NextChapter

Terms of Service

Effective Date: April 15th, 2026

Welcome to Next Chapter. These Terms of Service govern your access to and use of the website and application available at https://www.next-chapter.cloud/, including any document upload, document analysis, action-plan generation, informational content, and related services we provide.

By using Next Chapter, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.

1. What Next Chapter Does

Next Chapter is a free informational tool designed to help people better understand documents and next steps after a layoff, reduction in force, termination, or severance event.

The service may help you:

  • Summarize severance agreements, WARN notices, benefits documents, RSU schedules, and related employment documents.
  • Identify possible deadlines, review periods, election windows, or practical next steps.
  • Flag issues that may be worth discussing with a qualified employment attorney, benefits advisor, tax advisor, financial advisor, or government agency.
  • Generate a general action plan based on information you provide.

Next Chapter is intended to make difficult documents easier to understand. It does not replace professional advice.

2. Not Legal, Tax, Financial, or Employment Advice

Next Chapter provides general information only.

Next Chapter does not provide legal advice, tax advice, financial advice, investment advice, employment counseling, benefits counseling, or any other professional advice.

Using Next Chapter does not create an attorney-client relationship, fiduciary relationship, advisor-client relationship, or any other professional relationship between you and Next Chapter, its operators, contributors, service providers, or affiliates.

You should consult a qualified professional before making decisions that may affect your legal rights, employment rights, benefits, immigration status, taxes, finances, healthcare coverage, retirement accounts, equity compensation, or severance.

3. No Guarantee of Accuracy or Completeness

Next Chapter may use automation, artificial intelligence, document parsing, and third-party services to generate summaries, explanations, flags, and action plans.

Although we try to provide helpful information, the service may be incomplete, outdated, inaccurate, or not applicable to your specific situation. Laws, rules, deadlines, employer policies, benefit plans, and court interpretations can change and may vary by jurisdiction.

You are responsible for independently verifying any information before relying on it.

In particular, you should not rely solely on Next Chapter to determine:

  • Whether to sign a severance agreement.
  • Whether you have a legal claim.
  • Whether a deadline applies to you.
  • Whether your employer complied with applicable law.
  • Whether to waive legal rights.
  • Whether to accept severance, benefits, COBRA, retirement, equity, or unemployment options.
  • Whether to take or delay legal action.

4. Deadlines and Time-Sensitive Matters

Employment, severance, benefits, unemployment, and legal matters may involve strict deadlines. Next Chapter may help surface possible dates or deadlines, but it does not guarantee that all deadlines will be found or calculated correctly.

You are solely responsible for confirming all deadlines with your employer, plan administrator, government agency, attorney, or other appropriate professional.

5. Eligibility

You may use Next Chapter only if you are legally able to agree to these Terms.

You may not use Next Chapter if you are prohibited from doing so under applicable law.

6. No Account Required

Next Chapter may allow use without creating an account. You are still responsible for all information, documents, and materials you submit while using the service.

7. User Documents and Information

You may upload or provide employment-related documents and personal information for analysis.

You represent that:

  • You have the right to upload or provide the documents and information you submit.
  • The information you provide is accurate to the best of your knowledge.
  • You will not upload materials that are unlawful, malicious, infringing, or unrelated to the intended purpose of the service.
  • You will not upload documents containing information about other people unless you have the right to do so.

You remain responsible for reviewing any output generated by the service.

8. Privacy and Document Handling

Next Chapter is designed to process your documents and information for the purpose of providing the requested analysis.

Our current public site states that personal information and documents are processed securely and are not stored after the session or analysis ends. This commitment should also be described in a separate Privacy Policy.

To the extent there is any conflict between these Terms and the Privacy Policy, the Privacy Policy will govern how personal information is collected, used, processed, retained, and deleted.

You acknowledge that internet-based services can never be guaranteed to be perfectly secure. You should avoid uploading documents unless you are comfortable submitting them for analysis.

9. Sensitive Information

Employment documents may contain sensitive personal, financial, medical, benefits, family, tax, immigration, or compensation information.

Before uploading documents, you should consider redacting information that is not needed for analysis, such as full Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, dependent Social Security numbers, medical record numbers, passport numbers, or other highly sensitive identifiers.

10. Third-Party Services

Next Chapter may rely on third-party providers for hosting, security, analytics, artificial intelligence, document processing, payments, email, or other operational functions.

We are not responsible for third-party services, websites, content, policies, or practices, except as required by applicable law.

11. Donations

Next Chapter may allow users to make optional donations to support the service.

Donations are voluntary and are not required to use the service unless clearly stated otherwise. A donation does not create any professional relationship, does not entitle you to legal advice or individualized professional advice, and does not guarantee any particular result.

Unless otherwise stated at the time of donation, donations are non-refundable.

12. Prohibited Uses

You agree not to use Next Chapter to:

  • Violate any law or regulation.
  • Upload malware, malicious code, or harmful files.
  • Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the service or related systems.
  • Interfere with or disrupt the service.
  • Reverse engineer, scrape, crawl, or abuse the service.
  • Misrepresent your identity or authority.
  • Upload documents you do not have the right to share.
  • Use the service to provide professional legal, tax, financial, or employment advice to others unless you are properly licensed and solely responsible for that advice.
  • Use the service in a way that could harm Next Chapter, other users, or third parties.

13. Intellectual Property

Next Chapter and its website, software, design, branding, text, graphics, workflows, and other materials are owned by Next Chapter or its licensors and are protected by intellectual property laws.

You may use the service for your personal, non-commercial purposes.

You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, sublicense, or exploit any part of the service except as permitted by these Terms or with our written permission.

14. Your Content

You retain ownership of the documents and information you upload.

You grant Next Chapter a limited right to process your uploaded documents and submitted information solely as needed to provide, secure, operate, troubleshoot, and improve the service, subject to the Privacy Policy.

If the service is designed not to store documents after analysis, then this license ends when processing is complete, except for temporary, security, diagnostic, legal, or operational records described in the Privacy Policy.

15. Feedback

If you provide suggestions, ideas, corrections, or feedback, you allow us to use them without restriction or compensation to you.

16. No Warranties

Next Chapter is provided "as is" and "as available."

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, whether express, implied, or statutory, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, reliability, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, availability, and security.

We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, current, or suitable for your specific needs.

17. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Next Chapter and its operators, contributors, affiliates, vendors, and service providers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including lost income, lost severance, lost benefits, lost opportunities, legal claims, tax consequences, data loss, or emotional distress arising from or related to your use of the service.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability for any claim related to the service will not exceed $100 or the amount you paid to use the service in the twelve months before the claim, whichever is greater.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations of liability, so some limitations may not apply to you.

18. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Next Chapter and its operators, contributors, affiliates, vendors, and service providers from any claims, damages, liabilities, losses, costs, and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising from or related to:

  • Your use of the service.
  • Your uploaded documents or submitted information.
  • Your violation of these Terms.
  • Your violation of any law or third-party right.
  • Your reliance on the service without appropriate independent verification or professional advice.

19. Changes to the Service

We may modify, suspend, or discontinue all or part of Next Chapter at any time.

We may also update features, remove features, limit usage, or change how the service operates.

20. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. The updated version will be posted on the website with a new effective date.

Your continued use of Next Chapter after updated Terms are posted means you accept the updated Terms.

21. Termination

We may restrict, suspend, or terminate your access to the service at any time if we believe you have violated these Terms, created risk for the service or other users, or used the service inappropriately.

You may stop using the service at any time.

22. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, unless another jurisdiction's law is required to apply.

Any legal action related to these Terms or the service will be brought in the state or federal courts located in California, unless applicable law requires otherwise.

23. Severability

If any part of these Terms is found invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts will remain in effect.

24. Entire Agreement

These Terms, together with any Privacy Policy or other terms posted on the website, make up the entire agreement between you and Next Chapter regarding the service.

25. Contact

For questions about these Terms, contact: stefan.schmitz@gmail.com

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