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Parent & Guardian Agreement

Parent & Guardian Agreement

Last updated: 6 October 2026 · Version 2026-10-06

This agreement is for anyone who creates a parent or guardian account on Bema. It forms part of the Terms of Service. It exists because a parent account is a window into a teenager's work, and both the teenager and the parent deserve to know exactly how that window works.

1. You are an adult

A parent or guardian account must be held by someone 18 or over. By creating one, you confirm that you are.

2. What a parent account is for

A parent account lets you support a student through their college applications: see where they stand, read what they are writing, leave comments and suggested wording, assign tasks, plan the FAFSA together, and search for aid.

It is a support role. The student owns the application. Bema is built so that nothing you do can silently become the student's work.

3. How you get access, and how it ends

  • You enter the student's email address. Nothing is shared until the student accepts your request from their own account. An unanswered request expires after 14 days.
  • The student may disconnect you at any time, and your access ends immediately. We will not restore it without a fresh request the student accepts.
  • Where parents are separated or divorced, each parent connects independently. You will not see the other parent's account, their comments, or their notes, and disconnecting one parent has no effect on the other.

We know a parent acting in good faith will sometimes find this frustrating. The alternative — a back channel around the student's consent — would make consent meaningless, and consent is why students trust Bema enough to put real writing in it. If you believe a student's safety is at risk, contact the appropriate authorities; Bema is not the right tool for that.

4. What you can and cannot do

You can: read the student's progress, college list, checklist, deadlines, Common App workspace and essays; comment on an essay; propose replacement wording; assign a task; write your own notes in the Decision Center; plan and fill in the parent sections of the FAFSA worksheet; run scholarship and grant searches; read the AI's explanation of any Common App or FAFSA question.

You cannot: edit the student's essay or any application field (a suggestion is a proposal only the student can accept); read the student's conversations with the essay coach or the AI counselor; see or edit the student's own section of the FAFSA worksheet; delete the student's work; or act as the student. The server refuses these, not just the interface.

5. How to use it well

  • Give a reason, not a replacement. "This tells me you were nervous instead of showing me" teaches something. Substituted wording does not, and an admissions officer can usually tell when an adult wrote a sentence.
  • Respect the private spaces. The coach and counselor conversations are the student's own thinking. Bema keeps them private from you by design; please do not ask the student to work around that.
  • Do not use the tools to harass, pressure or surveil. Comments and tasks are visible to the student with your name on them. We may close an account used to intimidate a student.
  • Do not create an account for, or as, the student. One person, one account.

6. The student's data is theirs

You may ask us what we hold about your child, or ask for it to be corrected or deleted, at getbemaai@gmail.com. Where the student is 13 or older we will normally tell them about your request before acting, and we will not hand over the content of their essays or private conversations without their knowledge — the way to see their work is to be connected. See the Children's Privacy notice.

7. Your own data

Your account, your comments, your suggestions, your Decision Center notes and your FAFSA entries are yours. You can export them and delete your account from Settings at any time. Deleting your account removes your comments and suggestions; the student's work is untouched.

8. Financial information

Bema helps you plan the FAFSA; it never files it, and it never stores Social Security numbers, FSA IDs, ITINs, A-Numbers or driver's license numbers — the server refuses them. Enter those only on studentaid.gov. Aid estimates in Bema are rough planning figures and are not financial advice.

9. The AI

The AI features you can use are explanations and searches. They can be wrong, and they say so. Nothing the AI produces is advice about your family's finances, taxes or immigration situation; for those, talk to a professional.

Contact: getbemaai@gmail.com