Terms of Service

1. Who we are and how to reach us

Fighting Chance is operated by [Founder full name], an individual resident in South Africa, pending the registration of a private company under the Companies Act 71 of 2008. References in these Terms to “we,” “us,” or “Fighting Chance” are to that individual for now, and will transfer automatically to the registered entity upon its formation.

You can contact us at support@fightingchance.co.za for any matter relating to these Terms, your account, or your data.

2. What Fighting Chance is, and is not

Fighting Chance is a software platform that provides legal information and document preparation assistance to individuals dealing with uncontested family law matters in South Africa. It is not a law firm. It does not provide legal advice.

Legal advice, as contemplated by the Legal Practice Act 28 of 2014, is provided by admitted legal practitioners. Where the Fighting Chance product contemplates an attorney review stage (Stage 8: Attorney Sign-off), that review is provided by an independent attorney engaged by you directly, paid by you directly, and acting under their own professional discretion.

The distinction between information and advice is load-bearing. If at any point you are unsure which you need, treat it as advice and speak to an attorney.

3. Who can use this service

You may use Fighting Chance if:

• You are at least 18 years old;
• You are the party to the matter you are working on (not a third party acting on someone else's behalf);
• Your matter is a South African family law matter intended to be heard in a South African court;
• Your matter is, or can reasonably be, settled on an uncontested basis.

You should not use Fighting Chance if any of the following apply:

• You need urgent legal action in the next 72 hours — a Protection Order, Rule 43 interim relief, or similar;
• There is active or recent domestic abuse in your relationship;
• Your spouse is actively contesting the divorce or has retained an attorney who is defending the matter;
• Your matter involves complex corporate structures, trusts, offshore assets, or cross-border elements;
• You are looking for a tool to hurt, punish, or trap your spouse. That is not what this is, and you will not be welcome here.

4. Your account and conduct

You agree to provide accurate information about yourself and your matter. Fighting Chance generates legal documents and analyses based on what you tell it. Inaccurate input produces inaccurate output, which could harm your position if relied on in negotiation or litigation.

You agree not to:

• Use Fighting Chance on behalf of a third party without their knowledge and consent;
• Input information about your spouse or children that you know to be false;
• Use any output from Fighting Chance to harass, threaten, or intimidate any other person;
• Attempt to extract, reverse-engineer, or replicate the underlying AI models or prompt structures;
• Use the service if you are an attorney or other legal professional seeking to evaluate the product for competitive purposes without disclosing that fact to us first.

5. Early access and the state of the product

Fighting Chance is currently in early access. You acknowledge that:

• The product has not been reviewed end-to-end by an admitted South African family law attorney;
• Certain calculations, including accrual arithmetic, do not yet implement all legally-required adjustments (notably, CPI adjustment of commencement values under MPA s4);
• Certain authorities cited in product output are illustrative rather than dynamically retrieved and verified;
• Support is informal and handled by email with variable response times;
• The service may be interrupted, modified, or discontinued without notice during this period.

A full list of known gaps is maintained at the beta disclosures page and updated as items are resolved. You should read that page before and during your use of the service.

During early access, the service is provided free of charge. If we move to a paid model, current users will be notified by email at least 30 days before any charge is imposed and will have the opportunity to export their data and delete their accounts before any payment is due.

6. Your data and content

6.1 What you provide remains yours.

The information you enter into Fighting Chance remains your property. We do not claim ownership of it. We do not license it to third parties. We do not sell it. We do not use it to train publicly-available AI models.

6.2 What we need to do with it.

To operate the service, we process your information on servers we operate, and send portions of it to third-party AI services (including Anthropic, as provider of the Claude AI models) for the limited purpose of generating the product's output. These third-party providers are contractually bound not to retain, train on, or share your data. A list of current third-party processors is maintained in the Privacy Policy.

6.3 Data residency.

Fighting Chance aims to store your data on infrastructure located inside South Africa. Where a third-party processor does not have South African infrastructure available, data is transmitted outside South Africa only for the brief moment required to generate a response and is not retained by the provider. During early access, the exact deployment region is being verified.

6.4 Export and deletion.

You may export all data you have entered at any time, in standard formats. You may also delete your account and all associated data at any time. Deletion is actual deletion, not soft deletion. There is a 30-day recovery window, after which deletion is irrevocable.

7. Limitations of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by South African law:

• The service is provided “as is” and “as available.” We make no warranty that it will be error-free, uninterrupted, or fit for any particular purpose.
• We are not liable for any loss you suffer as a result of relying on any information, calculation, recommendation, or document produced by the service, unless that loss was caused by our gross negligence or willful misconduct.
• Where we are liable, our aggregate liability is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you have paid in the 12 months preceding the claim, or (b) R 5,000.
• We are not liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential loss.

These limitations do not exclude or limit any liability that cannot be excluded under South African law, including liability under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 where it applies.

8. Termination and deletion

You may close your account at any time. Closure triggers the deletion process described in section 6.4.

We may suspend or terminate your account if we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms, if we are legally required to, or if we discontinue the service. Where we terminate without cause, we will give you 30 days' notice by email and an opportunity to export your data.

9. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Where the change is material, we will notify you by email and in the product at least 30 days before the change takes effect. If you do not agree, you may close your account before the change takes effect. Continued use constitutes acceptance.

10. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa. Any dispute will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the South African courts.

Before resorting to litigation, we ask that you contact us first at support@fightingchance.co.za. We will respond within 14 days and make a good-faith effort to resolve the matter.