NRI Will for Indian Assets: A Practical 2026 Guide

Yes, you can make one will that covers your flat in Pune, your NRO account in Kochi and your demat holding, and you can sign it in Dubai, London, Singapore or New Jersey. Indian law does not ask where you signed it. It asks whether the document meets the execution test in the Indian Succession Act, 1925, whether it describes your Indian assets clearly enough for a bank or a sub-registrar to act on, and whether it names somebody who can actually do the running around in India.

This guide is for NRIs who are alive and planning. If your family is already stuck on an inheritance claim, start instead with the NRI India problem solver.

Getting these five right is most of the job. The rest of this page is about the drafting detail that decides whether your executor spends three weeks or three years on it.

Until December 2025, Section 213(1) of the Indian Succession Act said that no right as an executor or legatee could be established in any court of justice unless a court of competent jurisdiction in India had granted probate of the will, or had granted letters of administration with the will, or with a copy of an authenticated copy of the will, annexed.

That section never bit everywhere. By Section 213(2) it did not apply at all to wills made by Muslims or by Indian Christians. It applied to wills of Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains only where they fell in the classes described in Section 57(a) and (b), and to Parsi wills made within the ordinary original civil jurisdiction of the High Courts at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, or made outside those limits so far as they related to immovable property inside them.

The Repealing and Amending Act, 2025 (Act 37 of 2025) omitted Section 213 with effect from 20 December 2025, and made the matching corrections: the figures “, 213” were dropped from Section 3(1), and Section 370(1) now refers only to a right required by Section 212 to be established by letters of administration.

Read the practical consequence carefully.

• Probate is no longer a statutory precondition to establishing a right under a will in court.
• Probate has not been abolished. The machinery in Sections 222 to 276 is untouched, and a court can still grant it.
• Banks, registrars, housing societies, depositories and buyers can still ask for probate as their own comfort requirement. They are not bound by Section 213 either way.
• If your will is likely to be contested, a grant is still the cleanest way to put the question beyond argument.

The full story of the omission, including who it helped most, is on Probate no longer mandatory after the 2025 repeal. For how a grant is actually obtained, see probate and letters of administration in India.

Work down this list. Each line is something an Indian bank, registrar or judge will look for.

1. Identify yourself the way Indian records do. Full name as spelt on your Indian passport or PAN, father's name, and your Indian address of record. If your bank passbook says “Kumar S” and your will says “Suresh Kumar Subramanian”, somebody has to explain the gap later.

2. Revoke everything earlier, but say what you are revoking. Section 62 lets you revoke or alter a will at any time while you are competent to make one. Section 70 says an unprivileged will is revoked only by marriage, by another will or codicil, by a signed writing that declares the intention to revoke and is executed like a will, or by burning, tearing or otherwise destroying it. A loose “I revoke all former wills” clause in a later foreign will can silently kill your Indian one. Limit the revocation to the estate that will is meant to cover.

3. Add a scope clause. State in one sentence which assets this will deals with, for example “this will disposes only of my property situated in India”. Lawyers sometimes call this a situs clause. It is the single line that stops two wills from fighting each other.

4. Write a real asset schedule, not a description. Vague schedules are the biggest cause of delay.

One caution on the bank line: a nomination on an account is a payment instruction to the bank, not a substitute for inheritance under your will. Get the account type and status right first, using NRI bank accounts and FEMA compliance.

5. Name an executor, and a reserve. Section 223 says probate cannot be granted to a minor, to a person of unsound mind, or to an association of individuals unless it is a company satisfying prescribed conditions. Living abroad is not on that list. But somebody has to stand in a branch queue in Thrissur, so an executor resident in India, with a co-executor abroad, is usually the practical answer. Name a second choice in case the first declines or dies.

6. Two attesting witnesses, and neither of them inherits. Section 63© needs two or more witnesses, each of whom saw you sign or received your personal acknowledgment of your signature, and each of whom then signs in your presence. They do not both have to be in the room at once. Section 67 is the trap: if a witness, or that witness's spouse, is given anything under the will, the attestation survives but that gift is void. Pick neutral witnesses who are younger than you and easy to trace. The detail is unpacked in the two-witness rule under Section 63.

7. Add a residuary clause and a guardian clause. Anything you forget, or buy later, falls into the residue. If your children are minors, name a guardian.

8. Date it, sign every page, and say where the original lives. Tell your executor the physical location. A will nobody can find is a will nobody can prove.

9. Do not confuse a will with a transfer. A will speaks only from your death. A general power of attorney or an agreement to sell does not move title at all, which is a separate and very common NRI mistake. See why a GPA, will or agreement does not transfer title.

Registration remains optional under Section 18(e) of the Registration Act, 1908, so nothing is invalid without it. It is still worth doing, because a registered will is harder to attack as a forgery. Section 40(1) is helpful here: the testator, or after his death any person claiming as executor or otherwise under the will, may present it to any Registrar or Sub-Registrar. There is no territorial restriction on presenting a will, unlike a sale deed. The step-by-step is in how to register a will in India.

There is no rule in the Indian Succession Act that forces you to choose. Treat it as a practical trade-off, and take advice in your country of residence before you decide.

The common failure is not choosing two wills. It is choosing two wills and then letting the second one revoke the first. If you go this route, both wills must carry a scope clause and a revocation clause limited to their own territory, and the two lawyers must read each other's drafts.

Also take local advice on estate or inheritance tax where you live. That is a question for a professional in your country of residence, and this page does not answer it.

This is the section every NRI family eventually meets, and it is widely misdescribed as “resealing” a foreign grant. It is not. India issues its own fresh grant.

Section 228 is headed “Administration, with copy annexed, of authenticated copy of will proved abroad” and reads: when a will has been proved and deposited in a court of competent jurisdiction situated beyond the limits of the State, whether within or beyond the limits of India, and a properly authenticated copy of the will is produced, letters of administration may be granted with a copy of such copy annexed.

Four things follow, and only these four.

1. What India grants under Section 228 is letters of administration with the copy annexed, not probate. Your foreign executor becomes an Indian administrator by an Indian order.
2. The will must have been proved and deposited in a court of competent jurisdiction abroad. A will merely lodged with a lawyer or a registry, without a grant, is not enough for this route.
3. A properly authenticated copy must be produced. In practice that means the apostille or consular legalisation chain from the country where the grant was made.
4. The grant may be made. The word in the section is permissive, so the Indian court retains a discretion.

Because a fresh Indian application is needed either way, many NRI families find it simpler to have an Indian will that can be acted on in India from day one, rather than waiting for a foreign grant and then starting again here.

1. Collect the death certificate and get it legalised if the death happened abroad. This is the step families underestimate.
2. Decide whether a grant is needed at all. Since 20 December 2025 there is no statutory compulsion. If the bank, the society and the buyer are all satisfied with the will, the death certificate and an indemnity, the estate can be settled without going to court.
3. If a grant is needed, work out which court. Section 270 lets a District Judge grant probate or letters of administration if the deceased, at the time of death, had a fixed place of abode or any property, movable or immovable, within that jurisdiction. For an NRI who died in Sharjah but owned a flat in Pune, the property limb is what gives the Pune court jurisdiction. Section 271 adds that where the deceased had no fixed abode in the district, the judge may refuse the application if it would be better dealt with elsewhere, or may grant letters limited to the property inside his own jurisdiction.
4. File the petition with the right contents. Section 276 requires the time of death, a statement that the annexed writing is the last will, that it was duly executed, the likely value of assets, and, for probate, that the petitioner is the named executor. Where assets sit in more than one State, Section 276(3) requires the petition to state the amount in each State and the District Judges concerned. Families with a flat in Mumbai and land in Kerala miss this line constantly.
5. If there is no will at all, the route is different. See letters of administration where there is no will and how to apply for a succession certificate.

Write the asset schedule from the government record, not from memory or from an old photocopy. Before you draft, get a certified copy of the current mutation entry and the property card or record of rights for each piece of Indian land. If the record still shows a deceased parent, or shows an encumbrance you did not know about, fix that first. A will that gifts property which is not recorded in your name creates the exact dispute you are trying to prevent.

You can ask for these records from abroad. The route, including how to pay the fee without an Indian bank account, is set out in how to file an RTI from abroad. If the record itself looks wrong or somebody has moved on your property, the recovery steps are in NRI property in India: illegal sale, mutation and tenant disputes.

For the wider machinery of asking Indian public authorities for records and escalating when they stall, The RTI Playbook is the reference.

No. Section 18(e) of the Registration Act, 1908 places wills in the list of documents that may be registered, and Section 17, which lists compulsory registrations, reaches only non-testamentary instruments. So an unregistered will is perfectly valid. Registration is still useful evidence, and under Section 40(1) you can present a will to any Registrar or Sub-Registrar, not only the one for the district where the property lies.

Nothing in the Act bars it. Section 223 says probate cannot be granted to a minor, to a person of unsound mind, or to an association of individuals unless it is a company meeting prescribed conditions. Residence abroad is not on that list. The practical problem is not law, it is logistics, so most NRIs name an Indian resident as executor or co-executor.

Section 63© sets no nationality or residence condition for attesting witnesses. What it needs is that each witness saw you sign, or received your personal acknowledgment of your signature, and then signed in your presence. Choose people who can realistically be contacted years later, because a contested will may need their evidence.

Not as a matter of law. But if the foreign will is proved there first, your family in India has to run the Section 228 route: produce a properly authenticated copy of the will proved and deposited abroad, and ask an Indian court for letters of administration with that copy annexed. That is a fresh Indian proceeding, not a rubber stamp on the foreign grant. Many families prefer a short India-only will for that reason.

It can. Section 70 says an unprivileged will is revoked by another will or codicil, among other modes. A boilerplate “I hereby revoke all wills previously made by me” in a later foreign will is exactly the clause that does the damage. Both documents need a scope clause and a revocation clause limited to their own territory.

It depends which will. Section 70 lists marriage as one mode of revoking an unprivileged will. But the proviso to Section 57 says that marriage shall not revoke a will or codicil of the classes described in that section, which covers wills made by Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains. If you are unsure which limb applies to you, the safe move is to make a fresh will after marriage rather than argue the point later.

For self-acquired property, Section 59 says every person of sound mind who is not a minor may dispose of his property by will. The limits are elsewhere: the restrictions attached to Schedule III say the sections applied by Section 57 do not let a testator give away property he could not have transferred in his lifetime, or defeat a right of maintenance. Ancestral or coparcenary property is a different question again. The detail is in can you exclude children or a wife from a will, and if you expect a fight, how a will is challenged in court shows what the other side will argue.

No. Section 58(1) says the testamentary succession Part of the Indian Succession Act does not apply to the property of a Muhammadan. How much of the estate can be disposed of by will, and in whose favour, is governed by Muslim personal law rather than by these sections. Take specific advice before drafting.

• Indian Succession Act, 1925 (39 of 1925), bare Act as amended: sections 3, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 67, 70, 213, 223, 228, 264, 270, 271, 276, 370 and Schedule III. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/2385
• The footnotes in that text record the 2025 change: section 213 “Omitted by the Repealing and Amending Act, 2025 (37 of 2025), s. 3 and Sch. II (w.e.f. 20-12-2025)”; the figures “, 213” omitted from section 3(1) by the same Act; and section 370(1) substituted by the same Act.
• The Repealing and Amending Bill, 2025, as introduced. Cited here only for its annexed extracts from the Indian Succession Act, 1925, which reproduce Section 213 as it stood before omission. The operative change is sourced to the enacted text above, and the Bill Schedule matches the three footnotes recorded in it. https://prsindia.org/files/bills_acts/bills_parliament/2025/Repealing_And_Amending_Bill,2025.pdf
• Registration Act, 1908, sections 17, 18 and 40. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/15937/1/the_registration_act,1908.pdf

This page explains general law. It is not advice on your estate, and it does not address tax in your country of residence.

Last reviewed: 5 August 2026.