People are rightfully concerned about the privacy and security of their personal data that they post on online applications.  They need to know that their information will not fall into the hands of people who have no business seeing their private postings.  We realize that when you post your private information on FAMILYandHEIRS.com, it is for your private use, in other words, it should be seen by no one (not even Family and Heirs personnel) except you and your designated trusted heirs. We fully respect your privacy.  All of your confidential information is kept in encrypted form on our highly-secure servers.  When you sign up for our service, you receive two passwords: an Account password, that you will use to post your answers to our Pre-Planning Questionnaire and to upload and manage your important documents, and a Read-Only password, which you can give to one or more of your trusted heirs, where they can view, but cannot change, your answers and uploaded documents.  Our site was custom designed and written.  We’re not built on WordPress or Wix or any other website template builder.  One of the important requirements that we presented to our developers was that we (the website administration and personnel) could not see any client’s confidential information, nor could see their passwords (because if we could see their passwords, then we could view their information), and for us, building the website as securely as possible was our top priority. 

Recently, many states in the United States have passed stringent online privacy laws which websites operating in those states must follow.  We are located in the State of Texas, and Texas is one of the states that has recently enacted online privacy laws.  We’ll focus in this blog post on the Texas law, but in many ways it is similar to the privacy laws enacted in other states.  The Texas law is known as the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (“TXDPSA”), effective July 1, 2024.

To learn more about TXDPSA, there is an excellent article written by the well-respected law firm Clifford Chance that discusses the key provisions of this law:  https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/talking-tech/en/articles/2023/12/the-texas-data-privacy-law-an-overview.html

As stated in the Clifford Chance article, the TXDPSA applies to a person or entity that: (a) conducts business in Texas or produces products or services that are consumed by Texas residents (which is likely broader than the "targeting" language seen in certain other State Data Privacy Laws); (b) processes or engages in the sale of personal data; (c) is not a small business as defined by the United States Small Business Administration. In contrast to most other State Data Privacy Laws, the TXDPSA does not expressly provide any data processing or revenue thresholds for applicability purposes.

We conduct business in Texas and provide a service that is used by Texas residents.  We do not “process” or “engage” “in the sale of personal data. We are a business which qualifies as a small business as defined by the SBA (see, https://www.state.gov/what-is-a-small-business/ ).

Per the Clifford Chance article, “the TXDPSA provides a variety of individual consumer rights that align with most other State Data Privacy Laws. These rights provide consumers with a right to access, correct, delete, and obtain a copy of their personal data, and to opt-out of the selling of personal data and/or sharing of personal data for targeted advertising.”

We assure you, and you can find this assurance in our Privacy Policy (https://familyandheirs.com/privacy-policy) that, “We will not sell, lend, give, or share your private information with anyone for any reason.”  We must, however, to the extent we are able to do so, obey lawful court orders.  (This may require us to engage the services of a specialized software engineer to get into the system in a manner not otherwise available to us in an effort to comply with a lawful court order.)