Terms of Service

These are pre-launch terms. Handhold is not open to the public yet. We wrote these ourselves, in plain language, so that the people helping us test have something honest to agree to. A lawyer is reviewing them, and a reviewed version will replace this one before launch. When that happens the version at the top of this page changes, and we will tell everyone who has an account.

The short version

• Handhold helps you organize and get ready. It does not give medical, legal, financial or tax advice, and it is not a crisis service.
• What you put into Handhold stays yours.
• You are responsible for having the right to share what you share about another person.
• If you stop paying, nothing is deleted and nothing is locked away from viewing.
• You can close your account whenever you want.

The rest of this page says the same things with the detail a contract needs.

1. Who we are, and who can use Handhold

Handhold is provided by Handhold LLC, an Oklahoma limited liability company ("Handhold", "we", "us"). These terms are an agreement between you and Handhold LLC. By creating an account or using Handhold, you agree to them and to our Privacy Policy.

Handhold is for adults. You must be 18 or older to create an account, and you confirm that you are when you sign up. We cannot verify who is typing, so we rely on that confirmation.

2. What Handhold is

Handhold is a set of tools for people caring for an aging or dying family member: a place to keep track of tasks, notes, contacts, documents and decisions, to share that work with the people helping you, and to find general information and public resources.

We add, change and sometimes remove features. Some features described on our website may not be available yet, may be available only to some accounts, or may be turned off while they are reviewed. We work to keep Handhold available but do not promise that it always will be, and you should not rely on it as the only place you keep anything important.

3. Not an emergency or crisis service

Handhold is not an emergency service and is not a substitute for professional crisis care. If you or someone else is in danger or in crisis, call 911 or the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988). Nobody at Handhold monitors what you write in real time, and you should not expect a response to an urgent message.

4. Not professional advice

Handhold provides general information and organizational tools only. It does not provide medical, legal, financial or tax advice, and nothing in the app, on this website or from the Companion is a substitute for a licensed professional. Rules about care, benefits, insurance and estates differ by state and change over time; information in Handhold may be incomplete or out of date. Decisions about care, money or legal matters are yours to make with the professionals you choose.

Phone numbers and organizations listed in Handhold are public resources we do not operate. Listing one is not an endorsement, and no one pays us to be listed.

5. The Companion

Where it is available, the Companion is an AI assistant. It is not a person, a clinician or an advisor, and it can be wrong or incomplete. It is there to help you draft, explain, compare and organize.

The Companion does not send, share, save or act on anything on your behalf without your confirmation. You are responsible for checking anything it produces before you rely on it or send it to someone else. Sections 3 and 4 apply to everything the Companion says.

6. Your content and documents

You own what you put into Handhold. You give us permission to store, copy, display and process it only as needed to run Handhold for you and the people you share with, which includes processing by the service providers named in our Privacy Policy. That permission ends when the content is deleted, apart from backup copies that age out on their normal schedule.

Documents you store are kept in a database that our hosting provider encrypts at rest, and access to them is controlled by your account and your circle's roles. Handhold is not a zero-knowledge vault. Our systems can read stored documents in order to show them to you. Do not treat Handhold as the only copy of, or the most secure possible home for, your most sensitive material. Keep originals.

You are responsible for what you upload and write, and for keeping your password to yourself.

7. Care circles, sharing, and other people's information

Handhold lets you invite other people into a care circle. What you share with your circle is visible to the people in it, according to the role you gave each of them. Key Contacts are visible to your whole circle by design.

Much of what goes into Handhold is about someone other than you: the person being cared for. By adding information about another person, you tell us that you have the right to do so and to share it with the people you invite.

A Handhold login shows us who is signed in. It does not show us that someone has legal authority over another person. Handhold does not check powers of attorney, guardianship or any other authority, and a role in a care circle is not evidence of one.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use Handhold for anything unlawful;
• use Handhold, including the Companion, to harass, deceive, coerce, exploit or harm another person, including the person being cared for;
• add information about a person in order to control them or to take their money or property;
• try to reach accounts, circles or data that are not yours, or to work out who is behind another member's community name;
• interfere with the service, probe it for weaknesses without our written permission, or use automated tools to copy it;
• create an account for someone else without their knowledge, or use an email address that is not yours.

We may suspend or close an account that does these things. Where we can do so safely, we will tell you why.

9. Handhold Plus, payment and cancelling

Much of Handhold is free. Some features belong to a paid plan, Handhold Plus. Paid plans are not on sale during the pre-launch period; this section describes how they work once they are.

• Price and renewal. The price is shown before you pay, and is listed on our pricing page. Plus renews automatically at the end of each month or year until you cancel.
• Payment. Payments are handled by Stripe. We do not receive or store your full card number.
• Cancelling. You can cancel at any time. Plus stays on until the end of the period you have paid for, and then stops. We do not charge a cancellation fee.
• If a payment fails or you cancel. Nothing is deleted and nothing is locked away from viewing. Everything you put into Handhold stays yours and readable. Only the paid features pause.
• If someone in your circle dies. When a death is recorded in your care circle, we refund your most recent Plus charge if it was made in the 30 days before the death was recorded.
• Other refunds. Apart from the case above and anything the law requires, we do not refund part of a billing period. If a charge looks wrong, write to us. A person reads every message.
• Price changes. If we change the price of a plan you are on, we will tell you before the change applies to your next renewal.

10. Closing your account, and what happens when someone dies

You can download a copy of your data and close your account from inside the app. Our Privacy Policy explains what is deleted, what cannot be deleted right away when your account is tied to a circle other people still use, and how we help in that case.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, or if we are required to by law. If we ever shut Handhold down, we will give notice and time to download your data.

If an account holder dies. We do not automatically release a person's private notes, journal or Companion conversations to anyone. Things the person had already shared with their care circle stay available to that circle. Someone with legal authority over the person's affairs can write to us, and we will work with them directly.

11. No warranties

Handhold is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement. We do not promise that Handhold will be uninterrupted or error-free, that information in it is complete or current, or that content you store will never be lost.

12. Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Handhold LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost data, lost profits, or decisions made in reliance on information in Handhold or from the Companion.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability for all claims relating to Handhold is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose and (b) one hundred U.S. dollars.

Some states do not allow some of these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

13. If your use causes a claim against us

If someone brings a claim against Handhold LLC because you broke these terms or the law, or because you added or shared information you had no right to add or share, you agree to cover our reasonable costs and losses from that claim, to the extent the law allows.

14. Changes to these terms

We will change these terms, at the least when the reviewed version replaces this pre-launch one. Each version carries a version label and an effective date at the top of this page. When a change is material, we will tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect. If you do not agree with a change, you can close your account.

15. Governing law and the rest

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Oklahoma, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules, and disputes will be heard in the state or federal courts located in Oklahoma. This does not take away any consumer protection you are entitled to under the law of the state where you live.

If part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. If we do not enforce a term, that is not a waiver of it. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about Handhold. You may not transfer your account to someone else; we may transfer these terms as part of a sale or reorganization of Handhold, and we will tell you if we do.

16. Contact

Handhold LLC · hello@handholdcare.com

Version 2026-10-05 (pre-launch) · Published October 5, 2026 · Not yet reviewed by counsel.