Privacy Policy

To help you separate well, you entrust us with some of the most sensitive information a person has: your finances, your family, your children, your reasons. We treat that trust as the foundation of the entire service.

• We collect only what the process genuinely needs.
• What you submit is shared with the other party, because a fair agreement needs both of you to see the same facts, and we tell you this before you begin. Your private comments and voice notes are the exception: they are never shown to the other party in your words.
• Before anything is sent to an AI provider, we replace names and strip identifying numbers wherever the task allows. Our AI providers are contractually barred from training on your information.
• We never sell personal information. Not to anyone, not for anything.
• You can see, correct, and, once your matter allows, ask us to delete your information at any time.

Everything below is the fuller, legally precise version of those promises, in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA").

The "responsible party" under POPIA is:

You give us

• Account details: your name, email address, mobile number, and password (stored only as a one-way hash).
• Your intake: marriage and separation details, living and childcare arrangements, full financial disclosure (income, assets, liabilities, business and trust interests), maintenance information, and your wishes for the way forward.
• Documents you upload: identity documents, marriage certificates, payslips, bank statements, valuations and similar evidence.
• Free text and voice notes: your own words about your situation, including private comments intended only for the platform.
• Signatures and consents: your acceptance of terms, your consents, and, in time, your digital signature with its evidence record.

Created as you use the platform

• Process records: drafts, neutral summaries, mediation rounds, ratings and agreement history.
• An audit trail: a tamper-evident log of significant actions on your case, kept for your protection and ours.
• Technical records: sign-in events, device and security information (such as passkeys you register), and basic logs needed to keep the service secure.

Some of this is "special personal information" under POPIA (for example information about children, and anything your submissions reveal about health or beliefs). We process it only because the service you have asked us to perform cannot be performed without it, and with the safeguards described in this policy.

We do not use your information for marketing to third parties, profiling unrelated to the service, or automated decisions with legal effect. Every clause of your agreement requires your explicit human confirmation.

A Parenting Plan cannot exist without information about your children: names, dates of birth, schooling, and needs. We process this with particular care, and only for the purposes of the plan and the court process that gives it effect.

• Both parents see the children's information, as the Parenting Plan requires.
• It is pseudonymised before any AI processing wherever the task allows.
• It is never used for anything beyond your matter.

The exception is anything marked private: your free-text comments and voice notes in the guided process are never shown to the other party in your words. The platform conveys only a neutral, constructive version. Your ratings of settlement options are never revealed; only where you overlap.

Parts of the service are performed by AI models operated by our AI provider. Before text leaves the platform, we replace both parties' names with neutral labels and strip identity numbers, account numbers, email addresses and phone numbers wherever the task allows. Documents uploaded as photographs are processed as images, which cannot be pseudonymised the same way; for these we rely on the contractual safeguards below.

• Our AI providers may not retain your content beyond the processing itself, and may not train models on it.
• We log that an AI call happened, never its content, in your case's audit trail.
• AI output never binds you: nothing enters your documents without your confirmation.

We use a small number of carefully chosen "operators" (POPIA's word for processors), each bound by contract to confidentiality and security:

Beyond operators, we disclose personal information only: to the Office of the Family Advocate and the court, as your divorce requires; to a professional (such as an arbitrator or attorney) you have asked us to involve; or where the law compels us.

• Encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest, with an additional layer of field-level encryption for the most sensitive values, such as identity and account numbers.
• Strict separation between the two parties' private material, enforced in code and tested.
• Two-factor authentication and passkey support on every account.
• An append-only audit trail of significant actions.
• Encrypted, integrity-verified backups held separately from the platform.

If a breach ever occurs that is likely to affect you, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as POPIA section 22 requires, promptly and plainly.

We keep your case record for as long as your matter needs it, and afterwards for as long as the law expects: court documents and financial records carry statutory retention periods, and a concluded settlement is something both parties may need to rely on for years. When retention ends, information is deleted or fully de-identified.

If you abandon the process before completion you may ask us to delete your information sooner, subject to what we must keep by law (for example payment records).

Some operators (such as our AI and email providers) process information outside South Africa. Where that happens, POPIA section 72 requires, and we ensure, that the recipient is bound to a substantially similar standard of protection, by contract and by the safeguards in this policy.

• Access: ask what we hold about you, and receive a copy.
• Correction: fix anything inaccurate or out of date; most of your information you can correct directly in the platform until it is submitted.
• Deletion: ask us to erase what we no longer have grounds to keep.
• Objection: object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Consent withdrawal: where processing rests on consent, withdraw it, understanding that some withdrawals mean the process cannot continue.
• Complaint: raise anything with our Information Officer first if you'll allow us the chance, and always with the Information Regulator of South Africa.

Write to privacy@ongoodterms.ai; we respond within a reasonable time, and never charge for a first request.

The platform uses only the cookies it needs to work: your session, your security, your preferences. Our public website uses privacy-respecting analytics to understand visits in aggregate. We do not run advertising trackers.

If we change this policy in any way that matters, we will tell you in the platform and by email before the change takes effect, and the version and date at the top will always tell you what you are reading.