A workhouse is a poorhouse in which able-bodied persons are compelled to work. The term is most commonly associated with the industrializing nations of Europe and North America during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when many such individuals were required to enter the workforce in order to meet their country's labour demands or else be sent away to avoid becoming a burden on their family members. In English law, a pauper is any person who is unable to provide for his or her necessary expenses by reason only of being an indigent person, i.e., having no property to give an equitable claim upon. To make such a person competent to execute a will, it is not necessary that he or she should have been declared incapable of doing so by a court of justice; but inability to understand the nature and consequences of the act must be shown to exist as a fact - for example, if the person in question was of sound mind but merely of low intelligence. The expression "a poor man's house" is based on the assumption that a workhouse is like any other house in terms of its amenities and comforts.