Mobile Help

WELCOME TO THE FORM 14 ASSISTANT MOBILE!

Thank you for purchasing your license for The Form 14 Assistant Mobile! We are confident you will find it extremely helpful at court and on the go.

This web page contains instructions on how to access The Form 14 Assistant Mobile on your mobile device, how to license it, and "getting started" information. Please read it in its entirety.

To access The Form 14 Assistant Mobile on your mobile device, open your web browser (preferably Chrome on Android devices, or Safari on Apple devices) and navigate to the following URL:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7804356/Form14AssistantMobile/index.html

The Form 14 Assistant Mobile will start. At this point, you should either bookmark the URL for future use, or, preferably, install a homescreen icon for it.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR ANDROID USERS: If you are using an Android device, we STRONGLY recommend that you run the app using Google Chrome for Android, rather than the regular Android Browser (the one that has a blue globe for an icon). Although the program does work in the standard browser, on some devices it may behave oddly at times (for you techies, it's because the HTML5 support is not as good as in Chrome). Google Chrome for Android is far more reliable. If you don't have Google Chrome for Android on your device, you can download it from Google Play. Once you are running the app, install a homescreen icon by using "Add to Homescreen" on the Chrome browser menu to simplify launching the app in the future.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR APPLE USERS: If you are using an iPhone 4, you MUST install a Form 14 Assistant Mobile icon on your homescreen and launch from there, or the app won't fit on the screen (this is an iOS7 issue that will occur with many apps, not just this one). Even if you are using an iPhone 5 or an iPad, we recommend launching the app from an icon on your homescreen, as this will enable The Form 14 Assistant Mobile to run in full screen mode, which looks much nicer. When you start the program in Safari, The Form 14 Assistant Mobile will prompt you to install a homescreen icon.

Getting Started: When you start the app, you will always begin at the Welcome Screen. The very first time you start the app, you will need to enter your license code on this screen.

You MUST enter your name EXACTLY as provided in your licensing e-mail, with the upper and lower case. However, your expiration date can be entered in any valid date format (2-8-15 is the same as 2/8/2015 is the same as 2/8/15, for example).
Once you have entered your name, number, and expiration date, tap the "Validate License" button to register the program. If you have entered the license code correctly, the screen will inform you that you are licensed. You can then tap the "Continue Into App!" to begin using the app. If there is a problem, check your name, number, and expiration date to be sure they have been entered correctly, and then tap "Validate License" to try again.

Once your code has been accepted, you will not need to enter it again. Upon starting the app in the future, you will see the Welcome Screen, which will display your registration code and tell you how much time is left on your license. Tap "Continue Into App!" to begin using the app.

APP UPDATES

Updates to the app are provided automatically every time you start the app while you have an active internet connection. If you see an "updating" message, simply wait until it disappears and then the app will restart with the latest verson automatically installed. On the iPad, depending on which version of iOS you are running, you may see the "updating" message more than once.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Almost all issues with runnning the app can be fixed with a simple app restart. In particular, if your internet connection is dropped while the app is in the process of updating, the app may not start. To fix this, restart the app while your internet connection is active. To restart, if you are starting the app from inside your web browser, touch the browser "reload" icon. If you are lauching from a homescreen icon, on an Apple device, exit to the homescreen and then tap the homescreen app icon. On an Android device, kill the app from the task list button on your homescreen, then tap the homescreen app icon to restart.

HOW TO USE THE FORM 14 ASSISTANT MOBILE

If you are familiar with the desktop version of The Form 14 Assistant, you will feel right at home with the mobile version, as it is as close as possible to the desktop version while being enhanced for Mobile.

Remember that in The Form 14 Assistant Mobile, you can work with up to eight Form 14s at a time, but you are always working with one case at a time. That is, you can create multiple Form 14s, but the parties and children are always the same for all of them. You can save and load your data in order to work with multiple cases.

Also, you don't have to do anything in any particular order. You can create a Form 14 before you set up the names of the parties, for example.

SCREENS: There are four basic screens in The Form 14 Assistant Mobile.

In order from left to right, the four screens are: Caption, Parties, Attorney, and Form 14s. (note: users of the Windows version will recognize the first three screens as the contents of the Case Information Window). Since you can have up to eight Form 14s at a time, you can have as many as 11 screens total (Caption, Parties, Attorney, and the eight Form 14s).

HOW TO MOVE FROM SCREEN TO SCREEN: SWIPE OR TAP! Swipe left or right to move from screen to screen. Every screen also has a drop-down menu at the bottom that lets you go directly to any Form 14 you want, and buttons at the top that you can tap to go directly to the Caption, Parties, or Attorney screen, as well as the last Form 14 you were looking at.

Please note that on some Android devices, swiping inside a text field to change screens will not work. Swipe outside the fields.

CASE CAPTION SCREEN: The Caption screen lets you enter information about your case caption, including the county, case number, division, and case type.

PARTIES SCREEN: The Parties screen lets you enter information about the people in your case, including the children. It is here that you enter the names of the parties, which party is the mother and which is the father, and the children's names, birthdates, and disability status (the latter used in the daycare tax credit calculation).

ATTORNEY SCREEN: The Attorney screen lets you enter information about yourself and who you represent.

CREATING FORM 14s: When you are ready, tap the "New Form 14" button from any screen to create a new, blank Form 14 screen (up to the limit of eight). Or, from an existing Form 14, you can tap "Clone Form" to create a new Form 14 which is an exact duplicate of the Form 14 you were looking at -- useful to make a few changes and compare the results to your original form.

DIRECTIONS AND COMMENTS: To read the Form 14 Directions and Comments, tap the title cell on any Form 14 line (the cell on the far left.) You will be taken to the Directions and Comments for that line.

USING THE FORM 14 SCREEN: REVERSING THE FORM BY CHANGING THE CUSTODIAL PARENT: Each Form 14 screen is really two Form 14s in one: one giving custody to the Petitioner, and one giving custody to the Respondent. The "Custody to..." button above the Form 14 lets you swap the custodial parent. When you tap it, some of the numbers on your Form 14 will "reverse". Some fields do not reverse because it wouldn't make sense to have the same numbers for the Petitioner as for the Respondent. For example, the Petitioner and Respondent are probably not going to have the same child care costs if the Petitioner has custody versus the Respondent having custody.

ENTERING DATA: Yellow cells are cells into which you can enter data and which "reverse" when you tap the "Custody to..." button. Green cells are cells into which you can enter data and which have independent values for the "Custody to Petitioner" Form 14 and "Custody to Respondent" Form 14; in other words, these cells do not "reverse". White cells are cells which calculate automatically. To enter data, tap a yellow or green cell to open the dialog for that particular cell. Each cell has its own customized dialog for the type of data being entered.

SPLIT CUSTODY: Tapping the "Split Custody" button lets you turn on split custody and assign each child to one parent or the other. When Split Custody is on, the "Split Custody" button will turn green. With Split Custody on, the "Custody to Petitioner" Form 14 will show you only the children in the Petitioner's custody, while the "Custody to Respondent" Form 14 will show you only the children in the Respondent's custody.

NOTES: Tap "My Notes" to enter notes for the currently selected Form 14 screen and the currently selected custodial parent. Once you have entered a note, you can view it by tapping the "i" button next to the "My Notes" button. Since you can have eight Form 14 screens at a time, each one being two Form 14s in one (one each for the Petitioner and Respondent receiving custody) these notes can be very helpful in keeping track of which Form 14 is which.

SAVING AND LOADING YOUR DATA From any screen, tap the "Files" button to go to the File screen, from which you can load, save, and delete client files.

IMPORTANT: Do not clear your browser cache for The Form 14 Assistant Mobile or all your locally saved files and license information will be erased!

FEEDBACK AND QUESTIONS: Because there are so many different mobile devices out there, we are very interested in your comments and suggestions regarding this product, as well as any issues you may run across on your particular device.

For any other questions, please use the "Contact Us" link on this web site.