Health or Safety Emergencies: Messages containing language related to health concerns, safety issues, or urgent medical needs are detected as high priority.
• School Activity Deadlines: A permission slip or required payment due today or tomorrow is urgent when delay could prevent your child from participating. Demands to pay immediately, without a concrete near-term consequence for your child, do not establish urgency.
• Critical Updates on Child’s Well-Being: Notifications about your child’s health, significant emotional changes, or unexpected events that may impact their day-to-day experience are flagged for immediate delivery.

Our primary goal is to help you stay informed about time-sensitive matters as they arise, even if you’ve set notifications to receive messages less frequently. This gives you peace of mind when setting less-frequent notification preferences.

What happens when you get an urgent message

If a message is classified as urgent, BestInterest attempts to send enabled push or email alerts immediately rather than waiting for an hourly, daily, or weekly digest. With both channels off, no alert is sent. Device permissions, Focus or Do Not Disturb, connectivity, and delivery services can still delay or suppress an alert.

We will also add a tag that identifies the message in your message list more clearly.

Examples of urgent vs. non-urgent messages

• Urgent Example: “I need to switch pick-up to 5 pm today instead of 3 pm. Let me know if that’s possible.”
• Non-Urgent Example: “Let’s discuss adjusting our weekly schedule next month.”

By flagging messages with immediate implications, BestInterest aims to help you stay in control of coparenting communication without missing essential updates.

Important reminder: AI can make mistakes

While our AI system is designed to identify urgency, it is not perfect and may occasionally flag non-urgent messages as urgent or miss urgent details. Check the app directly when you expect time-sensitive updates; do not rely on urgency detection as emergency monitoring.

Are you not getting notifications at all? See Why am I not receiving notifications of new messages?.

If you have questions about how we prioritize messages or need assistance with notification settings, our support team is here to help. Thank you for trusting BestInterest to support your coparenting journey!