Terms

Terms in plain words

This is the plain-language version. A fuller legal text is being prepared and will replace it; until then this page is what we hold ourselves to.

Who we are

Probably Cousins is operated by Probably Cousins LLC, a Delaware limited liability company.

Your account

You create an account with an email and a password. You are responsible for keeping that password to yourself. You should be an adult, or have a parent or guardian's permission, to create one.

What you upload

Upload your own family tree files, photos, and stories, or material you have the right to share. Your family tree, photos, and stories stay yours — see Privacy for who can see them.

What we do with it

Some uploads, Help questions, and research jobs are read by an AI model provider — Anthropic — to answer them or act on them. Records with a citable URL and a clear rung of evidence go straight into your family's tree; anything less certain waits for your family's owner to decide. See Honesty for how that works.

Payments

Finding the record that proves a weak link in your tree — Document Your Cousins — is paid for with prepaid credit, starting at $10.00; everything else on the site is free.

Research credit is bought through Stripe. We never see your card number. You are shown the price of a research job before it starts, and never charged more than that estimate.

Unused credit is refundable within 30 days of the purchase it came from; credit you've already spent isn't, and no refund is issued while a charge is disputed. Request one from your family's Credits page; we decide it within a few business days.

Credits expire twelve months after purchase.

Living people

Anyone born within the last 110 years with no death record on file is treated as living. Their details are shown in full only inside their own family's signed-in site, never on the public parts of this site, except the reference-person exception described in Privacy. Anyone can ask to have their details removed; see that page for how.

What you can't do

Don't use bots or automated tools to bypass this site's rate limits or security. Don't upload malware, harass other members, or impersonate someone else.

Ending your account

You can close your account at any time from your Account page, or by emailing us. We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms.

As is

This is a research tool, not a genealogist, a lawyer, or a court of record. We provide it as it stands, and do our best to keep it accurate and running.

Contact

hello@probablycousins.com — read by the site's operator.

Governing law

These terms are governed by Delaware law.