Introducing INHERIT v1.0 — An Open Standard for Estate Data
2026-03-26 · Richard Davies
Estate planning has a data problem. Every consumer platform, every law firm, every professional tool stores estate information in a proprietary format. When someone dies, their estate data dies with their account. Professionals receive PDFs — or nothing at all.
INHERIT is the first open data interchange standard for estate planning information. Version 1.0 is available today.
What's in v1.0
The core release includes:
- 36 JSON schemas — 18 core (person, estate, will, asset, liability, beneficiary, executor, trustee, guardian, property, financial account, digital asset, insurance, pension, business interest, intellectual property, debt, and gift), 5 common utility types, and 13 jurisdiction-specific extensions
- OpenAPI 3.1 bundle with 109 REST API endpoints covering the full INHERIT lifecycle
- Test suite — 842 tests across unit, integration, and fixture validation
- TypeScript types auto-generated from the JSON schemas
- JSON-LD context for semantic web compatibility
All schemas are published under the Apache 2.0 licence and hosted at openinherit.org.
Getting started
- Read the primer — a 10-minute introduction to INHERIT concepts and data model
- Browse the schemas — full schema reference with examples
- Validate your data — paste JSON, get instant feedback
How to contribute
INHERIT is governed by an open steering committee. Proposals for new schemas, corrections, and extensions are welcome via GitHub. Firms interested in a steering committee seat can learn more on the partners page.
The standard is built in the open. Every decision is documented — including the ones we got wrong.