The first 30 days after a death in India: a practical order of work

Every claim you will make later begins with this one document, so it comes first and nothing else matters until you have it.

Deaths in India are registered under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, with the local registrar — usually the municipal corporation, municipality or gram panchayat for the place where the death occurred, not where the person lived. A hospital death is generally reported by the hospital, but the certificate still has to be collected by the family.

The normal reporting period is 21 days. Missing it does not mean the death cannot be registered, but each stage gets harder: between 21 and 30 days it is registered on payment of a late fee; after 30 days but within a year it needs the written permission of the prescribed authority, the prescribed fee, and an affidavit sworn before a notary; and after one year it can be registered only on the order of a first-class magistrate. If you are already past a year, that is a court step — start it early.

When you apply, ask for at least 10 to 15 certified copies. This sounds excessive. It is not. Every bank, every insurer, every fund house, the registrar of properties, the RTO and the electricity board will each want to keep an original or an attested copy. Families routinely go back for more copies three or four times, and later requests are slower than the first batch.

Resist the urge to start phoning banks. An hour spent gathering documents now saves several trips later, because almost every institution asks for the same core set.

Put together, in one folder: the death certificate copies, the deceased person's PAN and Aadhaar, your own PAN and Aadhaar, your bank account details with a cancelled cheque or a recent statement, and passport-size photographs. Add the identity proofs of anyone else who is a legal heir — you will need them more often than you expect.

At the same time, work out what actually exists. Look for bank passbooks and statements, insurance policy documents, mutual fund and demat account statements, PPF and post office passbooks, property papers, locker keys and rent receipts, and the previous two or three years of income tax returns. The tax returns are the single most useful document for finding assets nobody remembered: interest, dividends and capital gains all leave a trail there.

If the deceased person kept records with a service like KinSetu, this is the point at which a nominee can see the list of what was held and where — which is the entire reason such a record is worth keeping.

This single fact changes the whole route, so establish it early. Look in the obvious places — a locker, a lawyer's office, a home safe, with a trusted sibling.

If there is a will, it names an executor and sets out who inherits. Depending on where you are and what the will covers, the executor may need to obtain probate — a court's certification that the will is genuine — before institutions will act on it. Whether probate is compulsory depends on the jurisdiction and the type of property involved, and this is a question worth putting to a lawyer rather than guessing at.

If there is no will, the estate is distributed according to the succession law that applies to the deceased person's religion — for Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains the Hindu Succession Act, 1956; for Muslims, personal law; for most others the Indian Succession Act, 1925. Who inherits, and in what share, is fixed by that law and not by anyone's preference.

This is the most misunderstood point in the whole process, and getting it wrong is how families end up in disputes with each other.

A nominee is, broadly, the person an institution is authorised to release an asset to. A legal heir is the person legally entitled to own it. These are often the same person, but not always — and where they differ, being the nominee generally does not make the asset yours.

The practical consequence is that a nominee who receives money may be holding it on behalf of all the legal heirs rather than keeping it. The Supreme Court settled this for shares and depository holdings in *Shakti Yezdani v. Jayanand Jayant Salgaonkar* (14 December 2023), holding that nomination under the Companies Act and the Depositories Act is not a third mode of succession, and that a nominee holds as a fiduciary for the legal heirs.

Life insurance is the important exception. Under section 39(7) of the Insurance Act, 1938, as amended in 2015, where the policyholder nominated a parent, spouse or child, that nominee is *beneficially* entitled to the money rather than merely holding it. So for a life policy, being that kind of nominee generally does mean the proceeds are yours.

None of this stops you claiming. It means: claim as the nominee where you are the nominee, and settle the question of who ultimately owns the money separately, with a lawyer, and preferably in writing between the heirs.

Where there is no will — and sometimes even where there is — institutions ask for an official document establishing who the heirs are. There are several, they are not interchangeable, and applying for the wrong one wastes months.

A legal heir certificate is issued by the revenue authorities, typically the Tehsildar or taluk office. It is comparatively quick and cheap, and is commonly accepted for pension, provident fund and other movable claims.

A succession certificate is granted by a civil court under the Indian Succession Act, 1925, and is the document usually demanded for debts and securities — shares, bonds, deposits — where the amounts are large or there is no nomination. It involves a court process and public notice, and takes months rather than weeks.

A probate or letters of administration applies where there is a will, or where a court appoints an administrator.

Many institutions will settle smaller amounts without any of these, against an indemnity bond and a no-objection certificate from the other heirs. The thresholds differ by institution and by asset type, so it is worth asking "what will you accept?" before starting a court process you may not need.

Now the claims. Work through them in order of what your family actually needs: the operating bank account first if cash flow is tight, then insurance, then longer-dated investments.

Each asset type has its own forms, its own thresholds and its own quirks, so we have written a separate guide for each. Start with the one that matters most to you rather than trying to do everything at once.

A general rule that holds almost everywhere: intimate the institution in writing, get an acknowledgement with a reference number, and keep a log of every submission with the date and the name of the person you dealt with. Claims stall silently, and a reference number is what lets you escalate.

One reassurance first, because families worry about it: India has no inheritance or estate tax. Property or money received by inheritance or under a will is not itself taxable income, and the act of transmission is not a taxable transfer. What you may pay tax on, later, is income the asset earns in your hands, or a capital gain when you eventually sell — computed against what the deceased originally paid, not the value on the date of death.

A few things are easy to forget and worth a note now. The deceased person's final income tax return still has to be filed by the legal representative, who is treated as the assessee for that purpose. In practice there are two separate assessments: one covering the deceased's income up to the date of death, and another on the heirs or executors for what the estate earns after it. Utility connections, property tax records, vehicle registration, society records and any rent agreements need to be transferred. Credit cards must be surrendered rather than simply abandoned.

Liabilities deserve a word of their own. Debts are settled from the estate, and heirs are generally not personally liable beyond what they inherit. Recovery agents sometimes suggest otherwise to grieving families. If you are being told that you personally owe a deceased relative's loan, get legal advice before paying anything.