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project_scotland_as_second_jurisdiction

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descriptionSUPERSEDED 2026-04-22 by project_v2_architecture_locked_2026_04_22.md — under Option D (E&W + Scotland + Switzerland), Scotland is Phase-1, not Phase-2. Switzerland added as third Phase-1 jurisdiction. Retaining this memory for historical context + Scotland-specific legal-tradition analysis (jus relictae, legitim, heritable/movable, Sheriff Court confirmation) which remains load-bearing. Read the Phase-timing portions as HISTORICAL; read the Scots-succession-law substance as CURRENT.

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SUPERSEDED 2026-04-22 on Phase-timing only. Scots-succession-law substance below remains authoritative.

Rich’s directive (Sunday 19 April 2026): “i think Scotland should be the second target jurisdiction, as they are quite digitally sophisticated”

Decision: Scotland is the second jurisdiction target after E&W in INHERIT v2 Option F v1.1 phased rollout. Scotland Catala encoding begins concurrently with E&W Catala maximal-scope expansion in Phase 2 (M7-12); Scotland production-ready in Phase 3 (M13-18). NI + Republic of Ireland follow in Phase 3 or Phase 4. This supersedes the v1.0/v1.1 phase plan that grouped Scotland with NI + Ireland as “common-law proximity” jurisdictions.

Why Scotland as second — stronger than NI or Ireland on multiple axes:

  1. Rich’s primary reason — digital sophistication. ScotLII (Scottish Legal Information Institute) provides open access to Scottish primary legislation + case law. Scottish Government Digital Service Standard + Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service digital infrastructure. Registers of Scotland (land + property registration) has mature digital APIs. Office of the Public Guardian Scotland is digital-first. Scottish Law Commission’s ongoing succession-reform work produces machine-readable consultation documents. All of this lowers the friction of Catala rule authoring — statute texts are accessible; provenance (ELI-pattern URIs) plugs in cleanly.

  2. Distinct legal tradition — materially tests the schema. Scotland is a mixed legal system with Roman-law / civil-law heritage overlaying common-law adoption. Unlike NI (near-identical to E&W) or Republic of Ireland (adjacent common-law + EU law), Scotland has genuine divergences from E&W:

    • Forced heirship via “legal rights” — surviving spouse’s jus relictae (one-third to one-half of movable estate if children; one-half if no children) and children’s legitim (equivalent share). Not defeasible by will; cannot be cut out via testamentary freedom alone. This is NOT how E&W works — E&W has absolute testamentary freedom modulated only by Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 judicial discretion after death.
    • Heritable vs movable estate distinction — Scots law distinguishes these with different succession rules. Heritable (land + buildings) passes by heirs-of-line; movable (cash, securities, personal property) subject to legal rights. E&W abolished this distinction in 1925.
    • Scottish confirmation — procedural equivalent of English grant of probate, but with different court (Sheriff Court), different timeline, different documentation (Form C1 inventory), different succession-without-will rules (Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 rather than Administration of Estates Act 1925).
    • Intestate succession order — Scotland’s prior rights + legal rights + free estate structure is materially different from E&W’s Section 46 AEA 1925.
    • Testamentary capacity tests — Scotland uses “facility and circumvention” + “undue influence” doctrines alongside common-law capacity; case-law trajectory different. This is the first real cross-tradition test of Option F’s Catala rulebase expressivity + 6-family decomposition. If F can cleanly represent Scots succession alongside E&W succession, it validates the cross-tradition premise for the whole 21-jurisdiction thesis.

  3. Commercial proposition — cross-border estates are real. Many UK families have assets in both E&W and Scotland: primary home in one + holiday home or family-business interests in another; parents in Scotland + adult children in England; Scottish-domiciled testators with English property. InheritWills and MyFamilyInherits demonstrating multi-jurisdiction coverage from early Phase 2 is a real selling point — not hypothetical.

  4. Commonalities reduce friction — English language, GBP currency, UK legal practice framework, UK insurance + wealth-management products. The technical delta from E&W is the legal rules, not the operational/commercial surroundings. This is the right difficulty ramp for a second-jurisdiction encoding: genuinely hard legal work, but not compounded by translation, currency, or ecosystem divergence.

  5. Partner-solicitor availability. Scottish succession practitioners are abundant + English-speaking + well-networked with English wealth-management firms that have Scottish clients. Finding solicitor reviewers for Catala encoding (whether on AGPL+dual community branch or paid review) is tractable.

Why NOT NI or Republic of Ireland as second:

  • NI: Succession law is essentially English law (Succession (Northern Ireland) Order 1971 largely tracks AEA 1925; Wills Act 1837 as amended applies). Encoding NI after E&W is mostly a rebadging exercise — does not stress-test the schema or Catala rulebase against genuine tradition-level divergence. Good as third or fourth jurisdiction, not second.
  • Republic of Ireland: Common-law + EU-law overlay; Succession Act 1965 introduced a forced-heirship regime (legal right share for spouse; appropriate provision for children) distinct from E&W but derivative of earlier Irish statutes. More distinct than NI but less digitally-accessible than Scotland (Irish legal publishing is less uniformly open; statute updates less uniformly machine-readable). Better as third jurisdiction after Scotland validates the cross-tradition pattern.
  • Australia: Common-law across 8 states + territories, each with distinct succession acts. Rich’s geography + relationships + time-zones make the commercial signal weaker than UK-proximity. Better as Phase 4 commercial-signal-driven expansion.

Phase impact in Option F v1.1:

  • Phase 1 (M1-6): E&W InheritWills launch. Unchanged.
  • Phase 2 (M7-12): Rust SDK + first InheritKit customer + MyFamilyInherits ship + Alloy models for Wills/Trusts/Probate + E&W Catala maximal expansion + Scotland Catala encoding begins concurrently (late Phase 2, ~M10-12 start). Partner-solicitor engagement for Scotland rule review (paid or via AGPL+dual community branch).
  • Phase 3 (M13-18): Scotland production-ready live in InheritWills + MyFamilyInherits by M15 + TLA+ protocol invariants + Year-2 DB decision (Neo4j vs XTDB) + Go InheritKit SDK + Alloy models for Assets/Delegation/Catalogue + NI Catala encoding begins (M16+).
  • Phase 4 (M19-30): NI production-ready (M20) + Republic of Ireland + 1-2 additional jurisdictions based on commercial signal + enterprise-readiness + R&D custom-LLM prototype.

Schema + Catala implications:

  • Schema-level: Scotland’s legal-rights / prior-rights / free-estate structure needs first-class representation in the Wills family (testator’s forced-heirship obligations) and Probate family (Sheriff Court confirmation process). The heritable-vs-movable estate distinction is a first-class Assets family concern. Catalogue sub-family less affected.
  • Rulebase-level: Separate Scotland Catala module per family. Shared IHT kernel with E&W (IHT is UK-wide). Cross-family legal-rights computation requires Catala module imports across Wills + Assets.
  • Test vectors: Minimum viable Phase 3 test suite covers jus relictae + legitim + prior rights + Sheriff Court confirmation + Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 intestacy + cross-border estates (E&W testator with Scottish property; Scottish testator with E&W assets).

Ongoing reference: Scottish Law Commission (SLC) succession-reform programme is active — their Discussion Papers and Reports are the canonical source for forward-looking Scots succession direction. Keep SLC as a reference institution for the INHERIT v2 governance partner network.

Applies to: INHERIT v2 Option F v1.1 phase planning; option-F.md §6 phased delivery; scorecard v1.2 recommendation phase sequence; future scoping records (E&W × succession was the pilot; Scotland × succession is the next scoping-record target when Phase 2 starts).

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