Message forwarding by communication devices is conditionally and/or automatically controlled. A network message management component and/or handset message management component can monitor messages (e.g., short message service (SMS) messages) communicated between user equipment (UE) in a communication network, identify and/or intercept a message for which one or more forwarding conditions have been specified by the message originator, target, or forward target, and conditionally and/or automatically route the message to the target and/or forward target in accordance with predefined message routing rules based at least in part on the conditions specified by the originator, target, or forward target. The predefined message routing rules can be implemented by the network and/or the UEs, and can relate to the UE identifiers, time, priority, cost, operation state, size, desired automatic response messages, or other desired factors, associated with the message.