Where There’s A Will, There’s A Way Abroad: Succession Planning Where Indians Hold Foreign Estates

When Indian families build wealth globally, the estate is no longer confined to one legal system. A London flat, a Dubai bank account, a Singapore brokerage portfolio, and shares in an overseas holding company may each sit behind different procedural rules, different document standards, and different court processes. From an Indian foreign exchange perspective, a person resident in India may hold, own, transfer or invest in immovable property situated outside India if that property was acquired while that person was resident outside India or was inherited from a person resident outside India.¹

Why Foreign Estates Need Separate Planning

The biggest mistake in cross-border succession planning is to assume that one Indian Will automatically solves everything everywhere. In practice, succession is usually administered asset by asset, country by country, and institution by institution. A foreign land registry, foreign bank, foreign broker, or foreign company secretary may each ask for its own set of papers before they recognise the heir or executor. That is why foreign estate planning is less about one grand document and more about building a legally coordinated package that can work in more than one place.

Assets, Location, Domicile: The Legal Building Blocks of Cross‑Border Succession

For cross-border succession, three questions matter at the start: what is the asset, where is it located, and what is the deceased’s domicile. The Indian Succession Act itself separates immoveable and moveable property and says that succession to immoveable property in India is regulated by Indian law wherever the deceased may have had domicile, while succession to moveable property is regulated by the law of the domicile at death.²

The Act also states that one domicile affects succession to movables.³ In simple terms, a foreign house and a foreign investment account should not be analysed in exactly the same way, and domicile can become very important for moveable assets. For HNIs, this means that the legal answer often changes depending on the asset class. A family may think of its overseas wealth as one pool, but the law rarely does. The planning exercise should therefore begin with classification, not drafting.

Build the Estate Blueprint First: Why Asset Mapping Comes Before a Will

Before preparing any testamentary document, the family should prepare a clean estate map. That map should separate immoveable property, bank accounts, securities, partnership or company interests, insurance proceeds, pension-type benefits, and any asset that sits behind a nominee or custodial platform. It should also record the exact name in which the asset is held, whether it is held singly or jointly, whether there is a pre-existing nomination, and what institution or registry controls the transfer after death.

This sounds administrative, but it is legally important. If the asset list is incomplete, the best-drafted Will can still fail in practice because the executor may not even know what has to be collected, proved, transferred, or reported. Once a grant is obtained in India, the executor or administrator may be required to file an inventory and account.⁴  A proper asset map therefore saves time twice: first while drafting, and then again while administering the estate.

Put The Will Architecture In Place Early

A will is still the central planning tool for most cross-border estates. A person who is competent to make a will may dispose of property by will, and an unprivileged will must be signed and attested by two or more witnesses in the manner required by law.⁵ That basic rule sounds simple, but cross-border estates raise a harder question: should the family use one global will or a coordinated set of wills for different jurisdictions?

There is no universal answer. Some families prefer one principal Will. Others use one Indian Will and one carefully ring-fenced foreign Will for specific overseas assets. What matters most is internal consistency. A Will may be revoked or altered by its maker at any time when competent to dispose of property by Will.⁶ So, if multiple Wills are used, the drafting must be extremely careful to ensure that the later document does not accidentally cancel the earlier one.

One Will Is Not Always the Same as One Process

Even where one Will exists, the administration may still happen in more than one forum. If Indian assets, Indian debtors, or Indian court enforcement are involved, probate questions cannot be ignored in cases to which the relevant provisions apply.⁷ Further, if a Will has already been proved in a competent court outside India and a properly authenticated copy is produced, Indian law specifically contemplates a grant in India on that basis.⁸

This is an important practical point. A foreign grant does not mean the Indian leg of the estate disappears. It may simply mean that the Indian leg can move through a recognised statutory route instead of starting from zero. For families with assets in more than one country, the real objective is not to avoid process entirely, but to avoid duplicated confusion.

Choosing the Right Process: Probate, Administration and Succession Certificates

Where Indian probate or letters of administration are needed, the jurisdiction of the District Judge is tied to the place where the deceased had a fixed place of abode, or where some property of the deceased is found.⁹ Once granted, probate or letters of administration have legal effect over the deceased’s property and estate within the scope recognised by the Act, and serve as conclusive evidence of representative title against debtors and persons holding the deceased’s property.¹⁰

Families should also avoid confusing probate with a succession certificate. A succession certificate is a limited mechanism dealing with debts and securities.¹¹ It is useful in the right case, but it is not the master key for every asset class, and it is not the primary title instrument for foreign immoveable property. That distinction matters because wealthy families often hold a mix of real estate, operating entities, and financial portfolios, and each piece may require a different transfer path.

Preparing Documents for Cross‑Border Succession: A Critical Planning Step

Cross-border estates often slow down not because the heirs are unclear, but because the paperwork is not in the form the foreign authority wants. Death certificates, marriage certificates, probate orders, powers of attorney, translations, notarised affidavits, and identity records may all need formal authentication before a foreign authority will act on them. Under the Hague Apostille Convention, the traditional chain of legalisation is replaced, for covered public documents, by an Apostille certificate. India is a Contracting Party to that Convention.¹²

This is why succession planning for foreign estates should include a document-readiness file even during the owner’s lifetime. Copies of passports, proof of address, title deeds, account statements, company constitutive documents, and family identity documents should be stored in an organised manner. A will is important, but the ability to prove facts quickly after death is just as important.

Choose The Executor for Practicality, Not Only for Sentiment

In a domestic estate, a family member may often manage the process informally. In a foreign estate, the executor’s role becomes more operational. The person may need to coordinate with foreign counsel, Indian counsel, banks, brokers, registries, and multiple branches of the family. The choice should therefore be based on reliability, availability, and ability to handle paperwork across jurisdictions.

Where the estate is complex, families should also prepare simple lifetime instructions for the executor: where the originals are kept, what passwords or access pathways exist lawfully, which advisers to contact first, and which assets require urgent protective action. This is not a substitute for the will. It is the bridge between the legal document and the real-world transfer process.

Common Oversights in Cross‑Border Estate Planning

The first common mistake is assuming that overseas assets can be “cleaned up later.” That usually produces delay, missing papers, and avoidable disputes. The second is using broad wording in a later will that unintentionally revokes an earlier jurisdiction-specific will.¹³ The third is assuming that a nomination, a joint holding arrangement, or an account mandate answers the question of beneficial succession in every jurisdiction. Often, it only answers who the institution will initially deal with, not the final beneficial entitlement.

The fourth is failing to think about domicile. The Act itself makes domicile relevant to moveable property.¹⁴ For globally mobile Indians, this can become a central issue. The fifth is mixing up probate, letters of administration, and succession certificates as though they are interchangeable. They are not.¹⁵

Conclusion

Succession planning for foreign estates is ultimately an exercise in legal coordination. The owner must identify the assets correctly, understand which legal system is likely to control which asset, put a valid and carefully structured will in place, and prepare the executor for multi-jurisdiction administration. The earlier this is done, the less likely the family is to face parallel proceedings, blocked accounts, document defects, and avoidable delay.

For Indian HNIs, the most sensible approach is usually not to search for one magical global solution. It is to create a disciplined structure: a proper asset map, a valid testamentary plan, a clear executor framework, and a document pack that can travel across borders. In cross-border succession, clarity is the real wealth-preservation tool.

Footnotes

^{1 Section 6(4) of the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999.}

^{2 Section 5 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{3 Section 6 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{4 Section 317 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{5 Sections 59 and 63 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{6 Section 62 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{7 Sections 57 and 213 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{8 Section 228 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{9 Section 270 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{10 Section 273 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{11 Sections 370, 372, 374 and 381 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{12 Articles 2 and 3 of the HCCH Apostille Convention.}

^{13 Section 62 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{14 Section 6 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

^{15Sections 213, 228, 270, 273, 370 and 381 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925.}

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.