About INHERIT
Who built it, why it's open, and how it's governed.
Why this matters
When someone dies without clear instructions, their family doesn't just grieve — they're thrown into months of confusion, legal stress, and often bitter arguments. I've watched it happen too many times. People who were organised in life suddenly left chaos behind them.Rich Davies, Founder
The painful truth is that most families in the UK don't have a will — not because they don't care, but because the process feels overwhelming, expensive, or something they'll "get round to later."
Estate planning technology is fragmented. Solicitors, banks, insurers, financial advisers, and government bodies all handle estate data — but none of them can share it. Every handover is a PDF, a spreadsheet, or a phone call. Data is re-keyed, errors are introduced, and families wait weeks for processes that should take days.
INHERIT is a common language for estate data. One format that captures people, assets, bequests, trusts, relationships, tax positions, and jurisdiction-specific rules in a way that any system can read and write.
This isn't about replacing solicitors. It's about making their job easier and giving families a fighting chance at a smoother transition. If an open standard can help even one family avoid months of stress and legal fees, then every hour spent building this was worth it.
The people behind INHERIT
Rich Davies
Creator of INHERIT and founder of Testate Technologies Ltd, which builds estate planning software — WillScan.ai ↗ (live), MyFamilyInherits, LegacyLists, and WillsInFaith. Rich open-sourced INHERIT under Apache 2.0 because a data format only works if everyone can use it.
Juan Cruz Viotti
Co-author of Unifying Business, Data, and Code (O'Reilly, 2024). Creator of the Sourcemeta ↗ JSON Schema toolchain. Juan's tooling powers INHERIT's validation engine, and his expertise has shaped the standard's architecture.
Interested in contributing your expertise? We're looking for jurisdiction partners, implementation partners, and institutional supporters.
Become a partner →Governance & trust
Free open licence
Apache 2.0, irrevocable. Free to use, free to implement, free to build upon. No licence fees, ever.
21 jurisdictions
England & Wales, Scotland, US, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Islamic succession, and more. Each encodes local tax rules, court procedures, and succession law.
Independence roadmap
Currently in stewardship by Testate Technologies. When 5 jurisdiction partners and 3 institutional endorsements are reached, governance transfers to an independent body.
Backwards compatible
Breaking changes require a 12-month deprecation period. Open contribution via pull requests, issues, and discussions.
Full details: Governance Charter →
Where INHERIT is heading
Testate Technologies' own products are the first to adopt INHERIT. As independent adopters join, this section will grow to reflect the community using the standard.
MyFamilyInherits
Family estate planning platform.
LegacyLists
Collection management with estate planning.
WillsInFaith
Faith-aware estate planning.
Building with INHERIT? We'd love to feature your implementation.
Partner with us →