What clients ask about birth time accuracy

Birth time is the input that most changes what Meridian is allowed to say with confidence. These are the three questions that come up in intake and support mail most often.

"I only know the morning, not the exact time"

Meridian can still run the reading. The document will mark timing-sensitive sections with lower conviction or broader windows. You will see Working where a precise clock time would have pushed a finding to Clear or Full.

That is not a punishment for imperfect records. It is the engine refusing to fake precision. Clients who upgrade their time later can request a reread; the architecture treats better inputs as better evidence, not as a new person.

"My certificate time disagrees with family memory"

Use the certificate time for intake unless you have a documented reason not to. Family memory is valuable context for your optional question, but the engine keys ephemeris calculations to the legal record by default.

If both stories are plausible, say so in the question field. The reading can hold competing timing hypotheses without collapsing them into a single false certainty.

"Does daylight saving or hospital rounding matter?"

Sometimes. A thirty-minute drift can move house cusps in edge cases. Meridian geocodes place, resolves timezone from coordinates, and stores the intake snapshot used for generation. Small rounding usually shifts conviction on timing sections, not the entire Signature.

The practical advice: give the best time you have, note the source in the question field, and read conviction labels as the document's honesty layer about what that time supports.

For the full policy in plain language, see the Learn guide on exact birth time. This post is the short version we send when someone asks before checkout.