Terms of Service

These terms apply when you use the Beforehand app at app.beforehand.nz. The free crisis-information website at beforehand.nz is governed separately, it's free to use, no account, no payment.

By creating an account or paying for the app, you accept these terms. If you don't accept them, don't create an account.

These terms form a legally binding agreement under the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 and the Electronic Transactions Act 2002.

Beforehand is operated by NOWtech Limited (NZBN 9429033497617), trading as Beforehand, based in New Zealand.

You can contact us:

• Email: hello@beforehand.nz
• Post: 66 Centennial Drive, Whitianga 3510

Our Privacy Officer under the Privacy Act 2020 is David Crompton (privacy@beforehand.nz).

Beforehand is a tool that helps you organise your end-of-life affairs. It produces:

• An advance directive, a written statement of your healthcare wishes if you become unable to communicate them. Right 7(5) of the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights makes this legally valid as long as it's specific, informed, and made when you're competent.
• A summary document, your contacts, accounts, wishes, and key information your family will need.
• Practical preparation tools, contacts list, account references, wishes, nominee handoff.

What Beforehand does not currently produce: wills and Enduring Powers of Attorney (EPAs). These are planned for a future version. For now, we recommend Public Trust online wills ($69-$159) or a NZ-qualified solicitor for these documents.

Beforehand is a software tool, not a law firm. We provide templates and guidance. We do not provide legal advice, and using Beforehand does not create a lawyer-client relationship.

The documents Beforehand produces are valid legal documents when correctly completed and (where relevant) correctly executed by you. But:

• We can't tell you whether a specific clause is right for your situation
• We can't assess your mental capacity to make the documents
• We can't predict whether your documents will be challenged in court
• We can't account for every aspect of your individual circumstances

If your situation is complex, a family trust, a business, blended-family relationships, international assets, contested family relationships, very high net worth, or Māori land interests, see a NZ-qualified solicitor. Beforehand's intake gates will refuse to proceed in many of these cases.

If you're unsure whether your situation is simple enough for Beforehand, see a solicitor first. The cost (typically $300-600 for an initial consultation) is small insurance.

You can use Beforehand if:

• You are 18 years or older
• You have legal capacity to make decisions for yourself
• You are organising your own affairs (not someone else's)
• You are doing so for a New Zealand legal context

You may not use Beforehand to organise the affairs of someone else, even if you have a Power of Attorney for them. The person whose affairs are being organised must use the service themselves.

You authenticate with a passkey (WebAuthn) tied to your device. We also support magic-link email and recovery codes as fallback methods.

You are responsible for:

• Keeping your passkey-enabled device secure
• Storing your recovery codes safely
• Keeping the email address on your account current
• Not sharing your account with anyone else

If you lose access to all your authentication methods, we may not be able to recover your account. We don't keep "back-door" access to your data, it's the same protection that prevents an attacker pretending to be you.

Current pricing (all NZD, GST-inclusive):

Payment is processed by Stripe. We don't store your card details, Stripe does, under their own terms (PCI-DSS compliant).

The setup fee is a one-off charge. The annual fee renews automatically each year unless you cancel. You'll receive a renewal notice at least 14 days before each renewal charge.

If our pricing changes for new customers, your existing pricing won't change at renewal, we'll honour the rate you signed up at.

Cancelling renewals. You can cancel the annual fee at any time from your account settings. You'll keep access until the end of the period you've already paid for. We don't refund the unused portion.

Refunds on the setup fee.

• If you cancel within 14 days of signing up and have not generated any documents, we'll refund the setup fee in full.
• If you've generated documents, we don't refund the setup fee, but you keep access for the full year you've paid for, and you can export everything.

Account deletion. You can delete your account at any time. We retain a copy for 30 days (in case of accidental deletion), then it's permanently removed. You can request immediate permanent deletion by emailing hello@beforehand.nz.

Your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 are not affected by anything in this section. If the service is not of acceptable quality, fit for its purpose, or supplied with reasonable care and skill, you may be entitled to a remedy under the CGA. Nothing in these terms limits or excludes those rights.

When you use Beforehand, you create documents that you own. You can export, print, share, and use them however you like.

Validity is your responsibility:

• For an advance directive: it's valid when you sign it, provided you're competent and informed. You must communicate it to your GP / family / nominated attorney for it to be honoured.
• For documents that need witnesses or specific execution (when wills + EPAs ship in v2): Beforehand will walk you through the process, but you are responsible for executing the documents correctly.

We don't guarantee any specific legal outcome. We take reasonable care that our templates are NZ-law compliant, but if your specific document is challenged in probate or by a third party, that's between you (or your estate) and the challenger. Beforehand is not a party to your documents.

Beforehand is built for simple-to-moderate NZ estates. It is not suitable for:

• Setting up or amending family trusts
• Business succession planning
• International assets or non-NZ-resident attorneys
• Blended-family situations with stepchildren and biological children needing distinct treatment
• Any indication of contested family relationships or pending Family Protection Act claims
• Very high net worth (typically $5M+) where overseas inheritance tax matters
• Māori land interests under Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993

If our intake gates flag any of these, please see a solicitor. Trying to use Beforehand for these situations risks producing documents that don't do what you intend.

When you use Beforehand, you agree to:

• Provide accurate information about yourself, your family, and your wishes
• Use Beforehand for your own personal affairs only, not commercially
• Not attempt to circumvent our authentication, scrape data, or interfere with the service
• Not use Beforehand to facilitate fraud, harm to others, or anything illegal
• Tell us promptly if you become aware of unauthorised access to your account

You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you input. We don't verify that the people you list as contacts are real, that the accounts you reference exist, or that your wishes are achievable.

We agree to:

• Provide the service with reasonable care and skill
• Use reasonable safeguards to protect your information (see the Privacy Policy)
• Tell you in advance about material changes to these terms or the service
• Make your data exportable at any time
• Give you at least 90 days' notice if we shut Beforehand down (see section 15)

We do not guarantee:

• 100% uptime, we use reasonable efforts but don't promise no outages
• That every feature will work on every device or browser
• That third-party services (email, payments, storage) will never fail

Statutory rights, Consumer Guarantees Act and Fair Trading Act. As a NZ consumer, you have rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 and the Fair Trading Act 1986 that can't be excluded by contract. Nothing in these terms limits, restricts, or modifies those rights.

Beyond statutory rights: to the extent the law allows, our liability for any claim relating to Beforehand (in contract, tort, equity, or otherwise) is limited to the total fees you've paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.

We are not liable for:

• Loss arising from the legal effect (or lack of effect) of any document you produce
• Loss arising from your failure to execute documents correctly (witnessing, signing, communicating)
• Loss arising from third-party services we rely on (Stripe, email providers, hosting) failing
• Indirect, consequential, or speculative loss

Nothing in this section attempts to exclude liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, or anything that legally cannot be excluded.

If you're unhappy with the service, please email hello@beforehand.nz first. Most things can be sorted out directly, quickly.

If we can't resolve it:

• For consumer claims, you can apply to the Disputes Tribunal (claims up to $30,000) or the relevant court
• For privacy concerns, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (privacy.org.nz)
• For misleading or unfair-trading concerns, the Commerce Commission (comcom.govt.nz)

If we ever decide to shut Beforehand down, we commit to:

• Giving at least 90 days' notice by email and on the website
• Keeping the service available throughout that 90-day period so you can export your data
• Providing a full PDF export of every document you've created
• Not selling or transferring your data to a third party who would charge you for it
• Permanently deleting all user data after the shutdown date

This is a legally binding commitment, not a customer-service promise. We won't hold your data hostage.

Your privacy is governed by our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms. The privacy policy explains what we collect, why, where it's stored, who else sees it, and your rights under the Privacy Act 2020.

We may update these terms from time to time. If we do:

• We'll notify you by email at least 30 days before material changes take effect
• We'll show the change history on this page
• For changes that materially reduce your rights or increase your obligations, you can cancel and receive a pro-rata refund of any unused annual fee
• Continued use after the effective date means you accept the changes

Minor changes (typo fixes, clarifications, new contact details) take effect immediately and don't trigger the notice period.

These terms are governed by New Zealand law. You and we agree that the New Zealand courts (and the Disputes Tribunal where appropriate) have jurisdiction over any dispute under these terms.

If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest still applies, the unenforceable part is severed.

These terms (together with the Privacy Policy) are the entire agreement between you and us about your use of Beforehand. They replace any earlier agreements or representations.

• General: hello@beforehand.nz
• Privacy: privacy@beforehand.nz (Privacy Officer: David Crompton)
• Post: 66 Centennial Drive, Whitianga 3510