DEAD MAN'S FILE POLICY

Effective date: September 2025
Last updated: September 2026


Business Continuity and Client Access


Black Anchor Design, LLC is a single-member company owned and operated by Bobby Robinson. Black Anchor Design has no employee, partner, replacement owner, successor designer, or successor firm designated to continue its services.


This policy explains how clients keep control of their websites, accounts, files, and business assets if Bobby Robinson dies or becomes unable to operate Black Anchor Design for an extended period.


My Commitment


Your website accounts and business-specific assets are yours from day one, including your domain, client-owned accounts, logins, content, data, and brand materials.


Website clients also receive a client-specific Dead Man's File containing the necessary credentials, DNS information, hosting details, platform information, project file locations, and build notes needed to operate, maintain, transfer, migrate, or rebuild their website.


Nothing specific to your business should be locked behind Black Anchor Design or depend entirely on Bobby Robinson's availability.


Black Anchor Design retains ownership of its pre-existing and reusable design systems, code, components, frameworks, templates, processes, and development methods. Clients retain ownership of their business-specific content, brand assets, data, accounts, and paid project deliverables, subject to the terms of their signed agreement and applicable third-party licenses.


Every payment made to Black Anchor Design for digital goods or services, including the 10% holding deposit and any milestone payment, is non-refundable from the moment it's made. There are no exceptions. See the Refund Policy.


What You Own


The following belong to you from the beginning of the project or, for newly created final deliverables, upon payment as required by your signed agreement:


  • Your domain name;
  • Your website-platform account;
  • Your hosting account when established directly in your name;
  • Your business email accounts;
  • Your analytics and search accounts;
  • Your advertising and social-media accounts;
  • Your business information and customer data;
  • Your written content;
  • Your photographs, videos, and supplied media;
  • Your existing trademarks and brand assets;
  • Your approved client-specific logo and identity files;
  • Your approved client-specific marketing materials;
  • Your client-specific strategy and documentation;
  • Your purchased third-party assets, subject to their individual licenses; and
  • Your project-specific final deliverables, subject to the payment and ownership provisions of your signed agreement.


Whenever technically possible, client-owned accounts will be created in your name using an email address and payment method you control.


Black Anchor Design may receive administrative access while services are active. That access does not replace, restrict, or diminish your ownership of the account.


What Black Anchor Design Retains


Unless a signed agreement expressly provides otherwise, Black Anchor Design retains ownership of its pre-existing, independently developed, and reusable intellectual property, referred to in this policy as "Black Anchor Background IP." This includes:


  • Reusable source code and code libraries;
  • Scripts, components, modules, and frameworks;
  • Original design patterns;
  • Reusable website layouts and layout systems;
  • Templates;
  • Reusable website architecture;
  • Internal tools and development systems;
  • Processes, workflows, and methods;
  • Unused concepts and design directions; and
  • General knowledge, skills, and techniques used across multiple projects.


Black Anchor Design does not claim ownership of your client-provided materials, business data, client-owned accounts, existing intellectual property, or project-specific final deliverables transferred to you under a signed agreement.


Your ownership of your website and project-specific deliverables does not transfer ownership of Black Anchor Background IP incorporated into those deliverables.


Your Right to Continue Using the Website


For work delivered and paid for as required by your signed agreement, Black Anchor Design grants you a perpetual, worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free, and irrevocable license to use any Black Anchor Background IP incorporated into your delivered website or project-specific final deliverables.


This license allows you and any provider you appoint to:


  • Keep the website online;
  • Operate, maintain, and repair it;
  • Change its content;
  • Modify its appearance or functionality;
  • Update or replace integrations;
  • Move it to another hosting provider;
  • Migrate it to another platform;
  • Rebuild or replace it for your business; and
  • Continue using the delivered design for your own business purposes.


You do not need additional permission from Black Anchor Design, Bobby Robinson, or a representative of Black Anchor Design to operate, maintain, modify, transfer, migrate, or rebuild your website for your own business.


This license does not allow you or another provider to extract, resell, sublicense, publish, distribute, or reuse Black Anchor Background IP as a standalone product or for an unrelated third-party project.


Your Client Dead Man's File


Black Anchor Design provides each website client with a client-specific Dead Man's File. Its purpose is to give you, or a provider you select, the information needed to take control of your website without relying on Black Anchor Design.


Depending on the project and the services involved, the file may contain:


  • Domain registrar information;
  • Domain ownership details;
  • DNS records and nameserver information;
  • Website-platform information;
  • Hosting-provider information;
  • Administrative login details;
  • Secure credential-recovery instructions;
  • Database and file-location information;
  • Email-service information;
  • Analytics and search-account information;
  • Third-party services and integrations;
  • Software, plugin, and license information;
  • Website backup instructions;
  • Build and technical notes;
  • Brand and design references;
  • Project-file locations; and
  • Instructions for transferring or migrating the website.


Passwords, recovery codes, and other sensitive information may be provided through a secure password manager, a protected vault, or another secure delivery method, rather than being written in an unsecured document.


While services remain active, Black Anchor Design will use reasonable efforts to update the Dead Man's File after material technical or account changes made by Black Anchor Design. You are responsible for securely storing the delivered information and notifying Black Anchor Design of material account, ownership, provider, or credential changes made by you or another provider.


You should maintain your own current copies of important files, backups, credentials, recovery codes, and documentation.


When This Policy Takes Effect


This policy takes effect:


  1. Immediately upon Bobby Robinson's death; or
  2. After Bobby Robinson has been unable to operate Black Anchor Design for more than 30 consecutive days because of illness, injury, or incapacity.


This policy does not take effect during vacations, scheduled closures, ordinary project delays, short-term absences, or periods when Bobby Robinson remains reasonably able to communicate with clients and manage the business.


The 30-day period distinguishes prolonged incapacity from a temporary interruption. Nothing prevents a client from using credentials and account access already under the client's control during that period.


There Is No Successor


Black Anchor Design has no designated successor designer, developer, employee, agency, owner, or operating company.


No person is promised or authorized under this policy to complete unfinished work, continue operating Black Anchor Design, or provide ongoing design, development, hosting, SEO, maintenance, or consulting services.


A legally authorized representative may handle limited administrative matters, including:


  • Notifying active clients;
  • Locating company and project records;
  • Protecting or securing company-controlled accounts;
  • Providing available client-specific project materials;
  • Coordinating access to client-owned property; and
  • Winding up the company's affairs.


That person is an administrator, not a successor designer or developer, and does not become a gatekeeper or owner of client-owned property.


The representative is not authorized to issue refunds, credits, or reimbursements of any kind. Payments already received are considered the property of Black Anchor Design, LLC under the Refund Policy.


Before releasing project materials, credentials, or account information, the representative may require reasonable verification of the requesting person's identity and authority. The representative may provide only the materials reasonably associated with that client and project.


Active and Unfinished Projects


If this policy takes effect while your project is underway, no buyout fee applies, no further payments are owed, and you may engage any designer, developer, agency, consultant, or other provider you choose.


Your handoff will include the client-owned accounts and available project-specific materials produced or collected for your project, including, when applicable:


  • Strategy documents;
  • Client-provided content and media;
  • Approved brand assets;
  • Approved design deliverables;
  • Available work in progress;
  • Project status information;
  • Technical and build notes;
  • Client-owned credentials; and
  • The current available version of your Dead Man's File.


Work in progress will be provided in its then-current condition and may be incomplete, untested, unapproved, or unsuitable for publication without additional work.


Black Anchor Design cannot guarantee that another provider will complete the project for the original price, accept or continue the existing work, follow the original schedule, use the same technology, or preserve the original creative direction.


Any future agreement, fee, warranty, or obligation will be solely between you and the replacement provider you select.


Hosting and Third-Party Services


Your website should continue operating as long as its domain, hosting, platform subscription, security certificate, software, plugins, integrations, and other required services remain active, compatible, and paid.

Black Anchor Design does not own or control outside providers and cannot guarantee their availability, security, compatibility, pricing, continued operation, or uninterrupted service.


If a service is held in your account, you may continue to pay for and manage it directly.


If a service is provided through a Black Anchor Design-controlled account, you may need to establish a replacement account, purchase a new subscription or license, or migrate the website. Certain software licenses, subscriptions, discounts, agency plans, and provider-level services may be non-transferable.

Your Dead Man's File will identify known hosting, platform, DNS, and third-party dependencies so that your chosen provider can determine what should be renewed, replaced, reconfigured, or transferred.


Extraordinary Events and Natural Disasters


Black Anchor Design is not responsible for a delay, interruption, data loss, or inability to perform caused by circumstances beyond its reasonable control. These circumstances include:


  • Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, earthquakes, severe storms, or other natural disasters;
  • Widespread power, internet, telecommunications, or utility failures;
  • Pandemics or public-health emergencies;
  • War, terrorism, civil unrest, or government action;
  • Cyberattacks or failures involving hosting companies, software platforms, domain registrars, or other third-party providers;
  • Transportation or supply-chain disruptions; and
  • Other extraordinary, catastrophic, technological, human-made, or unforeseeable events beyond Black Anchor Design's reasonable control.


If such an event temporarily prevents Black Anchor Design from working, affected project schedules and service deadlines will be extended for the period reasonably necessary to resume operations. When reasonably possible, Black Anchor Design will make commercially reasonable efforts to notify affected clients, protect available client materials, mitigate the interruption, and resume operations.

An extraordinary event does not activate this policy unless it causes Bobby Robinson's death or prevents him from operating Black Anchor Design for more than 30 consecutive days. If either condition occurs, Section 6 controls.


Clients may continue using client-owned accounts, credentials, project files, DNS records, hosting information, and build notes already under their control during an interruption.


Nothing in this section guarantees uninterrupted or continued service from a domain registrar, hosting company, website platform, software provider, utility company, or other third party.


Payments


Every payment made to Black Anchor Design for digital goods or services is non-refundable from the moment it's made. There are no exceptions. This includes:


  • Deposits;
  • Retainers;
  • Project and milestone payments;
  • Holding or scheduling fees;
  • Consultation fees;
  • Hosting-management fees;
  • Maintenance-plan payments;
  • SEO-plan payments; and
  • Other prepaid services.


Payments compensate Black Anchor Design for work performed, reserved production capacity, project planning, administrative costs, incurred expenses, purchased materials, and commitments made in reliance on the project.


If this policy takes effect during an active project, you will receive the available client-owned materials and available project-specific work produced through that date. A payment does not guarantee that an unfinished project or future service will be completed following Bobby Robinson's death or prolonged incapacity.


A replacement provider may charge separately to inspect, understand, repair, complete, transfer, migrate, host, or rebuild unfinished work.


Third-party fees already paid, committed, or incurred, including fees for domains, hosting, software, stock media, fonts, plugins, subscriptions, licenses, and platforms, remain subject to the third party's terms and are not refundable by Black Anchor Design.


If this policy conflicts with a signed agreement, the signed agreement controls. Nothing in this policy creates a right to a refund, credit, or reimbursement of any amount already paid.


Data Security and Retention


Black Anchor Design will use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational practices to protect client credentials and sensitive account information while those materials remain under its control. No storage or transmission method can be guaranteed to be completely secure.


Client information will not be sold once this policy becomes active. A legally authorized representative may access company records only as reasonably necessary to protect accounts, identify and notify clients, provide available client-specific materials, comply with legal obligations, address a claim or dispute, or wind up the company's affairs.


Available project records may be retained for up to 12 months after services end, unless a longer retention period is required or reasonably necessary due to law, contract, taxation, backup systems, technical limitations, a dispute, or a claim. Records may then be securely deleted when legally and technically practical.


The Dead Man's File is a continuity aid, not a substitute for your own backups and records. Clients should maintain independent copies of all important files, credentials, recovery codes, backups, licenses, and documentation.


Controlling Agreements


This policy must be read together with your signed service agreement, proposal, scope of work, Payment Policy, Refund Policy, hosting terms, privacy policy, and applicable third-party licenses and terms.


This policy becomes part of a client's agreement only when it is incorporated into or referenced by a signed or otherwise accepted service agreement, proposal, order form, scope of work, or other contract.


If this policy conflicts with a controlling signed agreement, the signed agreement controls.


The version of this policy incorporated into the applicable agreement will govern that engagement unless the parties agree in writing to an updated version.


Governing Law


This policy is governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

Disputes relating to this policy are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state or federal courts serving Tarrant County, Texas.


Contact


 Bobby Robinson, Owner
Black Anchor Design, LLC
2833 Crockett St., Suite 502
Fort Worth, Texas 76107
817-818-7708
 hello@blackanchordesign.com