Refund Policy

Effective date: October 2, 2026

This policy is part of our Terms of Service. It is short because it should be.

Start here: our documents are downloadable files. Once you download one, we cannot take it back. That is the honest constraint and the whole reason this policy looks the way it does. A no-questions-asked refund on an instant download means giving away the product. So we do not promise that. What we promise instead is below, and we mean it.

The Dads Standard is not a law firm, does not employ lawyers to advise you, and does not give legal advice. We cannot refund you because a case went badly, because a judge ruled against you, or because a lawyer would have done better. We can refund you when the product was wrong.

3.1 The promise underneath all of this

If a document we sold you was wrong, we fix it or we refund it.

Wrong means: a factual error, a broken or unusable file, wrong state, wrong form, missing content we advertised, a citation that was already out of date on the day we sold it to you, a calculator that produced a result our own published method does not support, or a document rejected by a court for a defect in what we supplied rather than in what you filled in.

Tell us at support@thedadsstandard.com. Send what happened — a screenshot, the clerk's rejection notice, the page and line. There is no time limit on this one. If it is our error, we correct the file and re-send it at no cost. If a correction does not help you, or you no longer need it, we refund you. This covers the free tiers too: we will fix an error even where there is no money to give back.

What this promise is not. The law changes, and a document that was right when we sold it can stop matching your state later. That is not an error, and section 1.10 of the Terms says plainly that we do not warrant a packet reflects the law on the day you use it. What we do instead is keep the packets current: when your state changes its statute, schedule or rule text, we reissue the packet free. This section covers what was wrong when you bought it. The reissue covers what changed afterwards.

3.2 Instant digital downloads

This covers the parenting plans (.docx), state reference packets (.pdf), the support-calculator tool, and the modification kit.

You can request a refund within 14 days of purchase if you have not downloaded the file. We can see whether a download happened. If it has not, we refund in full, no reason needed.

Once you have downloaded the file, a change-of-mind refund is not available. You have the product. It cannot be returned. We say this before you pay, at checkout, and by buying you agree to it.

Downloaded files are still covered by section 3.1. Downloading does not waive the fix-it-or-refund-it promise. It only removes the change-of-mind option.

We will also refund a downloaded file when:

• You were charged twice for the same item.
• You bought the wrong tier by mistake and tell us within 14 days — in that case we will normally move you to the right tier and refund or charge the difference, which is usually what people actually want.
• The purchase was not authorized by you.

We will not refund because:

• You changed your mind after downloading.
• You did not use it.
• Your case went badly, you lost time, or a judge ruled against you.
• Your co-parent, your lawyer, or a mediator disagreed with the document.
• You decided to hire an attorney instead.
• Your court has a local rule or a local form we do not cover — although if we advertised your state and got it wrong, that is section 3.1 and you get a refund.

3.3 Subscriptions

Subscriptions are $9 per month, and $29 per month or $290 per year.

• Cancel any time from your account or by emailing support@thedadsstandard.com. Canceling stops the next charge.
• You keep access until the end of the term you paid for. We do not cut you off early.
• Monthly plans: we do not refund a month already started. Cancel before the renewal date.
• Annual plan: full refund within 14 days of the charge, as long as you have not downloaded subscriber-only material in that period. After 14 days, or after you have downloaded, the annual term is not refundable — but you can cancel so it does not renew.
• Renewal you did not notice. If an annual subscription renewed and you had not used it at all since the renewal, email us within 30 days of the charge and we will refund it. We would rather do that than argue with you about it. This applies once per customer.
• If we cancel you for a reason other than your breaking the Terms, we refund the unused part of the term.

3.4 The hand-checked services

Three tiers — Prove The Number, Both Sides Two Years and The Whole Record — include work a person does by hand. This is how refunds work for them:

• Before work starts: full refund, no questions. Email support@thedadsstandard.com any time before we begin.
• If your records never arrive. You have 30 days from purchase to upload them, and you can add 15 days from your account, up to two times. If that window closes and nothing has been checked, email support@thedadsstandard.com to request a full refund in writing.
• After work starts, before delivery: partial refund for the part not yet done. We will tell you clearly, in writing, on the day we begin, so you always know which side of that line you are on.
• After delivery: revisions first. If the finished work is not what was agreed, we revise it. If revision does not fix it, we refund it under section 3.1.
• Uploaded documents. If the service involves documents you upload and you withdraw them before we finish, we cannot complete the work. We will refund the part we have not performed.

If you paid for one of these tiers and it has not opened by the date we told you, you get a full refund on request, at any time. We will not hold money for a service we have not started.

3.5 How to ask

Email support@thedadsstandard.com with:

1. The email address you bought with.
2. The order number or date.
3. What you bought.
4. What went wrong, in a sentence or two. You do not need to write an essay.

What happens next:

• We reply within 2 business days.
• We decide within 5 business days of getting what we need from you.
• If we approve it, we issue the refund within 5 business days of that decision.
• Your bank or card issuer then takes its own time — usually 5 to 10 business days, sometimes longer. That part is out of our hands.
• Refunds go back to the original payment method. We cannot send a refund somewhere else.
• If we say no, we will tell you why, in writing, in plain language. You can reply and we will look again.

3.6 Chargebacks

If something is wrong, email us first. We answer in two business days and we would rather fix it than fight it.

Filing a chargeback before contacting us costs us a fee and usually takes longer than just asking. We may suspend an account with an open chargeback until it is resolved.

3.7 Your state's law

Some states give consumers refund rights that a policy like this cannot take away. If your state does, your state's law wins over this policy. Nothing here limits a right you cannot waive.