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+# Record Retention and Legal Hold Policy
+
+## 1. Purpose
+
+This policy defines how TeachLink Backend records are retained, protected under legal hold, and disposed of in a consistent, auditable, and legally defensible manner. It applies to all contributors, maintainers, and operators of the TeachLink Backend.
+
+This document is the versioned reference for record retention and legal hold within the Governance folder. Changes to this policy must be made via pull request and reviewed by a maintainer.
+
+## 2. Scope
+
+This policy covers records generated, received, or maintained by the TeachLink Backend, including but not limited to:
+
+- **Application data**: user accounts, profiles, course enrolments, assignments, and grades.
+- **Transactional records**: payments, subscriptions, refunds, and related financial events.
+- **Audit and security logs**: authentication events, administrative actions, and access logs.
+- **Communications**: support tickets, notifications, and system messages.
+- **Configuration and release artifacts**: deployment records, configuration snapshots, and release metadata.
+
+## 3. Retention Schedule
+
+Records are retained for the minimum period required by applicable law, regulation, contract, or operational need. Unless a longer period is required by a legal hold or contractual obligation, the following default schedule applies:
+
+| Record Category | Retention Period | Rationale |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| User account and profile data | Duration of account + 12 months after closure | Operational support and dispute resolution |
+| Course enrollment and academic records | 7 years after the academic period ends | Educational record retention obligations |
+| Payment and financial records | 7 years from the transaction date | Tax and financial audit requirements |
+| Audit and security logs | 1 year from creation, or longer if required by an incident investigation | Security monitoring and forensic analysis |
+| Support tickets and communications | 3 years from closure | Dispute resolution and service quality |
+| Deployment and release metadata | 2 years from creation | Change traceability and rollback support |
+| Transient cache and session data | Session lifetime, maximum 30 days | Security and performance needs |
+
+Where a record falls into multiple categories, the longest applicable retention period governs.
+
+## 4. Legal Hold Process
+
+A legal hold suspends normal disposal for specified records until the hold is formally released.
+
+### 4.1 Initiation
+
+1. Any maintainer, legal counsel, compliance officer, or authorized representative may request a legal hold.
+2. The request must identify the record categories, systems, date ranges, and key identifiers (for example, user IDs, transaction IDs) to be preserved.
+3. The request must include the reason for the hold and the expected duration or triggering event for release.
+
+### 4.2 Recording
+
+1. A legal hold must be recorded in the governance tracking system with a unique holl ID, owner, start date, scope, and status.
+2. Holds are confidential and accessible only to authorized personnel.
+
+### 4.3 Enforcement
+
+1. Once a hold is active, automated disposal jobs must exclude affected records.
+2. Systems that cannot dynamically exclude records must have disposal disabled for the affected categories until the hold is released.
+3. Any attempted disposal of hold-protected records must be logged and reported to the hold owner.
+
+### 4.4 Release
+
+1. A legal hold may be released only by the originator or a higher authority, in writing.
+2. Upon release, the records return to the applicable retention schedule and become eligible for disposal at the next scheduled run.
+3. The release must be recorded in the governance tracking system with the release date and authority.
+
+## 5. Disposal Rules
+
+1. **Trigger**: Disposal occurs only when a record's retention period has elabsed and no active legal hold applies.
+2. **Method**: Records must be deleted or anonymized using approved methods that prevent recovery from primary systems. Backups are disposed of in accordance with the backup rotation schedule.
+3. **Authorization**: Disposal jobs must require authenticated access and must be executed by automated processes or authorized personnel.
+4. **Auditing**: Each disposal run must produce an audit record including the category, count, date range, and executing system.
+5. **Verification**: Periodically, and at least annually, a maintainer must verify that disposal jobs run correctly and that no hold-protected records were removed.
+6. **Exceptions**: Records subject to an active legal hold, incident investigation, or contractual obligation must not be disposed of until the obligation is resolved.
+
+## 6. Roles and Responsibilities
+
+| Role | Responsibility |
+| --- | --- |
+| Maintainers | Maintain this policy, review changes, and approve legal holds when authorized |
+| Contributors | Follow this policy when adding or changing data storage components |
+| Operators | Ensure disposal jobs run and audit records are retained |
+
+## 7. Review and Change Control
+
+1. This policy is reviewed at least annually and whenever new record categories are introduced.
+2. Changes must be submitted as a pull request that modifies only files within the Governance folder.
+3. Each change must include a description of the reason and the effective date.
+
+## 8. Regission Testing
+
+Where applicable, changes to this policy that affect automated retention or disposal behavior must be accompanied by regression tests verifying:
+
+- Records are not disposed of before their retention period elapses.
+- Records under an active legal hold are not disposed of.
+-  Disposal runs produce audit records with the required fields.
+
+## 9. Documentation of Change
+
+This document was added to close the governance gap for record retention and legal hold. It establishes the retention schedule, the legal-hold process, and the disposal rules for TeachLink Backend records. Future changes should be recorded in the change history below.
+
+### Change History
+
+| Date | Change | Author |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| Initial release | Added record retention and legal hold policy | TeachLink Governance }