Vermont: explain when to choose Confidential with form-specific examples and authoritative help

[nonprofittechy]

Source and problem

Kris's Vermont testing on September 24, 2026: “When can I choose Confidential? For my financial forms? Protection order? Personal info? To me it’s all confidential.”

The choice needs to distinguish personal sensitivity from the court's actual confidentiality rules and give a usable next step for an unsure filer. Do not infer that an entire financial or protection-order filing is confidential merely from its subject.

Existing implementation

Static review of main at c2fd52b2d437e64644b7878a6c2c7dd9c3770c34:

• organize_documents.html already renders confidentiality help with the document choices.
• ui_text.py provides the organize_documents.confidentiality_help hook, whose generic default is “Choose confidential only when a court rule or court order requires it.” This general rule/order explanation does not itself answer Kris's concrete examples.

The confidentiality-choice infrastructure and Illinois wording work in #155 are completed. This issue is a Vermont-specific content/decision-support follow-up, not a reopening of that implementation. No current Vermont legal rule was independently validated in this code review.

Acceptance criteria

• Obtain Vermont court/partner review of the explanation, including whether the local wording should refer to a rule/order that requires or permits confidentiality. Do not copy another jurisdiction's legal guidance without review.
• Explain in ordinary language that selecting Confidential is a court filing designation, not a general preference to keep personal information private, and explain the effect of the available choices accurately.
• Give reviewed examples addressing Financial Disclosure, Disclosure of Exempt Income, waiver-related financial paperwork, protection-order materials, and personal identifiers. Identify any distinctions among forms, attachments, protected information, or applicable orders rather than making a blanket claim for a whole case type.
• Put guidance beside the document's confidentiality control and provide an authoritative Vermont help/resource path when the filer is unsure. Include any reviewed redaction or separate-confidential-form instructions where appropriate.
• Keep offered values/defaults and validation consistent with actual court metadata/rules; preserve saved user selections and do not silently change confidentiality based only on an AI guess or filename.
• Do not show a meaningless choice when confidentiality options are unavailable; retain the existing applicability behavior.
• Test Vermont-specific content, valid links, saved choices, and another jurisdiction's unchanged guidance. Have a first-time-filer reviewer demonstrate how they would find an answer for the listed examples.

Implementation suggestion

Use the existing ui_text hook with Vermont-maintained copy and a reviewed help resource; add document/filing-type-specific guidance only where verified rules justify it. Preserve the existing court codes and choice rendering, and coordinate linked/conditional content with #227/#198 rather than hard-coding legal rules into JavaScript.

Related

#74 covers reusable contextual help, #155 completed the confidentiality-choice foundation, #94 addresses filing types for these forms, and #79 distinguishes waiver paperwork from the waiver payment selection.