Munro & Co

The Problem#

• Scots succession law is fundamentally different from English law — no Grant of Probate (Scotland uses Confirmation, issued by the Sheriff Court), automatic prior rights for surviving spouses, and automatic legal rights (legitim) for children regardless of the will
• Prior rights thresholds change over time (updated periodically by the Scottish Government) and must be applied as at the date of death
• Munro & Co handles 40-50 intestate estates per year but cannot afford bespoke case management software
• The firm uses generic office tools and submits paper applications to Edinburgh Sheriff Court
• Each application requires manually calculating prior rights thresholds and legal rights fractions — taking 1-2 hours per estate with paper reference tables

How They’d Use INHERIT#

• Use the scotland extension to structure each estate: confirmation object with sheriffCourt: "Edinburgh", confirmationType ("confirmation" or "small_estate_certificate"), and inventoryValue
• Model the three prior rights via priorRights — dwellinghouseRight, furnitureRight, and financialProvision — each as a common/temporal-rule.json reference that automatically applies the correct threshold for the date of death
• Record legal rights in the legalRights object: jusRelictae (spouse’s share — 1/3 with children, 1/2 without), legitim (children’s share — 1/3 with surviving spouse, 1/2 without), and deadsPart (the freely disposable remainder)
• Set estate.json with domicile to Scotland via common/jurisdiction.json, use person.json for the deceased and claimants, asset.json and property.json for estate contents
• Capture family relationships in kinship.json to determine prior rights and legal rights entitlements

The Integration#

• Export-focused: Munro & Co generates INHERIT documents from estate records and submits them alongside Confirmation applications
• If Edinburgh Sheriff Court adopts INHERIT, the structured format would allow auto-population of court systems, reducing the current 8-12 week manual processing time

The Business Case#

• 80-100 hours saved per year on manual prior rights calculations and structured inventory preparation
• Time savings allow the firm to handle an additional 5-8 estates annually without hiring — generating approximately £15,000-£24,000 in additional fee income
• Structured Confirmation inventories reduce errors that currently cause Sheriff Court returns and delays
• A sole practitioner gains access to the same data structure used by large firms — levelling the playing field

Before / After#

Without INHERIT:

1. Munro receives instructions for an intestate estate in Edinburgh
2. He looks up the current prior rights thresholds in paper tables, cross-referencing against the date of death to find the correct historic values
3. He manually calculates the surviving spouse’s dwellinghouse right, furniture right, and financial provision — checking each against the threshold
4. He calculates legitim and jus relictae fractions based on the family structure
5. He prepares a paper inventory for Edinburgh Sheriff Court, typing asset details into a template
6. The paper application is posted; Confirmation is issued after 8-12 weeks

With INHERIT:

1. Munro enters the estate data into an INHERIT-compatible tool — deceased, spouse, children, assets, property
2. The scotland extension’s temporal rules automatically apply the correct prior rights thresholds for the date of death
3. Legal rights fractions are calculated from the kinship.json family structure
4. A structured Confirmation inventory is generated from the INHERIT document
5. The application is submitted digitally; if the court accepts INHERIT, processing time is significantly reduced