Nakamura Industrial Holdings

The Problem#

• The founding family holds shares in subsidiaries across six jurisdictions, homes in Tokyo and Singapore, and financial assets in multiple currencies
• Japanese forced heirship rules (iryubun) guarantee reserved shares to children regardless of the will, but interact unpredictably with foreign shareholdings
• Koseki (family register) records must be obtained from multiple municipalities — currently taking 3-4 months with physical visits to municipal offices
• No single document captures the full cross-border estate picture; six separate legal workstreams operate in isolation

How They’d Use INHERIT#

• Set estate.json with domicile to Japan and willType: "notarised" (kōshō yuigon format)
• Use the japan extension for core structures: KosekiRecord[] entries (with honseki, kosekiHead, kosekiReference), IryubunClaim[] for reserved-share claims (e.g. reservedFraction: "1/2" for the spouse), SpousesResidenceRight, and isanBunkatsu for the estate division agreement
• Model subsidiary shares as asset.json with category: "business" and subcategory: "unlisted_equity", each subsidiary in organisation.json with organisationType: "employer"
• Link to jurisdiction-specific extensions — japan for Tokyo, singapore-malaysia for Singapore property, us-estate for US subsidiary shares
• Capture double taxation treaty positions via common/tax-position.json between Japan and each subsidiary’s jurisdiction

The Integration#

• Bidirectional: legal advisers in each jurisdiction export their local estate work as INHERIT documents
• The lead Japanese adviser consolidates everything into a single multi-extension document
• The isanBunkatsu estate division agreement, once unanimously agreed by all heirs, is recorded and shared with all six jurisdictions simultaneously

The Business Case#

• Koseki compilation time drops from 3-4 months to 2-3 weeks with digitised municipal records mapped to KosekiRecord
• Consolidating six legal workstreams into one INHERIT document reduces coordination time by an estimated 40%
• Transparent iryubun modelling before the founder’s death avoids potential litigation costs of ¥80 million (approximately £430,000)

Before / After#

Without INHERIT:

1. Founder’s Tokyo adviser begins gathering koseki records from three municipalities — a process taking months
2. Each of the six jurisdictions’ law firms independently investigates local assets and builds a separate estate picture
3. Adviser in Japan discovers a conflict between the Japanese iryubun claim and the German subsidiary’s shareholder agreement — after months of parallel work
4. Coordination calls between six firms attempt to reconcile the overall estate; inconsistencies emerge in asset valuations and heir entitlements
5. The estate division agreement requires multiple rounds of revision as each jurisdiction reveals new information

With INHERIT:

1. Each jurisdiction’s adviser exports their local work as an INHERIT document with the relevant extension
2. Lead Japanese adviser consolidates all six documents into a single multi-extension INHERIT document
3. Iryubun claims and cross-border conflicts are visible immediately in structured data — identified in weeks, not months
4. The isanBunkatsu estate division agreement is drafted from the consolidated document and shared to all six firms simultaneously