Official Rules

No purchase necessary

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. A link proved by uploading the record yourself, free (the “Prove this link” button on your report card), earns exactly the same points as a link proved by a paid record search (“Or let us find it”).

Sponsor

Probably Cousins LLC, 250 Indian Road, Palm Beach, FL 33480 (“Sponsor”, “we”).

Contest period

The contest runs from 12:00 a.m. Eastern time on 1 November 2026 to 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern time on 30 November 2026 (the “Contest Period”). Our server's clock is the official clock.

Eligibility

Open to individuals who are 18 or older and the age of majority where they live, and who are legal residents of the United States, Canada (excluding Quebec), Australia or New Zealand, the countries where we offer the Service. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.

Employees, officers and contractors of the Sponsor, and members of their immediate families and households, are not eligible. One account per person; a person found using more than one account is disqualified.

A contest of skill

This is a contest of skill. Chance plays no part in deciding the winners: winners are the players with the most points, and points are earned only by finding the record that proves or corrects a parent-and-child link in your own family tree, which our readers then check.

How to enter for free

Create a free account on the leaderboard page and sign in, choose a public username, switch on “Show me on the public leaderboards”, give your country and your state, province or region, confirm that you are 18 or older, and accept these Official Rules. Upload your family tree file on the free Tree Score page and choose yourself in the tree. For any link, press “Prove this link” and upload a photo or scan of the record that shows the child and the parent; this is free. When our readers have read it, press “Claim points” on your report card. There is no fee to enter and nothing to buy.

Scoring

A link earns points only when a record our readers read moves it up (an evidence receipt of the kind “seen”: the record was read, matched the two people and agreed with the child's birth year). Editing a tree file earns nothing. A copy or an index earns nothing. A record that shows a link in your tree is wrong earns 1 point for an honest correction.

Points by the child's birth year: born 1900 or later, 1 point; 1800 to 1899, 3 points; 1700 to 1799, 5 points; before 1700, 10 points.

For this contest, a link counts only when every link on your path to a Mayflower passenger in our public-figures catalog has been proved by a record our readers read, the record was read during the Contest Period (the date on its receipt), and you claimed the points during the Contest Period. Milestone bonuses do not count toward the contest.

Each record entry can be claimed by one account only: it can earn points once for a father link and once for a mother link, and at most 20 points in all, whoever claims it. We recognise the same record entry by what our readers read in it (the names, the year, the place, the kind of record and its reference), not by the file. Points go only to the account that was signed in when the record was read or the search was bought. Each link in a tree scores once per player. We may remove points that we find were earned by tampering, by a record that is not what it appears to be, or in breach of these rules.

Ties

Ties are broken in favour of the player who earned the tied total first (the earliest time the last of those points was earned).

Prizes

Prizes are our own goods and services only. They have no cash value, cannot be transferred or exchanged, and are delivered to the winner's account. No cash alternative.

First place (1 prize): A free credential for one line (a $79 value) and three free “Prove this link” record searches (up to $39 each). Approximate retail value: US$196.

Second and third places (2 prizes): A free credential for one line. Approximate retail value: US$79 each.

Places 4 to 10 (7 prizes): One free “Prove this link” record search. Approximate retail value: US$39 each.

First to prove a complete line to a passenger (1 prize): A free credential for one line. Approximate retail value: US$79.

Approximate retail value of all prizes: US$706. A player can win only one prize in each contest. A player who wins a place and was also first to prove a complete line keeps the place prize and the badge; the first-complete-line prize is then not awarded. The badge and its prize go to the first eligible player, still on the leaderboards, to prove the line.

Winners

Winners are confirmed after the Contest Period from the points recorded by our server; only eligible players (above) who are on the leaderboards are ranked. We email each potential winner at the address on their account within seven days after the Contest Period ends. A potential winner who does not reply within 14 days, or who is not eligible, forfeits the prize, and it goes to the next eligible player.

A potential winner who lives in Canada must first correctly answer, without assistance of any kind, a time-limited mathematical skill-testing question, given by email or telephone, before being confirmed as a winner. The question is of this kind: “(12 × 6) + 18 ÷ 3 − 4 = ?”.

We publish the winners' usernames on the contest page. Names from your tree are never published.

General

By taking part you agree to these Official Rules and to our Terms of Use; where they differ, these Official Rules govern the contest. We may cancel, suspend or change the contest if it cannot run as planned (for example, through fraud or a technical failure), and will post any change here. Taxes on a prize, if any, are the winner's.

Privacy: we keep your username, your country and region, whether you confirmed your eligibility (one yes or no, nothing more), your points, and for each record you claim one-way fingerprints, an anonymous link key and a decade, as our Privacy Policy describes. We never keep your tree.

Disputes are governed by the dispute terms in our Terms of Use, except where the law where you live requires otherwise.