Effective September 30, 2026

Privacy policy

What we collect when you use the ProbateBuddy website and questionnaire, why, how we protect it, and the choices you have.

1. Who we are

ProbateBuddy is a document preparation service operated by Erik Mitbrodt, a lawyer in British Columbia, operating as ProbateBuddy. ProbateBuddy is not a law firm, and his law practice is not part of this service.

This policy is written to meet British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), which applies to private organizations in this province.

Privacy officer: Erik Mitbrodt, [email protected].

2. The short version

• We collect the information the BC Supreme Court probate forms require, and nothing more.
• We use it to prepare your filing package, to deliver it, to support you and to take payment.
• We do not sell it, rent it, or share it with anyone for marketing.
• No personal information is used to train any artificial intelligence. The forms are filled from your answers by fixed rules; no text is invented.
• Your answers are stored in Canada. The questionnaire tool and the email service we use are described in section 6, including where they keep data.
• We delete questionnaire answers and generated documents 90 days after delivery.
• You can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.

3. What we collect

On the website. Nothing. The website sets no cookies, runs no analytics and has no forms. If you email us, we receive what you send and your email address.

In the questionnaire. The questionnaire asks for what the court forms require. When it opens, that includes:

• About the person who died: full legal name and any other names used, date of birth, date of death, last home address, whether they were a Nisga'a citizen or a member of a treaty First Nation (asked because the Rules require notice to the Nisga'a Lisims Government or the treaty First Nation in that case), and details about the will and any codicil: when they were signed, where the original is, and its condition.
• About you, the executor: full legal name, occupation, relationship to the deceased, mailing address, phone number, email address, whether you are represented by a lawyer and, if so, the lawyer's name, firm and office address.
• About other people connected to the estate: the spouse (name, mailing address, optional email address), children (names, dates of birth, whether each is a beneficiary or has died), other beneficiaries including charities and organizations, people who would inherit if there were no will, any co-executor who has died or is renouncing (name, address, date of death), and the person who will send the notices.
• About the estate's assets and debts: real property in BC (civic address, legal description, parcel identifier, assessed value, mortgage lender, mortgage account number and balance, tax deferment), bank and credit union accounts (institution, branch, account type, account number, balance), investment accounts (institution, type, account number, value), vehicles, other assets, and debts.
• Anything else you choose to tell the court about the estate, the number of certified copies you need, and your typed name confirming that you accepted the acknowledgement.

For payment. Our payment processor, Stripe, collects your card details directly. We never see or store your full card number. We receive a record that a payment was made, the amount, and the last digits of the card.

Technical information. Our website host, Cloudflare, records the internet address and basic request details of visitors for security purposes and keeps them for a limited time under its own terms. We do not use this information to identify anyone.

4. Information about other people

Most of the information in the questionnaire is about people other than you: the person who died, the spouse, children, beneficiaries and others. The court forms require it, and as the executor named in the will you are the person entitled to provide it.

We use that information only to prepare the forms. We do not contact those people, and we do not use their information for any other purpose. If one of them asks us what we hold about them, we will tell them, subject to the rules in PIPA about information relating to an estate.

Information about a person who has died is treated with the same care as information about a living person.

5. Why we collect it

We collect and use personal information to:

• prepare the probate forms for the estate from your answers, which is the purpose of the service;
• deliver the package to you and keep a copy for a short period so we can correct or resend it;
• answer your questions and provide support;
• take payment and keep the records the tax laws require; and
• meet legal obligations, respond to lawful demands, and protect ProbateBuddy from fraud or misuse.

By completing the questionnaire you consent to these uses. Under PIPA you may withdraw consent, but we cannot prepare the forms without the information they require, so withdrawing consent before delivery means the service cannot be completed.

We do not use your information for marketing. We will not add you to any mailing list. We do not make automated decisions about you, and we do not profile you.

6. Who handles the information, and where

We use a small number of service providers. Each is bound by its own privacy terms and holds only what it needs to do its job.

Because Jotform and Stripe are outside Canada, information they hold may be accessed by authorities under the laws of those countries. Once your answers are imported, the copy held by Jotform is deleted.

We do not disclose personal information to anyone else except: to a court or authority when the law requires it; to a professional adviser bound by confidentiality if we need advice about a specific matter; or on your instructions.

7. How we protect it

• Connections to the website and questionnaire are encrypted (HTTPS).
• The database is encrypted at rest and reachable only from our own systems.
• Access is limited to the operator. Provider accounts use strong passwords and two-factor authentication.
• We keep information only as long as section 8 says, and we delete it afterwards.
• Generated documents are not shared with anyone but you.

No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a privacy breach that could cause you significant harm, we will tell you promptly, tell you what happened and what we are doing, and notify the Information and Privacy Commissioner where that is required or appropriate.

8. How long we keep it

Backups are deleted on the same schedule, allowing for the time it takes a backup cycle to turn over.

9. Your rights

Under PIPA you can:

• Ask what we hold about you and how we have used it. We will respond within the time PIPA allows, and we may charge a minimal fee for copies where the Act permits it.
• Ask us to correct information that is wrong. Once the forms have been delivered, corrections to the forms themselves are made by regenerating the package.
• Withdraw consent, with the consequences described in section 5.
• Ask us to delete your information earlier than section 8 provides, which we will do unless the law requires us to keep it.
• Complain. Write to the privacy officer first. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.

10. Children

ProbateBuddy is for adults acting as executors. We do not knowingly deal with anyone under 19. Information about children of the deceased is collected only because the court forms require it.

11. Changes

We will post any change to this policy on this page with a new effective date. A change that affects how we use information already collected will be explained, and where the law requires it we will ask for consent again.

12. Contact

ProbateBuddy, privacy officer: Erik Mitbrodt
Email: [email protected]