Terms & Conditions

This information is provided in terms of section 43 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 ("ECTA"):

Before your payment is taken you are shown a full summary of the transaction with the opportunity to review it, correct any mistakes, or withdraw (ECTA section 43(2)).

These terms are a binding agreement between you and us. You accept them by ticking the checkbox at registration, or by using the platform. Please read them, we have worked hard to keep them in plain language, as the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 ("CPA") asks of us and as our own values demand.

If you are joining at the invitation of the other party, these same terms apply to you independently: your acceptance, your consents and your information are your own, and are handled separately from theirs.

On Good Terms is a technology platform that helps separating couples reach their own fair agreement, a Parenting Plan and a Settlement Agreement, through structured questionnaires, AI-assisted facilitation, legal education, and document preparation, followed by the administrative steps of an uncontested divorce.

The role of artificial intelligence

• Parts of the service are performed by artificial intelligence: summarising and neutrally rephrasing what each party submits, generating draft clauses and options, and providing legal education and likely-court-outcome illustrations.
• AI-generated content can contain errors. Nothing becomes binding on you because the AI produced it: no clause enters your agreements without your explicit confirmation, and the final documents are reviewed by a human before submission to any authority.
• The platform is designed to be balanced and neutral between the two of you. It does not act for either party.

Reserved legal work

Where a step legally requires a practising legal practitioner, such as appearance in court to move the divorce order, that step is performed by an independent practising attorney or advocate, not by the platform. We coordinate this as part of the service.

• You must be 18 or older and able to enter into a binding agreement.
• The service is designed for couples married under South African law (in community of property, or out of community with or without accrual) seeking an uncontested divorce, and for the corresponding dissolution of civil unions.
• Both parties must participate voluntarily. The process only works, and is only valid, if each of you chooses it freely.
• You must register in your own name and provide information that is true. One account per person; you may not act as, or answer for, the other party.

1. Consent and safety. Before anything else, each party individually confirms they understand the process and answers a private safety question.
2. Payment. The initiating party pays the platform fee (section 10).
3. Invitation. The other party is invited and completes their own consent and safety step.
4. Private intake. Each party separately completes a structured questionnaire covering the marriage, children, living arrangements and finances, with supporting documents.
5. Facilitation. The platform produces a balanced joint summary and living draft agreements, and facilitates structured rounds until each required clause is agreed by both parties.
6. Signature. Both parties digitally confirm the final documents, then sign wet-ink copies (section 12).
7. Formalisation. The Parenting Plan is submitted to the Office of the Family Advocate for endorsement where required, the divorce action is prepared and issued, and the matter is set down as an uncontested divorce. The Decree of Divorce is delivered to you through the platform.

Timelines for endorsement, service by the Sheriff and court dates rest with those authorities, not with us.

We cannot and do not guarantee that you and the other party will reach agreement; that the Family Advocate will endorse a Parenting Plan in any particular form; that a court will grant a divorce order on any particular date or terms; or that the process will suit your circumstances. What we promise is a diligent, structured, good-faith process, and honesty with you about progress at every step.

• Keep your login credentials private. Everything done through your account is presumed to be done by you.
• We offer, and strongly encourage, passkeys and two-factor authentication. Given the sensitivity of what your account protects, please enable at least one.
• Tell us immediately at hello@ongoodterms.ai if you suspect your account has been accessed by anyone else, including the other party. Sharing credentials with the other party defeats the design of the process and is not permitted.

• Honest and complete disclosure. The fairness of your agreement depends on it. Deliberately concealing assets or providing false information may render the resulting agreement voidable, may amount to fraud, and entitles us to suspend the process.
• Respectful use. The platform's private channels may not be used to harass, threaten or abuse the other party.
• Lawful use only. You may not use the platform to commit or conceal unlawful conduct, probe or disrupt its security, scrape it, or attempt to access another person's information.
• Your own information. Upload only documents you are lawfully entitled to share.

We process personal information, including financial information and information about your children, which the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ("POPIA") treats as specially protected, solely to deliver the service described in these terms. In summary:

• What is shared: information you submit in your intake is shared with the other party after both of you have submitted, that mutual transparency is the foundation of the process, and you consent to it at the consent step.
• What stays private: your private comments and voice notes to the facilitator are never shown to the other party verbatim; your safety answer, your private ratings of options, and your account security details are never shared with them at all.
• AI processing: where content is processed by external AI providers, personal identifiers are pseudonymised where feasible, transmission is encrypted, and provider-side retention and training on your content are disabled.
• Security: your information is encrypted in transit and at rest, hosted in South Africa, access is logged in a tamper-evident audit trail, and the most sensitive identifiers are additionally encrypted at field level.
• Retention: we retain case records as required for legal and professional accountability, after which they are deleted or anonymised.

The full Privacy Policy forms part of these terms. You may lodge privacy complaints with us (section 22) or with the Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za).

• The service is charged as a single platform fee per couple, displayed before you pay. It is paid by the initiating party. There is no hourly billing.
• The fee covers the process in section 5, including the preparation and filing of the uncontested divorce. It does not cover: costs charged by third parties beyond the standard process (for example, extraordinary Sheriff's fees, a formal valuation you commission); or independent legal advice you choose to obtain.
• Cooling-off: you may cancel within 7 days of payment without reason for a full refund, in line with section 44 of ECTA, provided the other party has not yet accepted their invitation and you have not submitted your intake.
• Beyond the cooling-off period, the fee is not refundable. We may, in exceptional circumstances and at our sole discretion, make a refund or partial refund; nothing in these terms obliges us to do so, and nothing in this section limits any right you may have under the Consumer Protection Act to the extent it applies.
• A failed payment simply means the process has not started; no money leaves your account on a failed attempt.

We may pause, decline or discontinue a matter where it appears that participation is not safe or voluntary; that the matter is genuinely contested or too complex for a consensual process; that dishonesty is undermining it; or that continuing would be inconsistent with our legal or ethical obligations. Where we do, we will tell you why and point you to appropriate alternatives.

• The Parenting Plan and Settlement Agreement produced on the platform are agreements between you and the other party, we are not a party to them.
• The in-platform digital signature is a secured record of your confirmation of the final documents (identity-verified, hashed and timestamped). As South African court practice requires, you will also sign printed copies in wet ink before submission; the platform signature evidences your commitment and locks the documents against change in the meantime.
• Consistent with ECTA, you agree that electronic records and communications on the platform have legal effect between you and us.

The platform, its software, design, templates and content are ours or our licensors'. We licence you to use them for your own matter, not to copy, resell or build upon them. Your documents are different: the completed agreements and court documents produced for your matter are yours to use for that matter, including with your own attorney, and always will be, and you retain ownership of the information and documents you upload.

Payments are processed by Peach Payments under their terms; your card details go to them, not to us. Speech-to-text and AI language services are provided by vetted external providers under the safeguards in section 9. The Office of the Family Advocate, the Sheriff and the courts are public institutions whose conduct and timelines we do not control.

We aim to keep the platform available at all times but do not promise uninterrupted availability; maintenance, upgrades and events beyond our control can cause interruptions. Your information is backed up nightly to an independent location. We may improve or modify platform features, provided that changes do not materially reduce the service you have paid for mid-process.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including our liability for gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or fraud, and your rights under the CPA.

Subject to that, and to the extent the law allows: we are not liable for loss caused by information you or the other party provided being false or incomplete; for the decisions you take in your agreement (which are yours and the other party's, made with the opportunity to obtain independent advice); for the acts and omissions of courts, the Family Advocate, the Sheriff or other third parties; or for indirect or consequential loss. To the extent the law allows, our total liability to both parties in connection with a matter is limited to double the platform fee paid for that matter.

You indemnify us against claims arising from your breach of these terms or your unlawful conduct, this does not apply to anything caused by our own fault.

You may stop the process at any time. We may suspend or terminate access for material breach of these terms, unlawful conduct, or the suitability grounds in section 11, with notice and reasons, except where the law or genuine urgency prevents it. Sections that by their nature survive termination (including 9, 12, 13, 16, 19) survive it.

We communicate with you by email, through the platform, and via WhatsApp (if selected), and you consent to receiving service and legal notices that way. Please keep your email address current, important notices about your matter go there. The address for legal service on us is our physical address in section 1, with a copy to hello@ongoodterms.ai.

These terms are governed by South African law. Disputes between you and us about the platform or these terms will first be addressed through our complaints process (section 22); failing resolution, the South African courts have jurisdiction, and nothing prevents you from approaching the National Consumer Commission or other applicable ombud. (Disagreements between you and the other party about your separation are what the platform itself is for, they are not disputes under this section.)

• If any provision of these terms is unenforceable, the rest remain in force.
• A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver of it.
• You may not cede or transfer your rights under these terms; your matter is personal to you. We may transfer our rights and obligations to a successor of the business, on notice to you and without reducing your rights.
• These terms, the consents you give on the platform, and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us regarding the platform.

We may update these terms from time to time. If a change is material, we will notify you by email or on the platform before it takes effect, and material changes will not apply retrospectively to a matter already in progress except where required by law. The current version, with its effective date, always lives at this address.

Questions, notices and complaints: hello@ongoodterms.ai. A person reads every message. If you make a complaint, we will acknowledge it promptly, investigate it properly, and give you a reasoned response.

This page is provided in terms of ECTA and the CPA. It is itself written to be read, if anything is unclear, ask us and we will explain it plainly.