Legal

Age Policy

The Wyvern Fellowship Ltd · Last updated: 4 September 2026

This page states, in one place, the age rules that apply across the Site, and why we have set them where we have. It is referenced from our Website Terms of Use, Fellow Terms, Donations Terms and Contributor Agreement (a private agreement signed directly between Wyvern and each contributor, not published on the Site), which remain the governing documents for each of those relationships.

The rule

You must be 18 or over to enter into any contract with us — that includes:

  • taking out a Bronze, Silver, Gold or Patron subscription under our Fellow Terms;
  • making a Donation under our Donations Terms; and
  • becoming a Journal Contributor under our Contributor Agreement.

We ask you to confirm your age (by date of birth or self-certification) at the relevant checkout or sign-up step, and providing false information to get around this is itself a breach of the applicable terms.

Browsing the Site itself has no age minimum. Our objects extend to families and communities of all ages, and our free, public content (including the Mission Statement and non-paywalled Journal content) is open to all. If you are under 18, we ask that you use the Site with the involvement of a parent or guardian, and that you do not submit personal information through a contact, chapter-interest or other form without their knowledge.

Why 18, and why a single line

We considered whether to set a lower age for some activities (for example, a family-facing newsletter or a chapter event) and a higher one for financial commitments. We have chosen a single, simple line instead, for three reasons:

  1. Contractual capacity. A contract with someone under 18 is, in general, only binding on them for "necessaries" — under the Minors' Contracts Act 1987 and the common law, a subscription, donation or publishing agreement would not reliably bind a minor, exposing us to disputes about enforceability and refunds. Restricting all contracting to adults avoids this entirely, rather than requiring a case-by-case capacity assessment.
  2. The Fellow tiers already involve families, not minors as counterparties. Our Articles of Association and Mission Statement describe a network of "individuals, families and local groups," and the Fellow Terms note that a parent or guardian is the contracting party for a household. Keeping the contracting line at 18 is consistent with this: family participation happens through the adult Fellow, not through a minor holding a subscription in their own name. A lower age minimum would risk exactly the confusion this policy was written to avoid — between "family-facing" and "open to minors as direct counterparties."
  3. Simplicity and consistency across the Group's terms. A single age minimum, applied identically in the Website Terms, Fellow Terms, Donations Terms and Contributor Agreement, is easier to state, easier to check at each checkout, and easier to enforce consistently than different ages for different products.

Data protection note

Because the Site itself has no browsing age minimum, our Privacy Notice separately addresses what we do if we become aware that a child's personal data has been submitted to us without appropriate parental involvement, consistently with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 (which sets 13 as the age at which a child can consent to information-society services in their own right — a different question from the contracting age minimum set out above). This policy does not change or restate that guidance; see the Privacy Notice for how we handle children's data specifically.