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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9360135" data-attributes="member: 42582">Not anyone can grant probate on a will. Not anyone can witness an affidavit. I'm not sure what the practices were around deeds of assignment of title to land in 17th century England, but I would not be surprised if they were typically witnessed by an official of some sort.The general point is that the absence of serious crime does not mean there is no legal system. The Shire clearly has a relatively complex system of private law, but JRRT does not tell us about its details. If, in a Middle Earth game, for some reason it came up that some transaction had to be performed (assignment of title to a Hobbit hole, adoption of a nephew, sub-division of a barely field, whatever it might be) I would be quite comfortable deciding that the witness can be a Shirriff, the Mayor, the Thain, or the Master of Buckland.This sort of thing did not need to be spelled out by JRRT, and in my vie does not need to be spelled out as part of world-building. Given how local and ad hoc legal systems were prior to nineteenth century rationalisations, it will be more realistic if the GM just makes something up on the spot that seems to fit the established fiction.</blockquote>