Sponsorship and firm terms.

These terms apply when a firm buys a sponsored listing through sponsor checkout, or subscribes to receive intakes through this site. They sit on top of the terms of use, which apply in full: the disclaimers, the limit on liability, the indemnity and the dispute resolution section there govern this relationship too.

Where a firm has signed a separate written agreement with us, that agreement controls what it covers, and these terms cover the rest. Where the checkout page states a term for a specific purchase — a price, an end date — that term controls for that purchase.

Paid advertising for the firm chosen at checkout, at a fixed price. While it is active:

• the firm is listed first, by Listing Rank among any other sponsors, in searches for the places it has told us it serves (its state, or the metro areas it names);
• its card and profile carry a Sponsored label, on every surface, including the API and the data feeds;
• updates the firm sends us are handled first.

A placement is not exclusive, is not limited to a number of firms in a place, and carries no promise of impressions, clicks or intakes. We do not guarantee any level of traffic, and we do not commit to keeping the site’s own audience at any size.

This is the part that matters most, and it is not negotiable at any price.

• Sponsorship is not a verification badge, an endorsement, a rating, a recommendation, or a statement that the firm is the best match for anyone.
• It does not buy a point on the Experience Score, a place in the Listing Rank among non-sponsors, a badge, or any change to the facts shown on the listing.
• License checks are run the same way for sponsored and unsponsored firms, and cannot be bought, hurried or suppressed.
• Every listing, sponsored or not, is held to the same standard: information comes from the firm’s own website, shown with its source and the date it was checked.
• A sponsorship does not stop us from publishing a correction to the firm’s listing, from recording a license status the authority’s lookup returns, or from delisting the firm under section 10.

• You must be authorized to buy advertising for the firm. Ticking the box at checkout is your statement that you are, and you accept these terms for the firm as well as for yourself.
• If the email address used at checkout is not at the firm’s website domain, we confirm with the firm before the sponsorship goes live. If we cannot confirm it, we cancel the sponsorship and refund the payment in full.
• The firm must be lawfully able to offer estate planning services in the places its listing covers. We may ask for evidence of that, and may hold a sponsorship until we have it.
• We may refuse or cancel any purchase, before or after payment, for any lawful reason. Where we refuse one, we refund it in full.

• Monthly plan. $89 a month, billed every month from the day you buy until you cancel. We will give at least 30 days’ notice by email before changing the monthly price; the new price applies from your next billing date, and you can cancel before it.
• Prepaid offers. A prepaid offer is one payment for a sponsorship that runs from the day it goes live through an end date shown on the offer and at checkout. It does not renew and is never charged again.
• Payment. Prices are in US dollars. Payments are processed by Stripe on Stripe’s own page, under Stripe’s terms; EstatePlan.now never receives your card number. You authorize us and Stripe to charge the payment method you give us for the fees due.
• Taxes. Prices exclude any sales, use or similar tax. Where we are required to collect one, it is added at checkout or invoiced separately. Taxes on your own income are yours.
• If a payment fails. We will try again and email you. If it is still unpaid after 14 days, we may pause the sponsorship until it clears, and end it after 30 days. Pausing does not extend the term you have paid for.
• Disputed charges. Email sales@estateplan.now before you file a chargeback, and we will look at it and refund anything we have got wrong. If a chargeback is filed on a sponsorship that ran as described, we may end the sponsorship and recover the payment processor’s fee.
• Records. Stripe keeps a record of the purchase, including the buyer’s name and email, under its own privacy policy. Invoices and receipts come from Stripe.

• You can cancel at any time. The sponsorship stays active until the end of the month you have paid for, and partial months are not refunded.
• A prepaid offer runs to its end date. If you cancel it early, it stops at the end date without a further charge, and the prepayment is not refunded except under the next bullet.
• If we end it. We may end a sponsorship if the firm asks us to remove its listing, if the firm no longer offers estate planning, if the sponsorship breaks these terms or the law, or if we stop selling sponsorships in that place. If we end it for any reason other than a breach of these terms, we refund the unused part, pro rata.
• If we get it wrong. If a sponsorship did not run as described — the label was missing, the placement did not appear in the places it covered — tell us and we will refund the affected period. That refund is the remedy for it.
• When a sponsorship ends, the firm’s listing stays on the site as an ordinary listing, ordered the same way as every other, unless the firm asks to be removed.

• Accuracy. The facts on a firm’s listing come from the firm’s own website. Keeping that website accurate, and telling us when a published price, service or process changes, is the firm’s job. A sponsored firm that knows its listing is wrong and leaves it wrong is in breach of these terms.
• Photos and marks. A firm that gives us a photo, a logo or other material tells us it has the right to do so, including the consent of anyone shown, and grants the licence in section 7 of the terms of use. We take a photo down when the firm asks.
• Intakes. A firm that receives intakes through this site handles the personal information in them under its own confidentiality and privacy obligations, and uses them only to respond to the person who sent it. It does not add them to a marketing list without that person’s consent, and does not share them with another firm.
• Its own compliance. The firm is responsible for the professional conduct, advertising, solicitation, conflict-of-interest and record-keeping rules that apply to it.

Lawyer advertising, referral and fee-sharing rules differ by state. We have built this site to stay on the right side of the common ones: fees here are fixed and never a share of a legal fee or an amount per matter; sponsored placements are labeled on every surface; and nothing we publish says a firm is better than another.

EstatePlan.now does not describe itself as approved or compliant in any state. The ranking rules, advertising copy, firm agreement, intake disclosures and data handling are reviewed by legal ethics counsel in a jurisdiction before firms there are invited to Start Now. The firm remains responsible for the rules that apply to it, including any filing or record-keeping its state requires, and should satisfy itself that a sponsored listing here is permitted before buying one.

• A firm may separately subscribe to receive intakes through EstatePlan.now and use the reporting dashboard, at a fixed monthly price under a written firm agreement.
• That fee is never a percentage of a legal fee and never an amount per matter. The subscription buys no placement, ranking, badge or endorsement, and an intake received through EstatePlan.now scores exactly like an intake on the firm’s own site.
• Intake data belongs to the person who sent it and, once received, to the firm. We hold it to deliver it, to show the sender their status, and to count completed intakes for the firm, as described in the privacy notice. We do not sell it, and we do not give it to another firm.
• Dashboard counts of accepted matters are entered by the firm and are not verified by EstatePlan.now. They are the firm’s own record, shown back to it.
• The software is provided as is, with the disclaimers and the limit on liability in the terms of use. It is not a case management system, not a document store, and not a system of record; the firm keeps its own.

• Any firm, sponsored or not, can correct or remove its listing by writing to info@estateplan.now. Removal is not conditional on anything, and we do not charge for it.
• We may remove or delist a firm where the facts no longer hold: the firm has closed, no longer offers estate planning, or a licensing authority’s own lookup shows its lawyers are not in good standing. Where we can, we tell the firm first and give it a chance to answer.
• A removal reaches the API and the change feed too. Anyone holding a copy of the data is asked to refresh at least monthly, which is how a removal propagates; we cannot pull it back out of a copy someone else already made.
• If a sponsored firm is removed at its own request, section 6 decides the refund.

Sponsorship and the Start Now software are provided as is. We do not warrant any level of impressions, clicks, intakes, matters or revenue, and a sponsorship that produces none is not a breach of these terms.

Our total liability to a firm for everything arising out of a sponsorship or the Start Now software is limited to the amounts you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or $100, whichever is greater, as set out in section 12 of the terms of use. The indemnity in section 13 there applies to firms and sponsors.

We may change these terms on at least 30 days’ notice by email to every sponsor and firm with an active agreement. A change never applies to a term already paid for: your current month, or your prepaid period, runs under the terms you bought it under. If you do not accept a change, cancel before it takes effect and we will refund any unused prepaid period.

Questions, or anything about billing: sales@estateplan.now.

• Terms of use — The agreement for using this site, reusing its data, and sending anything to us.
• Privacy — What the site collects, what it never collects, how long it keeps it, and how to have it deleted.
• Copyright and DMCA — How to report material on this site that infringes your copyright, and how we answer.