Terms of Service

By creating an account, signing in, uploading content, ordering a keepsake, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you are using the Service on behalf of another person or an estate, you represent that you have the authority to accept these Terms on their behalf, and "you" refers to both you and that person or estate.

Age requirements

You must be at least 18 years old to enter into these Terms, to hold an account in your own name, or to place an order. A person aged 13 to 17 may use the Service only through an account established and supervised by a parent or legal guardian who accepts these Terms on their behalf and remains responsible for their use.

We do not knowingly permit children under 13 to create accounts or to submit information to us directly. Information about a child under 13 may appear in a family tree only where an adult family member has entered it. See our Privacy Policy for how we handle children's information.

Invitation-based access

Treechival is a private, invitation-based platform. Each family tree represents a specific family line. Access to a tree is granted only to individuals with a genuine connection to that line — by direct descent, by marriage into the family, or by a shared maiden-name connection — and is granted at our discretion or at the discretion of that tree's administrator.

Access is a revocable permission, not a property right. We or a tree administrator may modify, suspend, or revoke access to any tree at any time, including where a family disagreement, a request from another family member, or a concern about privacy or accuracy makes that appropriate. Access to one tree never implies access to any other tree.

Permission levels

• Viewer — may view the tree and archive, and may edit their own member record.
• Editor — may add and edit members, relationships, media, and stories within that tree.
• Administrator — may additionally manage access and settings for that tree.

Account security

Authentication is handled through Cloudflare Zero Trust using the email address associated with your account. You are responsible for maintaining control of that email account and for all activity that occurs under your access. Accounts are personal — do not share your access, and notify us promptly at treechival@gmail.com if you believe your access has been compromised.

Treechival provides tools for families to build and explore a family tree, preserve photographs, videos, audio, and documents in a shared archive, record milestones and life events, generate narrative summaries using artificial intelligence, receive notifications about family activity, and order printed keepsakes.

We are continually developing the Service. We may add, change, or remove features, and we may impose reasonable limits on storage, file sizes, upload volume, or usage. Where a change materially reduces functionality you rely on, we will give reasonable advance notice when it is practical to do so.

You keep ownership

Family tree data, photographs, videos, audio, documents, stories, and other material you submit ("Your Content") remain yours. We claim no ownership of Your Content.

The licence we need to run the Service

You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, transmit, reformat, resize, transcode, index, and display Your Content, and to create thumbnails and other derivative copies of it, solely for the purposes of operating, securing, backing up, and improving the Service and making Your Content available to the family members you have authorised.

Where you order a keepsake, that licence extends to our print and fulfilment partners, but only to the extent necessary to produce and deliver the item you ordered.

This licence exists only to run the Service. We do not sell Your Content, licence it to third parties for their own purposes, use it for advertising, or use it to train artificial-intelligence models.

The licence ends when Your Content is deleted, except that we may retain copies in routine encrypted backups for a limited period, and except where the content has been shared into another family member's tree or incorporated into a keepsake order or other record we must keep.

Feedback

If you send us suggestions or feedback about the Service, we may use them without restriction and without any obligation to you.

You represent and warrant, for everything you submit to the Service, that:

• you own it or have all rights and permissions necessary to submit it and to grant the licence above;
• it does not infringe any copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other right of any person;
• you have obtained any consent required from living people who appear in it or whose personal information it contains; and
• it is not unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, obscene, or otherwise prohibited under these Terms.

You are solely responsible for Your Content. We do not routinely review it before it appears, but we may remove or restrict any content at any time — including content we believe violates these Terms, infringes someone's rights, or is the subject of a credible complaint from a family member or a person identified in it.

Genealogy is unusual: building a family tree necessarily means recording information about other people, including living relatives who have not signed up and have not agreed to these Terms. This section governs that, and it matters.

When you add information about another living person — names, dates and places of birth, photographs, stories, places they have lived, or anything else — you are responsible for doing so lawfully and respectfully. You should only add information that the person would reasonably expect to be shared within your family, and you should obtain their consent where the information is sensitive or where they have asked you not to share it.

Do not add information about a living person that reveals health or medical conditions, sexual orientation, immigration status, criminal history, financial details, government identifiers such as Social Security numbers, or precise current home addresses, unless that person has agreed.

Any person who appears in a Treechival tree may contact us at treechival@gmail.com to ask to see, correct, restrict, or remove information about themselves, whether or not they hold an account. We will act on reasonable requests and may remove or restrict content without the uploader's agreement in order to do so. Our Privacy Policy describes this process in more detail.

Some features generate narrative text — member stories, name meanings, namesake suggestions, and cultural heritage summaries — using a third-party artificial-intelligence service, drawing on the family data already present in your tree.

AI-generated content is informational and may be wrong. It is not verified fact, not a genealogical source, and not professional advice of any kind. Do not rely on it for legal, medical, financial, immigration, ancestry-verification, or any other consequential purpose without independent confirmation.

Interpretations of names, origins, ethnicity, and cultural heritage are inherently uncertain and may be inaccurate or incomplete. You may edit or delete AI-generated content in your tree at any time. You remain responsible for any AI-generated content you choose to keep, publish within your family, or print.

We are the seller

Innovation Dynamics, LLC is the merchant and seller of record for all keepsakes and printed products offered through the Service. We purchase production and fulfilment from third-party printing partners and sell the finished item to you at our own retail price. Your contract of sale for any keepsake is with us, not with the printer.

Pricing and taxes

Prices are shown in US dollars and may change at any time before you place an order. The price that applies is the one displayed at checkout when you submit your order. Applicable sales tax is calculated and added at checkout where we are required to collect it. Shipping charges, where they apply, are shown before you pay.

Occasionally an item may be mispriced or misdescribed. If we discover an error in the price or description of an item you have ordered, we will contact you and give you the choice of confirming the order at the correct price or cancelling it for a full refund. We are not obliged to sell at an incorrect price.

Order acceptance

Your order is an offer to buy. Our order confirmation email acknowledges receipt but does not by itself accept your offer; a contract is formed when we send the item into production. We may decline or cancel any order — for example where the item is unavailable, where we suspect fraud, where payment fails, or where the uploaded image is unsuitable for printing or appears to infringe someone's rights. If we cancel after taking payment, we refund in full.

Payment

Payments are processed by Stripe. We do not receive or store your full payment card number. You warrant that you are authorised to use the payment method you provide.

Image quality

Printed output depends on the resolution and quality of the image you select. We may warn you where an image is low-resolution, but we are not responsible for print quality attributable to the source image, and dissatisfaction on that basis is not a defect.

Shipping and risk

Production and delivery times shown are estimates, not guarantees, and we are not liable for carrier delays. Title and risk of loss pass to you on delivery to the address you provide. You are responsible for giving us a correct and complete delivery address; we are not responsible for items delivered to an incorrect address you supplied.

Rights in printed images

By placing an order you confirm you hold the rights necessary to reproduce the image, including where it is a professional photograph, a studio portrait, a school photograph, or a scanned document that may carry a third-party copyright.

Cancelling before production

You may cancel an order for a full refund at any time before it enters production. Because items are made to order, production often begins quickly. Email treechival@gmail.com as soon as possible and we will cancel if production has not started.

Personalised items

Keepsakes are custom-made from your family's images and data. Once in production they cannot be resold and are therefore not returnable for change of mind, buyer's remorse, or a change in family circumstances.

Damaged, defective, or incorrect items

If your item arrives damaged, defective, or materially different from what you ordered, contact us within 30 days of delivery with your order number and photographs of the item and its packaging. We will arrange a replacement at no cost or, where a replacement is not practical, a full refund. This is in addition to any rights you have under applicable consumer protection law, which these Terms do not limit.

Lost in transit

If tracking shows an item has not arrived within 15 days of its estimated delivery date, contact us and we will investigate with the carrier and replace or refund the order.

How refunds are made

Refunds are issued to the original payment method, normally within 10 business days of approval. Your bank or card issuer may take longer to post the credit.

Some parts of the Service may be offered on a paid subscription. Where they are, the terms in this section apply in addition to the rest of these Terms. Ordering keepsakes does not require a subscription.

• Billing period, price, and what is included are disclosed at the point of purchase before you pay.
• Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period at the then-current price until you cancel.
• You may cancel at any time from your account settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; you keep access until then.
• Except where required by law or expressly stated, subscription fees already paid are not refundable on a partial-period basis.
• We will give at least 30 days’ notice by email before any price increase takes effect, and you may cancel before it does.
• If a payment fails, we may retry it and may suspend paid features until payment succeeds.

If your paid plan ends, we will not delete your family tree or archive without notice. We will tell you what happens to any features that depended on the plan and give you a reasonable opportunity to export your data before any change takes effect.

What we send

Treechival may send you notifications by email and, if you opt in, by SMS text message, based on the preferences you set. Notification types include activity digests summarising updates to family members you follow, nudges when a family member wants to draw your attention to something, order and account messages, and occasional feature announcements.

SMS terms

By opting in to SMS on Treechival, you consent to receive recurring automated text messages from Treechival at the number you provide. Message frequency varies with your preferences and family activity.

Message and data rates may apply. Treechival does not charge for SMS messages, but your carrier's standard messaging rates apply. Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages.

You can opt out at any time by replying STOP to any message, or by disabling SMS notifications in your Account Settings at treechival.com/account. Reply HELP to any message for support information, or contact treechival@gmail.com.

SMS is never required to use Treechival. Every feature is fully available without it, and consent to receive SMS is not a condition of any purchase.

You confirm that the mobile number you provide is yours and that you are authorised to receive messages at it. If your number changes or is reassigned, update or remove it in Account Settings promptly.

You agree not to:

• access, or attempt to access, any family tree, member record, media file, or account you have not been granted access to;
• probe, scan, or test the security of the Service, or circumvent authentication, access controls, or rate limits;
• scrape, crawl, harvest, or bulk-download content, or use automated means to access the Service except as we expressly permit;
• upload malware, or anything designed to disrupt or damage the Service or its users;
• use the Service to harass, stalk, threaten, defame, or intimidate anyone, including other family members;
• impersonate another person, or misrepresent your relationship to a family or a family member in order to gain access;
• use family contact information obtained through the Service to send marketing, spam, or unsolicited commercial messages;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to derive the source code of the Service, except where that restriction is unenforceable by law;
• resell, sublicense, or commercially exploit the Service or its content; or
• use the Service in violation of any applicable law, including privacy, export control, and consumer protection law.

Attempting to reach another family's data is a serious violation and may be a crime under computer misuse laws. We investigate and may report it.

The Service itself — including its software, design, layout, illustrations, tree artwork, iconography, text, and the Treechival name and logo — is owned by Innovation Dynamics, LLC or its licensors and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of those rights to you.

We grant you a limited, personal, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service for your family's own genealogical and archival purposes, subject to these Terms.

We respect copyright. If you believe material on the Service infringes a copyright you own or represent, email treechival@gmail.com and include:

• identification of the copyrighted work you say has been infringed;
• identification of the material you say is infringing, with enough detail for us to find it — a link or the page and item name is ideal;
• your name, email address, and a telephone number or postal address we can reach you at;
• a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
• a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act on the owner’s behalf.

We review every report we receive and will remove or restrict material that infringes. We also terminate the access of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

If material you posted was removed and you believe that was a mistake or a misidentification, reply to us and explain why. We will review it and restore the material if your objection is well founded.

The Service depends on third parties for hosting, authentication, email and SMS delivery, payment processing, AI text generation, printing, and shipping. Our Privacy Policy lists them and what each receives. Their own terms and privacy policies govern their services, and we are not responsible for their acts or omissions beyond our own obligations to you under these Terms.

Our Privacy Policy at treechival.com/privacy explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights you have over it. It forms part of these Terms.

You may stop using the Service at any time and may ask us to close your account by contacting treechival@gmail.com.

We may suspend or terminate your access, with or without notice, if you breach these Terms, if your use poses a risk to the Service or to other users, if a tree administrator withdraws your access, or if we are required to do so by law. Where the circumstances allow, we will tell you why and give you an opportunity to respond.

On termination, your right to use the Service ends. Content you contributed to a shared family tree may remain visible to that family where removing it would damage the integrity of the tree for others — for example, relationship links that other records depend on. We will handle deletion requests as described in the Privacy Policy, and will give you a reasonable opportunity to export your data first.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination do survive it, including those on your content licence for material already shared or printed, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and governing law.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, or that any defect will be corrected.

We make no representation that any genealogical information on the Service is accurate, complete, or verified. Family tree data is supplied by family members, not researched or authenticated by us. Do not rely on it as proof of identity, descent, citizenship, inheritance, or entitlement of any kind.

We take backups and design for durability, but no system is immune to loss. You are responsible for keeping your own copies of irreplaceable photographs, documents, and records. Do not treat Treechival as your only copy of anything you cannot bear to lose.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, INNOVATION DYNAMICS, LLC AND ITS MEMBERS, MANAGERS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, GOODWILL, OR DATA, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, OR ANY OTHER THEORY, EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNT YOU PAID US IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED US DOLLARS ($100).

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or death or personal injury caused by negligence. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

These limitations are a fundamental basis of the bargain between us and apply even if a limited remedy fails of its essential purpose.

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Innovation Dynamics, LLC and its members, managers, officers, employees, and agents from any claim, demand, loss, liability, damage, cost, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to: Your Content; your use of the Service; your breach of these Terms or of any law; or any claim by another person that your submission or sharing of information about them violated their privacy, publicity, or intellectual property rights.

We may assume the exclusive defence and control of any matter subject to indemnification by you, in which case you agree to cooperate with us.

Talk to us first

If you have a problem, contact us at treechival@gmail.com and describe it. Most issues are resolved quickly. You agree to give us 30 days from that notice to resolve the dispute informally before starting formal proceedings.

Governing law

These Terms and any dispute arising out of them or the Service are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Venue

You and we agree that the state and federal courts located in Moore County, North Carolina have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute that is not resolved informally, and each of us consents to personal jurisdiction and venue there and waives any objection to it. Either of us may still bring an individual claim in small claims court if it qualifies.

Time limit

Any claim arising out of or relating to the Service must be brought within one year after it arises, except where applicable law requires a longer period.

We may update these Terms from time to time. The effective date at the top of this page shows when the current version took effect. For material changes we will give reasonable advance notice — by email, by an in-app notice, or through the What's New section of your account dashboard — before they take effect.

Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms. If you do not accept them, stop using the Service and contact us to close your account. Changes never apply retroactively to a dispute that arose before the change.

• Entire agreement — these Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service and replace any earlier understanding.
• Severability — if any provision is held unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary or severed, and the rest remains in force.
• No waiver — our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
• Assignment — you may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, on notice to you.
• Force majeure — neither of us is liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond reasonable control, including outages at our infrastructure providers, natural disasters, and acts of government.
• Notices — we may give notice by email to the address on your account or by posting in the Service. Notices to us go to the contact address below.
• No third-party beneficiaries — these Terms create no rights in anyone other than you and us.
• Headings — section headings are for convenience only and do not affect interpretation.

Innovation Dynamics, LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company, operating Treechival at treechival.com.

General and legal enquiries: treechival@gmail.com

Email is the fastest and most reliable way to reach us, and it is how we handle legal notices, privacy requests, and copyright complaints. If you need a postal address for a formal notice, ask us by email and we will provide one.

SMS support: reply HELP to any Treechival text message, or email treechival@gmail.com.