Terms of Service
The agreement between you and the provider of Leaves: what the service is, what you may do with it, what we may never do with your research, and how either of us ends it.
This document is a draft. It was written from what Leaves actually does rather than from a template, but it has not been reviewed or approved by anybody with legal responsibility, and nothing on this page binds you or us until it has been. Billing is not open, so nobody has been asked to agree to it either.
01 Who you are contracting with §
Leaves is a hosted service provided from the Netherlands. The registration details below are what identify the provider for the purposes of Dutch and European consumer law, and they are the same details shown in the footer of every page of this site.
- Registered name
- not yet registered
- Address
- not yet registered
- Chamber of Commerce
- not yet registered
- VAT
- not yet registered
- Contact
- privacy@leaves.family
Notices under these terms, and any question about them, reach a person at privacy@leaves.family.
This is also the part of these terms that is not filled in, and it is the reason they are still a draft. An agreement cannot be concluded on a document that does not say who the other party is, so nothing here is offered to anybody until it does.
02 What Leaves is §
Leaves is a place to do genealogical research. You make an account, you create projects, and in each project you record persons, families, places, events, sources, notes and media. You can invite other people into a project, and each of them holds a role that decides what they may do.
It is a service, not a program you install. Nothing is downloaded and nothing runs on your own machine, which means this agreement is about access to a running system rather than about a copy of software you own.
We may change how the service works, and will. Where a change takes away something you could do before, you will hear about it beforehand rather than discover it afterwards.
03 Your account §
One account belongs to one person. Keep the password to yourself: anything done with your account is treated as done by you until you tell us otherwise, and you should tell us the moment you suspect somebody else is in it.
Give an address you can actually receive mail at. It is how the account is confirmed, how it is recovered, and how we reach you about anything that affects your data.
You are answerable for the people you invite into your projects. You choose each one's role, you can change it, and you can withdraw it at any time.
You must be old enough where you live to enter into a contract. Leaves is not designed for or directed at children.
04 Your research stays yours §
Everything you put into a project is yours. We claim no ownership of it and nothing in this agreement moves any right in it to us.
Running the service needs one narrow, practical permission: to store what you enter, to copy it within our own systems for backup and for serving it back to you, and to show it to the people you have invited. That permission exists for nothing else, and it ends when you delete the content or the account.
We do not read your research, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to train anything.
You can take it out at any time — a whole project as GEDCOM, or the entire account, every project and every uploaded file, as a single archive. Export is never behind a plan and never behind a payment. If Leaves stops being worth paying for, your work leaves in a format the rest of the world reads.
05 What you may not do §
The limits are the ordinary ones, and they are short.
- Do not enter content you have no right to hold, or that is unlawful where you are or where the people in it are.
- Do not use Leaves to harass, expose or endanger a living person. Genealogy touches people who never asked to be in anybody's database, and clause 2 of the Privacy Statement is about exactly that.
- Do not try to reach another account's data, to get around the role system, or to probe, overload or break the service.
- Do not resell access, or share one account between people who should each have their own.
- Do not automate the service in a way that costs other customers their performance.
If something you are doing puts the service or another customer at risk we may suspend the account while it is sorted out. We will say why, in writing, and give you a way to answer.
06 Plans, prices and payment §
There is a Free plan and a paid plan called Pro. What each includes is on the pricing page, and the figures there are the figures the checkout charges.
Prices are gross: the number you see is the number you pay, with VAT already in it. An invoice still breaks out the net amount, the rate and the VAT charged, because your own bookkeeping needs it.
Pro is bought for a term — monthly, yearly, or three years. A term paid by card or PayPal renews automatically until you cancel it. A term paid any other way does not renew by itself: it ends, and you are told before it does.
Billing is not open yet. Nothing can be bought today, and these clauses take effect when it can.
07 If a price changes §
We can change what Leaves costs. We cannot change what you are already paying for a term you have bought: a new price applies from your next renewal and never in the middle of a term.
You will hear about it at least 30 days before that renewal, by email to the address on the account. If you do not want the new price, cancel before the renewal date and nothing is charged.
08 Your right of withdrawal §
A consumer in the European Union has 14 days to withdraw from a distance contract without giving a reason.
Leaves is a digital service supplied immediately, and that interacts with the 14 days in a way worth stating plainly rather than burying. At checkout you are asked to confirm two things: that you want access to start straight away, and that you understand the right of withdrawal ends once the service has been fully performed. Until both are confirmed, the plan does not start.
In practice: if you asked for immediate access and have used the plan, you may still withdraw within the 14 days and you pay for the part you used, in proportion to the term. If you have not used it, the whole amount comes back.
To withdraw, write to privacy@leaves.family. The model withdrawal form is available and you are welcome to use it, but a plain statement that you are withdrawing is enough. The refund follows within 14 days of being told, by the means you paid with.
09 If you stop paying §
Nothing is deleted, ever, because a plan ended. Writing stops. Reading does not.
When a paid plan lapses, or an account goes over what its plan allows, the projects affected become read-only. Four things stay available regardless of plan, quota or payment:
- Reading every record and every file that was there before.
- Deleting. Somebody over a limit who cannot delete is trapped above it with no way back under.
- Export, whole and unrestricted, in an open format.
- The billing page, so the situation can be ended.
If you own more projects than the Free plan allows, you nominate the one that keeps writing and the rest go read-only. Until you nominate one, all of them are read-only — the safe direction, and the dashboard asks.
A downgrade also takes write access from collaborators who made no billing decision. They keep it for 30 days and are told, rather than finding out by being locked out of work they did.
10 Ending the agreement §
You can stop at any time. Cancelling ends the renewal and drops the account to Free at the end of the term you have already paid for. A term you choose to leave early is not refunded, except where clause 8 applies.
You can also delete the account outright, from inside the application. That is immediate and permanent: the account, every project you own, every record in them and every file you uploaded are removed and are not recoverable. Export first.
We can end this agreement on 30 days' written notice, or at once where clause 5 has been seriously or repeatedly broken. If we end it for any reason other than a serious breach by you, the unused part of the term is refunded and you get at least 30 days to export.
11 Availability and support §
We do not promise a percentage. Leaves is run by a small operation, and an uptime figure we cannot back with somebody awake at three in the morning would be a number rather than a commitment.
What is committed to instead: backups are kept, planned maintenance is announced where it can be, and support mail is answered by a person.
Backups exist to bring the service back, not to undo your editing. If you delete something and want it back, an export you made yourself is the reliable route, which is part of why export is unconditional.
12 Liability §
This is the clause a lawyer has to write, and the one most obviously not yet written by one. What follows describes the position we intend to take.
We intend to be liable for damage caused by our own intent or gross negligence, and for everything the law does not permit us to limit — which, for a consumer in the European Union, is a great deal. Beyond that we intend to limit liability to the amount you have paid us in the twelve months before the event, and to exclude indirect loss.
One thing we are not trying to limit, and are stating instead: losing your research is the harm that matters here. That is why export is unconditional and available on the Free plan, why clause 9 deletes nothing, and why deletion is something only you can trigger. Hold us to those three.
13 Changes to these terms §
These terms can change. Where a change materially affects you, you will be told at least 30 days beforehand by email and may end the agreement before it takes effect if you do not accept it.
Every version carries a version number and a date at the top of this page. The date is the one to check.
14 Governing law and disputes §
Dutch law governs this agreement.
If you are a consumer, that does not take away the protection of the mandatory law of the country you live in, and you may bring a dispute before the courts there.
Talk to us first — most things are a misunderstanding, and privacy@leaves.family reaches a person rather than a queue. If that does not settle it, a consumer may also take the matter to a consumer complaints body in their own country, and to the courts.