Effective Date: August 10, 2026
These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of the PCA Investigators website, client portal, and investigative research services provided by Percival, Carter & Associates Investigators (“PCA Investigators,” “PCAI,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).
By accessing our website, creating an account, submitting a case, purchasing services, or otherwise using our services, you agree to these Terms.
If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use our services.
Important: These Terms contain provisions concerning payments, refunds, service limitations, report verification, liability, dispute resolution, and other legal matters. The final version should be reviewed and approved by qualified counsel before publication.
1. Our Services
PCA Investigators provides independent probate research, missing-heir investigations, beneficiary research, family-history research, and related investigative research services.
Our services may include researching:
- Probate records
- Court filings
- Obituaries
- Genealogical and historical records
- Family relationships
- Potential heirs and beneficiaries and
- Other records reasonably available within the scope of an investigation.
We serve probate matters in all 50 states, including all 254 Texas counties, and research family lines wherever they lead.
We provide research findings and documentation to help clients and the professionals handling an estate understand the information uncovered during an investigation.
2. No Legal Advice
PCA Investigators is an independent investigative research firm.
We do not provide legal advice, legal representation, probate advice, or legal opinions.
Our research and reports do not determine legal heirship, probate rights, entitlement to an estate, or any other legal question.
Questions concerning the legal effect of our findings or the appropriate legal process should be directed to qualified legal counsel.
3. Investigation Scope and Results
Every investigation is different. The scope and timing of an investigation depend on factors including:
- The information available at intake
- The complexity of the family history
- The availability and accessibility of records
- The number of people being researched and
- Whether research extends across state or national borders.
We do not guarantee that every heir, beneficiary, relative, or other person will be located or identified.
We do not guarantee a particular research result, percentage of success, legal outcome, probate outcome, or recovery from an estate.
Our findings reflect the research conducted and the information reasonably available within the scope of the engagement.
PCA Investigators does not represent that an identity has been established to a forensic standard.
4. Client Responsibilities
You agree to provide information that is accurate and complete to the best of your knowledge and to update material information when necessary.
You are responsible for ensuring that you have an appropriate legal and lawful basis to provide personal information about other people to PCA Investigators.
This is particularly important where information concerns heirs, beneficiaries, relatives, witnesses, informants, or other third parties.
You must not submit information for an unlawful purpose or use our services to harass, threaten, defraud, stalk, or otherwise harm another person.
5. Accounts
Certain services require a client account.
You are responsible for:
- Providing accurate account information
- Maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials
- Taking reasonable steps to prevent unauthorized access to your account and
- Notifying us if you believe your account has been compromised.
The client portal allows authorized users to submit and track cases and access reports and related documents.
We may restrict, suspend, or terminate access when reasonably necessary to protect the service, our users, our personnel, or the integrity of an investigation.
6. Fees and Billing
Our standard pricing is $200 for each person we locate and verify. There is no charge for a person we are unable to locate.
The charge is based on the number of people our team locates and verifies, as recorded when the report is approved, not on the number of people submitted for research.
Unless otherwise agreed, individual and guest clients pay through Stripe after verification is complete. Reports are released once payment is received.
Firm clients may be eligible for per-work-order billing or monthly invoicing. Monthly invoicing is a credit arrangement that is determined by PCA Investigators and is not a self-selected payment option.
The system may support coupons, promotional codes, volume-discount tiers, credit limits, tax-exempt status, and other configurable payment terms when offered by PCA Investigators.
Any applicable taxes or other charges will be handled as presented during the applicable transaction or billing process.
7. Payment Processing
Card payments are processed by Stripe.
PCA Investigators does not store full payment-card numbers in its database. Our system may retain a Stripe customer identifier and limited card information such as card brand and last four digits.
By submitting a payment, you authorize the applicable charge under the terms presented during checkout or agreed for your account.
8. Cancellation and Refunds
If a case is cancelled, the PCA Investigators system automatically issues a Stripe refund for confirmed charges associated with the cancelled case, subject to the operation of the applicable payment and cancellation process.
Cancellation also causes the associated live work order to be cancelled.
[COUNSEL TO CONFIRM THE FINAL CONTRACTUAL REFUND STANDARD, INCLUDING WHETHER ANY EXCEPTIONS OR LIMITATIONS SHOULD APPLY. THE LANGUAGE MUST REMAIN CONSISTENT WITH THE ACTUAL AUTOMATED REFUND BEHAVIOR OF THE SYSTEM.]
9. Reports and Verification
Every completed matter produces an investigation report.
Before delivery, the report is reviewed by a verifier independent of the researcher.
Reports are associated with a hash and an immutable snapshot so that the integrity of the report can be verified.
PCA Investigators provides a public report-verification route. Anyone who possesses the applicable verification hash can use that route to confirm whether the report associated with that hash has been altered.
The verification function is an integrity check. It is not a substitute for legal review, independent evaluation of the research, or legal determination of heirship.
Report and invoice PDFs are available for download through the authenticated client portal by the owning client.
10. No Guarantee of a Particular Outcome
PCA Investigators does not guarantee:
- That every potential heir or beneficiary will be located
- That a person identified through research is legally entitled to an estate
- That an estate will be able to proceed or close
- That a probate court will accept a particular finding
- That a particular person will respond to contact efforts
- That records will be complete or accurate or
- That research will produce a particular legal or financial result.
Our reports describe the research conducted, sources reviewed, and findings reached within the scope of the engagement.
11. Research Sources and Limitations
Our researchers may review probate, public, historical, genealogical, and other records reasonably available within the scope of an investigation.
Records may be incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, unavailable, sealed, restricted, or inconsistent with other records.
PCA Investigators does not control the accuracy, availability, completeness, or continued existence of third-party records.
Research findings should therefore be evaluated in the context of the records and information available to the researcher.
12. Prohibited Uses
You may not use PCA Investigators services or the client portal to:
- Commit or facilitate unlawful activity
- Harass, threaten, stalk, or intimidate another person
- Defraud another person or organization
- Circumvent applicable access restrictions
- Attempt to obtain unauthorized access to another account or case
- Interfere with the operation or security of the website or portal
- Submit knowingly false or misleading information or
- Use information obtained through our services for a purpose prohibited by applicable law.
13. Confidentiality and Personal Information
Our handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy.
Investigation matters may contain highly sensitive information, including information concerning decedents, heirs, beneficiaries, relatives, and other individuals.
Access to the client portal is controlled according to user roles and authorization permissions.
You are responsible for protecting information you receive through your account and for using that information lawfully.
14. Intellectual Property
The PCA Investigators website, client portal, software, branding, text, graphics, reports, templates, and other materials made available by PCA Investigators are owned by or licensed to PCA Investigators unless otherwise indicated.
You may use reports and other deliverables provided to you for the purposes for which they were supplied and subject to applicable law and any separate written agreement.
You may not reproduce, modify, distribute, sell, or commercially exploit PCA Investigators materials except as permitted by law or expressly authorized by PCA Investigators.
15. Third-Party Services
Certain portions of our services depend on third-party providers, including hosting, payment processing, analytics, web-font, and bot-protection providers.
Third-party services may be governed by their own terms and policies.
PCA Investigators is not responsible for the independent operation of third-party services outside our reasonable control.
16. Service Availability and Changes
We may modify, suspend, or discontinue portions of the website, client portal, or services from time to time.
We do not guarantee that the website or portal will always be available, uninterrupted, error-free, or free from security vulnerabilities.
We may perform maintenance, security updates, or other changes that temporarily affect availability.
17. Disclaimer of Warranties
[COUNSEL TO INSERT AND APPROVE THE FINAL WARRANTY DISCLAIMER.]
The final Terms should address the extent to which the website, portal, research services, records, reports, and other services are provided with or without warranties permitted under applicable law.
No warranty language should be interpreted to override any representation expressly made elsewhere in these Terms concerning the actual services provided.
18. Limitation of Liability
[COUNSEL TO INSERT AND APPROVE THE FINAL LIMITATION-OF-LIABILITY PROVISION, INCLUDING ANY APPLICABLE CAP, EXCLUSIONS, AND REQUIRED STATE-LAW LANGUAGE.]
19. Indemnification
[COUNSEL TO INSERT AND APPROVE THE FINAL INDEMNIFICATION PROVISION.]
20. Dispute Resolution
[COUNSEL TO INSERT AND APPROVE THE FINAL DISPUTE-RESOLUTION PROVISION, INCLUDING WHETHER CLAIMS ARE SUBJECT TO ARBITRATION, ANY CLASS-ACTION WAIVER, NOTICE REQUIREMENTS, AND PROCEDURAL TERMS.]
21. Governing Law
[COUNSEL TO CONFIRM THE GOVERNING LAW AND VENUE PROVISIONS BEFORE PUBLICATION.]
The governing-law provision should identify the applicable state law and any appropriate venue or jurisdiction.
22. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time.
When we make changes, we will update the Effective Date at the top of the Terms.
Your continued use of the website, client portal, or services after the effective date of revised Terms constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms to the extent permitted by applicable law.
23. Severability
[COUNSEL TO REVIEW AND APPROVE FINAL STANDARD CONTRACTUAL SEVERABILITY LANGUAGE.]
24. Entire Agreement
[COUNSEL TO REVIEW AND APPROVE FINAL INTEGRATION/ENTIRE-AGREEMENT LANGUAGE AND ITS INTERACTION WITH INDIVIDUAL ENGAGEMENTS, WORK ORDERS, INVOICES, OR OTHER WRITTEN AGREEMENTS.]
25. Contact
Questions concerning these Terms may be directed to:
Percival, Carter & Associates Investigators
8220 Louetta Rd, PMB 1098
Spring, TX 77379
(832) 281-2571
info@pcainvestigators.com
PCA Investigators is an independent investigative research firm and does not provide legal advice.