Terms of Service

1. Agreement

These Terms of Service are a contract between you and ElderCare Matters, LLC (“ElderCareMatters,” “we,” “us”). By using ElderCareMatters.com you accept them. Families and visitors: Sections 1 to 5 and 12 to 17 apply to you. Providers: every section applies to you. Effective date: October 15, 2026.

2. The service

ElderCareMatters is an online directory and request service. Families search by care category and city, choose up to 10 providers per request (one category per request), and providers respond. We are not a care provider, home care agency, medical practice, law firm or financial adviser, and we give no medical, legal or financial advice.

Providers are independent businesses. They are not our employees, agents, partners or joint venturers, and we do not supervise, direct or control the services they deliver. We are not a party to any agreement between you and a provider. Any contract for care is between you and that provider.

In an emergency, call 911.

3. What “ECM Verified” means, and what it does not

Definition

“ECM Verified” is a term we define here. It has no meaning beyond this definition. When a provider listing displays the ECM Verified badge, it means that on the date shown with that badge, and on that date only, ElderCare Matters, LLC completed all three of the following:

1. Business registration. We confirmed through the records of the applicable state, county or municipal authority that the provider was registered and in active status, and that the registered name matched the name on the listing.
2. License status. Where the applicable state requires a license, certification or registration for the category of care the provider lists, we searched the database or public record maintained by the issuing agency and confirmed that the license was active and issued in the provider’s name. Where no license, certification or registration is required, this element does not apply and the badge rests on subsections (a) and (c).
3. Direct confirmation. We spoke by telephone with an individual at the provider who confirmed the provider’s operating address and the geographic areas it serves.

A listing that fails any one of (a), (b) or (c) does not display the badge.

What the badge does not mean

The badge is a records check performed on a single date. It is not an evaluation, a recommendation, an endorsement, a rating, a certification, an accreditation, or a warranty of any kind. Specifically, and without limiting the foregoing, the ECM Verified badge does not mean and must not be read to mean that ElderCare Matters, LLC has:

1. conducted a criminal, civil, credit or other background check on the provider, its owners, its officers, its managers, its employees or its contractors;
2. visited, toured, surveyed or inspected any location operated by the provider;
3. reviewed any complaint, citation, violation, enforcement action, disciplinary record, inspection report or state survey finding concerning the provider;
4. confirmed that the provider carries any insurance, bond or other financial protection;
5. reviewed the provider’s staffing levels, staff qualifications, staff training, or the credentials of any individual who would deliver care;
6. formed or expressed any opinion about the quality, safety, suitability or adequacy of any care the provider delivers or may deliver; or
7. confirmed any fact about the provider as of any date other than the date shown with the badge.

Re-verification and expiration

We re-perform the checks described above every 12 months for providers in categories requiring a license and every 24 months for all other providers. We also re-perform them when a provider changes its business name, legal entity, operating address, license number or category of care, and when we receive information suggesting a provider may have closed, moved or ceased operating as listed. If we are unable to complete a re-verification, we remove the badge from the listing. Removal of the badge does not remove the listing.

The absence of a badge means we have not recently confirmed the details described above. It does not indicate that we found a problem.

You are responsible for your own diligence

You should not select a care provider on the basis of the ECM Verified badge, this directory, or any content on this site. Information we do not have, and cannot provide, is available to you at no cost from your state licensing agency, from your state Long-Term Care Ombudsman, from your Area Agency on Aging, and, for nursing homes, home health agencies and hospices, from Medicare Care Compare at medicare.gov/care-compare. We encourage you to use those sources, to visit any provider in person before deciding, and to make your own judgment.

Full description

A plain-language description of what we check and what we do not is published at eldercarematters.com/verified. That description and this section are intended to be read together. If they conflict, this section controls.

4. Family use

The service is free for families. You must be 18 or older. Give accurate information. Submit only your own contact details, or details you are authorized to share, such as a request you submit for a parent with their permission.

When you pick providers and submit a request, you direct us to share your request with those providers, as the Privacy Policy describes. You choose how providers may reach you. Tell any provider to stop and it must stop. Email Help@ElderCareMatters.com to stop all contact.

5. Reviews and family content

Post only honest, first-hand experiences. Fake, paid-for or incentivized reviews are prohibited, consistent with the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials. You give us a nonexclusive license to display what you post. We may remove content that violates these Terms.

6. Provider listings

6.1 Accuracy

You warrant that your listing is accurate, current and complete.

6.2 Licensing

You warrant that you hold every license, certification and registration required for each category of care and each city you list, that each is active and issued in your legal name, and that none is suspended, revoked, conditioned, or the subject of a pending disciplinary proceeding. You will notify us within 5 business days if any of that changes.

6.3 Keeping your listing current

You will update your listing within 10 days of any change to your business name, legal entity, operating address, license number, ownership, or categories of care. You will update all other listing information within 30 days of a change.

6.4 Insurance

You warrant that you carry commercial general liability insurance and, where your category of care customarily requires it, professional liability insurance, in amounts consistent with industry practice for your category and your state. You agree to name ElderCare Matters, LLC as an additional insured on those policies on request, and to provide a certificate of insurance within 10 days of a written request. Providers on the Featured and Premium plans must provide a current certificate of insurance before the listing goes live and again at each annual renewal.

6.5 Compliance with law

You are responsible for your listing content and for complying with every law that governs your services. This includes fair housing law for senior living listings, and any state law governing referral or placement agencies as it applies to you.

6.6 Our rights

We may verify your credentials at any time, request supporting documentation, and suspend or remove any listing that misstates them. Removal for a misstatement does not entitle you to a refund.

6.7 Linking to your listing

We may ask you to link to your ElderCareMatters listing from your own website, and we may give you a badge or a snippet for that purpose. This is a request and not a requirement. Your plan, your placement, your listing and your access to requests do not depend on whether you do it.

7. Plans, billing and cancellation

Current plans, prices, included cities, extra-city fees and contact-detail windows are listed on the Plans & Pricing page, which is part of these Terms. The plan you buy at checkout, and its price, apply to you until we give notice under this section.

Paid plans bill monthly on the 1st. Your first charge is prorated for the days remaining in the month and is shown at checkout before you pay. Plans renew automatically each month until you cancel. The renewal terms, the recurring charge and the cancellation method are disclosed at checkout, and you consent to them there.

Cancel anytime from your dashboard. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid month. There are no refunds for partial months. Your listing then becomes a Free listing.

We give 30 days’ email notice before any price change. Changes apply at your next renewal after the notice period.

If a payment fails, we email you and you have 10 days to update it. If it is still unpaid after 30 days, your plan converts to a Free listing. We never delete a listing for non-payment. Your listing stays live, keeps its reviews and keeps receiving requests as a Free listing, and we remove it only if you ask us to.

A plan that converts to Free keeps one city, because Free includes one city. You choose which one. If you do not tell us within 30 days of the conversion, we keep the city matching your billing address, and if none matches, the first city you listed. Nothing is deleted, and your other cities are restored if you return to a paid plan.

8. Requests and family data

These rules protect families and the value of your plan.

Requests come first from families who picked you. If a family chose expedited matching and its picked providers have not responded, typically within 72 hours and sometimes sooner at our discretion, we may send the masked request to additional providers in the family’s area. You request contact details for expedited requests the same way, within your plan’s window.

A masked request shows care type, location and timing. You may request the family’s contact details during your plan’s window. Windows are fixed and do not open early.

Permitted use: contact the family about that request, through the channels the family chose, and provide the services they asked about. Nothing else.

Prohibited: selling, renting, trading or disclosing family data; adding families to marketing or newsletter lists without their separate consent; contacting a family after it says stop; using family data for any purpose beyond the request.

You must follow all laws when contacting families, including the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and CAN-SPAM. We pass you the family’s consent record. Call or text only within its scope, and honor every opt-out immediately.

Delete a family’s data promptly at the family’s request or ours, and delete all family data when your account ends.

Breaking this section is grounds for immediate termination without refund, and you will indemnify us for claims that result.

9. Articles and sponsored placement

Plans include article slots per year: Free 1, Basic 1, Premium 2, Featured 4. You may write articles yourself at no cost or pay us to write them ($350, $250, $200 or $150 by plan), with one revision round included and additional rounds at $50 each. Turnaround is two weeks from topic approval. Each article may contain one backlink.

All articles pass editorial review, must be accurate, must not promise care outcomes, and are published with the author’s affiliation disclosed. You license us to publish and retain them.

Paid search placements are labeled “Sponsored.”

10. Our content

The site, its design, text and marks belong to ElderCare Matters, LLC or its licensors.

Copyright complaints (DMCA)

If you believe content on the site infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent:

Include: (1) your physical or electronic signature; (2) the copyrighted work you claim is infringed; (3) the URL of the material; (4) your contact details; (5) a statement that you believe in good faith the use is unauthorized; and (6) a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act for the owner. We remove or disable reported material promptly, notify the poster, and accept counter-notices under 17 U.S.C. 512(g). We terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

Record keeping

We log every notice, counter-notice, action taken and date, and track infringement strikes per provider account.

Designated agent registration number: DMCA-1081162.

11. Prohibited uses

No one may: use the site unlawfully; scrape, harvest or bulk-download data; misrepresent identity or credentials; post false, misleading, infringing, defamatory or harmful content; probe or breach security; solicit our users for a competing directory; or use data obtained from the site beyond the uses these Terms allow.

12. Termination

You may close your account anytime. We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms. Sections 8, 10 and 13 to 16 survive termination.

13. Disclaimers

The service is provided as is. We do not warrant uninterrupted or error-free operation, and we make no promises about provider quality, availability, response times or care outcomes. Listing accuracy is each provider’s responsibility. Some states do not allow certain warranty limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

14. Limitation of liability

Neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, punitive or consequential damages. Our total liability for any claim is capped at the greater of $100 or the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose. Some states do not allow these limits.

15. Indemnification

15.1 Indemnification by providers

You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless ElderCare Matters, LLC and its members, officers, employees and agents from and against any claim, demand, suit, proceeding, loss, liability, damage, judgment, settlement, fine, penalty, cost or expense, including reasonable attorney’s fees and the cost of defense, arising out of or relating to:

1. the services you provide or fail to provide to any family, including any claim of personal injury, wrongful death, abuse, neglect, exploitation or professional negligence;
2. any content in your listing, including any statement about your licensing, credentials, services, pricing or availability;
3. your licensing status, or any action by a licensing or regulatory authority concerning you;
4. the acts or omissions of your employees, contractors, agents, or anyone acting on your behalf;
5. your use, handling, storage or disclosure of any family’s personal information received through the service, including any claim under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, any state consumer health data law, or any other privacy or communications law; and
6. your breach of these Terms or of any warranty in Section 6.

This obligation applies whether or not ECM is alleged to have been negligent, except to the extent a claim arises solely from ECM’s own gross negligence or willful misconduct.

15.2 Control of the defense

ECM may, at its option, assume the defense of any claim covered by Section 15.1 at your expense, or require you to defend it with counsel reasonably acceptable to ECM. You may not settle any such claim in a way that imposes any obligation on ECM, or that admits fault by ECM, without ECM’s prior written consent.

15.3 Indemnification by families

You will indemnify ECM against claims arising from content you post, from your misuse of the service, or from your breach of these Terms.

15.4 Survival

This Section 15 survives termination of these Terms and the closing of any account.

16. Disputes

16.1 Governing law

These Terms, and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or to the service, are governed by the laws of the State of Florida, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. The Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of Sections 16.3 through 16.11.

16.2 Informal resolution comes first

Before starting an arbitration or a lawsuit, you and ElderCare Matters, LLC agree to try to resolve the dispute informally for 60 days. To begin, send a written Notice of Dispute to Help@ElderCareMatters.com, or to ElderCare Matters, LLC, 630 E Fort King St, #48, Ocala, FL 34471. The Notice must be individualized. It must state your name, the email address and phone number associated with your use of the service, a description of the dispute, the specific relief you seek, and the amount you claim. It must be signed personally by you, or by ECM if we are the party sending it. A Notice signed only by counsel, or a Notice that is substantially identical to Notices sent on behalf of other claimants, does not satisfy this section.

Within the 60 days, either party may request an individualized telephone conference of up to one hour. You and ECM must each participate personally. Counsel may attend. Completion of the 60-day period, and participation in a conference if one is requested, are conditions precedent to filing an arbitration or a lawsuit. Any applicable statute of limitations is tolled while this section runs.

16.3 Agreement to arbitrate

If a dispute is not resolved under Section 16.2, you and ECM agree that any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of or relating to these Terms, the service, the site, any listing, any request, any communication sent or received through the service, or the relationship between us, whether based in contract, tort, statute, fraud, misrepresentation or any other legal theory, and whether arising before, during or after the termination of these Terms, will be resolved by binding individual arbitration and not in a court. This includes disputes about the scope, enforceability or formation of this agreement to arbitrate, except that a court, and not an arbitrator, decides whether Section 16.4 is enforceable.

16.4 Class action and representative action waiver

You and ECM each waive any right to bring or participate in a class action, collective action, consolidated action, private attorney general action, or any other representative proceeding. The arbitrator may award relief only to the individual party seeking relief, and only to the extent necessary to resolve that party’s individual claim. The arbitrator may not certify or preside over any form of class, collective or representative proceeding, and may not consolidate the claims of more than one person except as Section 16.8 provides.

16.5 Public injunctive relief

Sections 16.3 and 16.4 do not apply to a claim for public injunctive relief where applicable law makes that right non-waivable. Such a claim may be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction. It is severed from any arbitration and stayed pending arbitration of the remaining claims.

16.6 Small claims

Either party may bring an individual claim in small claims court in a court having jurisdiction over the parties, so long as the claim remains in that court and remains individual.

16.7 Collection of unpaid fees

ECM may bring an action in the state or federal courts located in Marion County, Florida to collect fees owed by a provider. Each provider consents to personal jurisdiction and venue in those courts for that purpose.

16.8 Coordinated filings

If 25 or more demands for arbitration raising substantially similar claims are filed against ECM by, or with the assistance of, the same law firm or a coordinated group of firms within any 90-day period, the demands will be administered in batches of no more than 50 demands each, plus a final batch of the remainder. Each batch proceeds as follows. Counsel for the claimants selects 25 demands for the batch and counsel for ECM selects 25. One arbitrator is appointed for the batch. One filing fee is paid per batch. Only one batch proceeds at a time, in the order the demands were filed. Any applicable statute of limitations is tolled for every demand not yet in an active batch. You and ECM agree to cooperate in good faith with the arbitration provider to implement this section, including by agreeing to a modified fee schedule. A court has authority to enforce this section, including by enjoining the filing or prosecution of demands out of sequence.

16.9 Your right to opt out

You may opt out of Sections 16.3, 16.4 and 16.8 by sending written notice to Help@ElderCareMatters.com within 30 days after you first accept these Terms. The notice must state your name, the email address associated with your use of the service, and a clear statement that you are opting out of arbitration. Opting out affects no other part of these Terms and will not affect your use of the service in any way. If you opt out, disputes are resolved under Section 16.12.

16.10 Rules, forum and fees

Arbitration is administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules for disputes with families, and under its Commercial Arbitration Rules for disputes with providers, in each case as modified by these Terms. The rules are available at adr.org. Arbitration takes place in the county where you live, or by telephone or videoconference at your election, or at another location the parties agree on. A single arbitrator decides. The award may be entered as a judgment in any court with jurisdiction.

For disputes with families, ECM pays all AAA filing, administrative and arbitrator fees beyond the initial consumer filing fee set by the AAA consumer fee schedule. ECM will not seek its attorney’s fees from a family unless the arbitrator finds the claim was frivolous or brought for an improper purpose, applying the standard of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Each party otherwise bears its own attorney’s fees, except where a statute provides otherwise.

16.11 Severability within this section

If Section 16.4 is found unenforceable as to a particular claim or request for relief, that claim or request is severed and heard in court under Section 16.12, and the remaining claims proceed in arbitration. If Section 16.4 is found unenforceable in its entirety, then Section 16.3 is void in its entirety and all disputes are resolved under Section 16.12. Section 16.4 is not severable from Section 16.3 for this purpose. If any other provision of this Section 16 is found unenforceable, it is severed and the remainder of Section 16 stays in effect.

16.12 Court proceedings

Where a dispute is not subject to arbitration under this Section 16, it will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Marion County, Florida. You and ECM each consent to personal jurisdiction and venue in those courts, and each waive any right to a trial by jury.

16.13 Survival

This Section 16 survives termination of these Terms and the closing of any account.

17. Changes and general

17.1 Changes

We may update these Terms. Each version carries an effective date and a version identifier. For providers, we give at least 30 days’ email notice of a material change, and it takes effect at the next renewal. For families, we post the updated Terms with the new effective date. The version in force when you submit a request governs that request. Continued use of the site after the effective date is acceptance of the updated Terms.

17.2 Changes to Section 16

A material change to Section 16 does not apply to any dispute that arose before that change’s effective date. A material change to Section 16 binds you only when you accept the updated Terms, which happens when you submit a new request after its effective date.

17.3 Severability

If any provision of these Terms is unenforceable, it is severed and the remainder stays in effect.

17.4 Assignment

We may assign these Terms, in whole or in part, in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of the business or its assets. You may not assign them without our written consent.

17.5 No third-party beneficiaries

These Terms are for the benefit of you and ElderCare Matters, LLC only. No provider has any right under a provision written for families, and no family has any right under a provision written for providers, except where a provision says otherwise in its own words. No other person has any right under these Terms.

17.6 Entire agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any plan terms shown at checkout, are the entire agreement between you and us about the service, and they supersede any earlier version.

17.7 Notices

Notices to us go to Help@ElderCareMatters.com, or by mail to ElderCare Matters, LLC, 630 E Fort King St, #48, Ocala, FL 34471. Notices to you go to the email address on your request or your provider account.

17.8 Survival

Sections 13, 14, 15 and 16 survive termination of these Terms and the closing of any account.