Privacy Policy

We collect only the information we need to run the service:

• Account information. Your name, email address, and login credentials. Our authentication provider handles passwords. We never see them in plain text.
• Case profile and form data.The information you enter to prepare your documents. That covers names, dates, addresses, and details about your children. It also covers financial information, court locations, file numbers, and the contents of the forms you draft. This can include information about other people involved in your case. You provide it as a litigant preparing your own court documents. On a professional account, you may provide it about your clients and their cases instead. Your client may also send some of it to you directly, through an intake link you create. You are responsible for having your client's authority to give it to us, and we protect it exactly as we protect a litigant's own information.
• Client intake submissions. If a practitioner sends you an intake link, your answers go into a holding area for them to review. That record holds what you type and nothing more. It carries no IP address and nothing about your device or your browser. Section 6 says how long we keep it.
• Documents. Files you generate with the service. Until August 19, 2026 you could also upload files to your case workspace; any you uploaded stay covered by this policy until they are deleted.
• Beta and contact submissions. If you apply for the beta or email us, we keep your email address and the answers or message you send.
• Technical data. Standard server logs, such as IP address and browser type. We use them for security, rate limiting, and keeping the service running. We keep these logs for anyone who uses the service, including a client filling in an intake link with no account. These logs also record when you sign in, and whether you told us you were using a shared computer. They record every time we looked your account up ourselves. They never record the contents of your case.

• To provide the service: saving your case profile, auto-filling forms, and generating documents.
• To keep your account secure and prevent abuse.
• To respond when you contact us for support.
• To understand how the product is used, in aggregate, so we can improve it.
• To sign you in and to send password resets, which our authentication provider handles. We do not send announcements, newsletters, or marketing of any kind.

We do not sell your information, rent it, or share it with advertisers. We do not use your case data to build profiles. The only purpose it serves is the one you see: preparing your own documents.

Two optional features send text to a third-party AI provider outside our own servers. That provider generates the response. One feature checks the writing in a single answer. The other answers a question about a form. These features run only when you use them. The rest of the product works without them.

The writing check sends the contents of that one answer box. The question assistant sends your question. If you carry on an existing chat, it also sends the earlier questions and answers in that chat. We do not permit our AI providers to use your content to train their models.

This is the only case where the information you enter leaves our own servers. We do not remove names, addresses, or any other detail before we send it. Do not paste documents that belong to other people into those features. Do not paste anything you received from a lawyer.

• We store your case data on servers located in Canada. The AI features in section 3 are the one exception. That exception covers only the text you send them.
• We encrypt data at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS).
• We restrict and log access within our systems. Row-level security scopes every database query to your own account.

No system is perfectly secure. Your answers become court documents. We protect them at that standard.

What we can see, and what we cannot. We operate a support tool that reads your account's metadata. It shows that a case exists, whether your subscription is active, whether your account is provisioned, and which organization you belong to. It cannot open your case profile, your children's records, or the questions you asked the AI assistant. It cannot open the answers a client sent you through an intake link either.

For a document that will not export correctly, that tool can show us the shape of your answers. Shape means which fields hold something, roughly how long each one is, and where each one lands on the printed form. It never shows what an answer says. Checkbox and multiple-choice answers are excluded even from that, because a filled box can itself be the answer. Every time we look at anything tied to your account, we record that it was your account.

Shared and public computers. If you tell us at sign-in that you are on a public or shared computer, we sign you out after 15 minutes without activity. We warn you before we do. We leave nothing on that machine once you close the browser. On your own device we sign you out after 8 hours without activity.

Both figures are periods of inactivity, not limits on how long you can stay signed in. The clock restarts every time you do something. We do not detect what kind of device you are using. You make that choice yourself, every time you sign in.

We share information only with:

• Service providers who help us run the product. That covers hosting, database, authentication, email, and AI processing. Each one is bound to use your information only to provide their service to us.
• Authorities, when legally required. If we receive a valid legal demand, we disclose only what the law requires. Where the law permits, we tell you first.

Nobody else. Your ex-partner, opposing counsel, and the court cannot see your account.

If a practitioner sends you an intake link, your answers go to that practitioner or their clinic. Our support tool cannot open them, as section 4 explains. The intake page also runs a bot check from a third party. That check sees your IP address. We never send it your answers.

We keep your case profile for as long as you have an account. Family court cases span months or years, and you may need to return to it. We automatically delete documents 180 days (about six months) after you last worked on them. Saving a form counts as working on it, so a case you are actively using is not deleted. If you need longer on a case you are not currently working on, you can extend it twice, by 90 days each time — up to a year in total from your last activity. We warn you in the app before anything is deleted, and you can download a copy at any time. That covers the forms you start and the form answers saved against them, along with any files uploaded before August 19, 2026, when uploads were removed.

The deletion runs on a daily automated schedule, and we do not wait for you to ask. It will not delete a case unless we have shown you a warning about it in the app first — if we could not warn you, the deletion does not happen. This automatic deletion applies to personal accounts. Documents in a clinic or professional workspace are kept until the account holder deletes them or the account itself, because professionals are required to retain client files. We also keep a record of the warnings we showed you about a case — which warning, when, and that it was shown. That record contains nothing about the case itself, and it is deleted with your account.

An intake link stops working 14 days after we create it. If a client sends answers, we hold them until the practitioner applies them, and no longer than 60 days. Applying or cancelling the link deletes the answers straight away. A link nobody uses is deleted 30 days after it expires, and nothing about it is kept. After the practitioner applies or cancels a link, we keep a record that it existed for 30 days. That record holds no answers.

To get a copy of your data, use the export control in your account settings. It downloads immediately. You can also email intake@canadianformatters.com from the address registered to your account, including if you cannot sign in. We respond within 30 days, as PIPEDA requires.

The copy includes your account record and your case profile. It also includes any children records, your documents, and the answers saved in your forms. It includes your saved packages and any questions you asked the AI assistant. We regenerate documents from your saved answers. A file you uploaded therefore appears as the text we extracted from it, rather than as your original file. If your subscription does not cover document downloads, the copy contains your answers but not the completed court forms. Blank court forms are public documents and are always free, from us and from the court. The copy does not include answers a client sent through an intake link that you have not applied yet. Applying them makes them part of the case profile, and they are in the copy after that.

To have your data deleted, use the delete control in your account settings. You can also email the same address from your registered address. We deactivate your account immediately and sign you out everywhere. For seven days you can sign in and restore it.

After seven days we permanently delete your case profile, your children records, your documents, and your form answers. We also delete your saved packages, and any questions you asked the AI assistant along with its answers. We delete your login itself, so the account no longer exists. Our hosting provider holds encrypted backups, and they expire on a rolling schedule. After that, no copy remains. If you hold a professional account, we also delete its intake links and any answers waiting on them.

Four things survive a deletion request. The first is security and access logs, with any link to your account removed. The second is a record that a code was redeemed. We keep both to detect fraud and abuse. A record that anyone can erase on request cannot do that.

The third is the sign-in audit trail kept by our authentication provider. It records sign-in attempts against your email address. That system is theirs rather than ours. It expires on their schedule, and we do not delete from it.

The fourth is the record of every time we looked at your account, described in section 4. Unlike the first, that record keeps your account identifier, and we cannot remove it. It exists to make our own access auditable. A record of who read your file that the reading can erase is not a record. It holds no case information, because there is nowhere in it to put any.

One thing sits outside all of this. If you applied for the beta before you created an account, we keep that application in a separate spreadsheet, not in the product database. The application holds your email address and your answers. Deleting your account does not remove it. Email us and we delete it by hand.

We comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). You have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct information that is inaccurate.
• Withdraw consent and delete your data.
• Complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada if you believe we have mishandled your information.

To exercise any of these, email intake@canadianformatters.com from your registered address. See section 6 for what a request covers and how long it takes.

We use only the cookies the service requires. They keep you signed in, they remember whether you told us you were on a shared computer, and they keep the service secure. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Canadian Formatters is for adults preparing court documents. It is not directed at children. Case profiles may contain information aboutchildren. You provide it as a parent or litigant, or as a professional preparing a client's case. A client may also send it to you through an intake link. We handle that information as part of your case data under this policy.

We tell you in the app when we change this policy in a way that matters. A change matters when it widens what we collect, what we can see, who we share it with, or how long we keep it. You see the notice the next time you sign in, before you carry on using the service.

One address reaches us for everything. Questions about privacy or your data: intake@canadianformatters.com. General questions: intake@canadianformatters.com. See also our Terms of Service.