A mother with legal custody of her children has told Wired how Apple’s Family Sharing system allowed her ex-husband to monitor and control their children long after the courts said she should be the one in charge. Despite a custody order, she found that Apple’s systems gave her no real power to stop him.

Family Sharing, designed to let parents manage devices and purchases for their children, gives total control to a single “organiser.” That person can track locations, set screen time limits and control app access. The problem is that the other parent has no equivalent authority, even in cases where a court has granted them custody.

Wired reported that “the lack of dual-organiser roles, leaving other parents effectively as subordinate admins with more limited power, can prove limiting and frustrating in blended and shared households. And in darker scenarios, a single-organiser setup can be dangerous.”

One mother, identified only as Kate, described how her ex-husband used the system to monitor the children during her custody days. He tracked their location, checked their screen time and imposed strict digital curfews when they stayed with her, then lifted the limits when they returned to him.

“When her marriage collapsed, she says, her now ex-husband, the designated organiser, weaponised Family Sharing and used it to terrorise the kids. He tracked their children's locations, counted their screen minutes and demanded they account for them.”

After separating, Kate’s ex refused to disband the family group, blocking her from creating a new one.
“I wrongly assumed being the custodial parent with a court order meant I’d be able to have Apple move my children to a new family group, with me as the organiser,” she said. Apple support staff reportedly sympathised but said there was nothing they could do, as “the organiser holds the power.”

The only workaround offered was to abandon existing Apple IDs and start again. But that would mean losing every purchased app, family subscription and years of photos and videos essentially erasing digital lives to escape an abusive setup.

But given that they are already living in an abusive set up, wouldn't it be better to rip the band aid off and buy a phone from a company that gives a shit about its customers and listens to courts?

Privacy experts and advocacy groups have long warned that tech companies fail to consider the realities of domestic abuse when designing “family” features. In Apple’s case, the company’s tightly controlled ecosystem and rigid account structure appear to have made the situation worse.