After a death there are three documents that families treat as one, and the first useful thing anybody can tell you is how they differ. An heirship certificate comes from the revenue or municipal administration and records who the heirs are. A succession certificate is granted by a District Judge under Part X of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, and operates on particular debts and securities, listed in it by name. Probate or letters of administration belong to a will, or to a whole estate that has to be administered. An institution that asks for one will not accept another, and it is not being difficult. They are not substitutes. Now the part that costs families the most. The Act defines what it means by security, and the list is Government promissory notes, debentures and stock; certain bonds charged on the revenues of India; stock, debentures or shares in a company; local authority debentures; and anything a State Government notifies by gazette. Immovable property is not on that list. A succession certificate cannot transfer your father house, and no amount of court fee will make it do so. The house moves through the records, on title documents, in a separate exercise. Then the second expensive belief. A nomination is not succession. A nominee may be paid; a nominee does not thereby own. The Supreme Court closed the last open corner of that question for company securities on 14 December 2023, deciding that a nominee position stops short of ownership and that nothing in the vesting language adds a route of inheritance. The four nominees now permitted from 1 November 2025 changed how many people a bank may pay, and changed nothing about who keeps it. And one more thing worth knowing before you file. The judge decides the right to a certificate in a summary manner, and where the questions are too intricate for that he may still grant it to the person having prima facie the best title. So the proceeding allocates the right to collect. It does not decide who owns the estate, and neither winning it nor losing it settles that.
What is on this page
The expensive mistakes on this subject are almost never made in court. They are made in the first week, at a counter, on somebody advice, before anybody has asked the only question that matters.
That question is not how to get a succession certificate. It is which of three documents the estate in front of you actually calls for, because the three are granted by different authorities, cost different amounts, take different lengths of time, and operate on different kinds of property.
A family that applies for the wrong one loses the court fee, the months, and the goodwill of the institution it was arguing with. Nothing about the loss is recoverable, and the conversation that would have prevented it costs nothing.
Here they are side by side, which is the comparison nobody is given at the counter.
| Document | Who grants it | What it establishes | What it operates on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heirship or warisan certificate | Revenue or municipal administration | Who the heirs are | Administrative records, pensions, modest balances, mutation support |
| Succession certificate | District Judge, under Part X of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 | Who may collect specified debts and securities | Only the debts and securities listed in it |
| Probate or letters of administration | Court of competent jurisdiction | The will, or authority to administer the estate | The estate as a whole, under the will or the grant |
Three authorities, three statutes or sets of rules, three answers. The reason this page exists is that institutions ask for them by name and families supply whichever one was easiest to get.
This is the cheap, quick, administrative document, and within its own range it is genuinely useful.
It records who the heirs of a deceased person are, on the basis of the administration enquiry. It supports a mutation entry, a pension transfer, an employer settlement, and the release of a small balance where the institution is content with an indemnity alongside it.
What it is not is a grant from a court about particular assets, and that limitation is the whole of its weakness. See legal heir certificate, and in some States a next of kin certificate performs a related function.
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This is the court document, and it is narrow and powerful in equal measure.
It is granted by a District Judge under Part X of the Indian Succession Act, 1925. It names particular debts owed to the deceased and particular securities belonging to him, and it entitles the holder to collect them. Anything not named in it is outside it.
Its power lies in what it does for the person who pays. An institution that pays against this certificate is protected by the statute in a way that no affidavit, no indemnity and no heirship document can replicate, and that protection is the reason banks and depositories insist on it.
The third route belongs to a will, or to an estate that has to be administered as a whole.
Probate establishes a will and the executor authority under it. Letters of administration do the equivalent job where there is no executor able or willing to act. Both go to the whole estate rather than to a schedule of items.
If there is a will, this is probably your route rather than the second one, and the Act itself says as much: a certificate under Part X is barred for a debt or security where probate or letters of administration are required to establish the right to it. See probate of will, and if no will exists yet for a living family member, will drafting is the document that prevents all of this.
The confusion is not stupidity, and it is worth understanding because it tells you where to be careful.
All three are called certificates in ordinary speech. All three are produced at the same moment, to the same kind of counter, by the same grieving family. All three are obtained through agents who often do not distinguish between them, and the cheapest one is the one most likely to be recommended.
Add one more cause. In Hindi and in most regional languages the words used for all three overlap, so a family asking for a warisan or uttaradhikar certificate may be describing any of them, and the person they are asking may be answering about a different one.
Families are often convinced that an institution insisting on a particular document is being obstructive, and that persistence or a senior officer will solve it.
It will not, and the reason is in the statute rather than in the branch. The protection a bank or depository receives when it pays against a succession certificate is given by the Act. There is no equivalent protection for paying against an heirship certificate, and an officer who pays anyway is personally exposed to the claim of an heir who was left out.
So the useful approach at the counter is to ask one question rather than to argue: which document does your settlement policy require for this class of asset and this value. Get that answer in writing or by email, and the rest of the work becomes a matter of execution rather than negotiation.
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Before any of the detail, the thing that should be said first because it saves the most money.
None of the three, by itself, settles who owns what. An heirship certificate records a list of heirs. A succession certificate allocates the right to collect listed items. Probate establishes a will. Entitlement, where it is genuinely disputed, is decided in a civil suit on evidence, and a family at war over shares will end up there whichever certificate it obtains first.
If the real problem in your family is that two people both say the money is theirs, no certificate solves it. Better to learn that before applying than after the grant, because by then the certificate has cost a fee and bought a procedural position instead of an answer.
Which gives the sequence this page recommends, and it is the opposite of what usually happens.
List the assets and split them in two: debts and securities on one side, immovable property on the other. Establish whether there is a will, however informal. Ask each institution, in writing, what it requires for its own asset. Only then decide which document or documents to apply for, and in what order.
That order of work is what we put in writing before any money is taken, and it is frequently the whole of the value we add. The rest is assembly.
Turning to the document this page is named after, and to the question that decides whether it is any use to you.
It covers the debts owed to the deceased and the securities belonging to him. Both words are doing precise work, and the second one is defined in the Act itself rather than left to ordinary meaning.
Read the definition before paying any court fee. It is the cheapest hour of this entire exercise, and it is the hour that tells you whether you are in the right Part of the right Act.
The Act sets out what it means by security for the purposes of this Part, and the definition is a closed list rather than an illustration.
Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 370(2) — for the purposes of this Part, security means (a) any promissory note, debenture, stock or other security of the Central Government or of a State Government; (b) any bond, debenture or annuity charged by Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom on the revenues of India; (c) any stock or debenture of, or share in, a company or other incorporated institution; (d) any debenture or other security for money issued by or on behalf of a local authority; and (e) any other security which the State Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, declare to be a security for the purposes of this Part.
Taken one at a time, because each limb catches a different kind of asset.
The first covers Government paper: promissory notes, debentures, stock and other Government securities. The second is historical and rarely encountered now, covering obligations charged by a United Kingdom Act on the revenues of India. The third is the one most families need: stock, debentures and shares in a company or other incorporated institution. The fourth covers local authority borrowing. The fifth leaves room for a State Government to add to the list by gazette notification, which is a thing worth checking in your own State rather than assuming.
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The third limb deserves its own heading because it answers a question asked at almost every depository counter in the country.
Shares, stock and debentures in a company are securities for the purposes of this Part. So where a deceased person held equity in demat or in physical form, and there is no will, a succession certificate specifying that holding is the instrument the depository participant or the registrar is entitled to insist on.
That is why an heirship certificate is routinely refused for a share transmission and routinely accepted for a municipal record. The institutions are not applying different standards of fussiness. They are applying different statutes.
Now the sentence that this whole page exists to deliver.
Immovable property does not appear anywhere in that definition. Not land, not a house, not a flat, not agricultural holding. The list is Government paper, certain historical obligations, company securities, local authority borrowing, and whatever a State Government notifies.
A succession certificate cannot transfer a house, and no amount of court fee, no senior counsel and no amount of time will make it do so. If somebody has told you to obtain one in order to get a property mutated, they have told you to pay an ad valorem fee for a document that will not be accepted for the purpose.
It surprises almost everybody, and the reasons are worth naming because they are also the reasons it keeps happening.
The name is the first cause. A document called a succession certificate sounds like a certificate of succession to everything, and nothing in the name signals that it is confined to a schedule of financial items. The second cause is the counter clerk at the municipal office, who asks for it because it is the most impressive document a family is likely to produce. The third is that families with mixed estates obtain one correctly for the shares and then assume it covers the house as well.
So the property has to travel by a different road, and it is worth sketching that road so nobody waits for the wrong document.
Immovable property devolves by operation of succession law on the death, and what then has to happen is a record entry: mutation of the municipal or revenue record into the names of the heirs, supported by the death certificate, proof of relationship, and the heirship document. In a contested case a declaration from a civil court is what actually settles it.
That is a separate exercise with a separate file. Begin with property mutation, take an encumbrance certificate so you know what is charged on the property, and have the chain examined through property title verification before any heir signs anything about it. On who the heirs of a Hindu are, we have set out the statutory scheme at length on our disownment public notice page and have not repeated it here.
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There is a restriction at the head of this Part, and it is the provision that sends some applicants to a different court altogether.
A certificate shall not be granted under this Part with respect to any debt or security where a right to it is required to be established by letters of administration or probate. In other words, where the estate properly calls for a testamentary grant, you cannot shortcut it with a certificate over the financial items.
Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 370(1) — a succession certificate shall not be granted under this Part with respect to any debt or security to which a right is required by section 212 or section 213 to be established by letters of administration or probate, with a proviso that nothing contained in the sub-section applies in the case of a debt or security to which a person claiming the effects of a deceased Indian Christian, or any part of them, is entitled, even where a right to it can be established by letters of administration under the Act.
Read that sub-section carefully and something has happened to it that nobody appears to have written about, so this page raises it as a question rather than answering it.
The bar is expressed by reference to two provisions, sections 212 and 213. Section 213 no longer exists. It was taken off the statute book by the Repealing and Amending Act, 2025, assented to on 20 December 2025, and that removal is why probate ceased to be compulsory in the territories where it had been.
So one of the two limbs of the restriction now points at a provision that has been taken off the statute book, while the other limb, section 212, is untouched and continues to require letters of administration in the cases it covers.
This is the point at which a page ought to be careful about the difference between a reading and a rule, so here it is in plain terms.
What we are saying is that the cross-reference now has one live limb and one dead one, and that anybody relying on the bar should check which limb is being invoked against them. What we are not saying is that the restriction has been narrowed, or that a certificate is now available where it was not, because that turns on how the surviving reference is to be construed and on what the repealing Act saves, and we found no ruling either way.
This is our reading of a consequence, identified as ours, and not a statement of settled law. It is on the page because a reader whose application is objected to on this ground deserves to know the point exists. It is a question for counsel with the papers, and we say so rather than resolving it for you. The removal itself, and what it means for a will, belong to our will registration page.
The sub-section carries a proviso that applies to one community by name, and it is noted here for completeness rather than analysed.
The restriction does not apply to a debt or security to which a person claiming the effects of a deceased Indian Christian, or any part of them, is entitled, even where the right could be established by letters of administration under the Act. The effect is that such a claimant may use this Part where another applicant could not.
Whether that proviso helps you turns on the deceased personal law and on the facts, and it belongs to an advocate, not to a documentation desk.
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Jurisdiction is the next thing to settle, and it is settled from one fact about the deceased rather than from convenience.
The application goes to a District Judge, and the Act identifies which one. It is not the court nearest to the applicant, not the court where the bank branch is, and not the court where most of the family lives.
Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 371 — the District Judge within whose jurisdiction the deceased ordinarily resided at the time of his death, or, if at that time he had no fixed place of residence, the District Judge within whose jurisdiction any part of the property of the deceased may be found, may grant a certificate under this Part.
Two words in that provision do the work and both of them are questions of fact.
Ordinarily excludes a temporary stay, so a parent who spent three months at a daughter house did not thereby change his ordinary residence. At the time of his death fixes the date, so a lifetime spent in one city does not govern if the ordinary residence had genuinely shifted before the death.
Settle this from documents rather than from family consensus: the ration card, the voter entry, the Aadhaar address, the bank KYC address, the electricity bill, the last medical records, the pension record. Where they disagree, the disagreement itself is the answer that has to be argued, and it is better argued from a file than from memory.
The second limb exists for a situation that has become common, and it is worth knowing because it rescues a family that would otherwise be stuck.
Where the deceased had no fixed place of residence at the time of death, jurisdiction lies with the District Judge within whose jurisdiction any part of the property may be found. That covers the elderly parent who moved between the homes of different children, the person who had given up a tenancy and not taken another, and the person who died away from any settled home.
It is not a free choice of forum, and it is not available merely because the residence is inconvenient to prove. It applies where there genuinely was no fixed place of residence, which is itself a thing to establish rather than to assert.
The Act prescribes the contents of the petition, and the list is short enough to check your own draft against.
Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 372 — the application shall be made by a petition signed and verified as a plaint by or on behalf of the applicant, and shall state: (a) the time of the death of the deceased; (b) the ordinary residence of the deceased at the time of death and, if the residence at that time was not within the local limits of the jurisdiction of the Judge to whom the application is made, then the property of the deceased within those limits; (c) the family or other near relatives of the deceased and their respective residences; (d) the right in which the petitioner claims; (e) the absence of any impediment under section 370 or under any other provision of the Act or of any other enactment to the grant of the certificate or to its validity if it were granted; and (f) the debts and securities in respect of which the certificate is applied for.
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That opening requirement is more than a formality and it changes how the document should be prepared.
A petition signed and verified as a plaint is a pleading. What is stated in it is stated on the applicant own verification, paragraph by paragraph, distinguishing what is known from what is believed. It is not a form to be filled in and it is not a narrative to be approved at a glance.
The working discipline that follows is plain enough, and we hold to it: nothing goes into the petition that there is not a document for, and anything stated on information and belief is verified as such rather than as knowledge. That is slower at the drafting stage and it is the only thing that protects the grant afterwards.
The section carries its own warning, and the warning has a slightly odd shape now.
A person who knowingly makes an averment in such a petition that is false in a material particular commits an offence, and the Act identifies that offence by reference to section 198 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.
That Code has since given way to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, leaving the Act here with an un-updated cross-reference of exactly the kind that the general savings provisions exist to handle. The practical position is unchanged: a knowingly false averment in the petition is a criminal matter as well as a ground for revoking the certificate later.
What happens after the petition is filed is the part families imagine most wrongly, so it is worth describing from the statute rather than from expectation.
The District Judge gives such notice as he thinks necessary, fixes a day for the hearing, and on that day proceeds to decide the right to the certificate. The Act specifies the character of that decision, and the specification is the most important sentence in this Part after the definition of security.
Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 373 — if the Judge is satisfied that there is ground for entertaining the application, he shall fix a day for the hearing and cause notice of the application and of the day fixed to be served on any person to whom, in his opinion, special notice should be given; on the day fixed, or as soon as may be practicable thereafter, he shall proceed to decide in a summary manner the right to the certificate; and where it appears that the questions of law or fact in the case are too intricate and difficult for determination in a summary proceeding, he may nevertheless grant a certificate to the applicant if he appears to be the person having prima facie the best title thereto.
Summary is not a compliment about speed and it is not a criticism of the court. It is a description of the standard being applied.
A summary determination is reached without the full apparatus of a civil trial: without issues framed in the ordinary way, without the full discovery and inspection that a title suit involves, and without findings that bind in later proceedings in the way a decree does. The question before the Judge is narrow, which is what allows it to be answered quickly.
Understanding this changes how a petition should be prepared. The object is not to prove a case to the hilt. It is to put before the court, cleanly and with documents, the material that shows the applicant right to collect, so that the narrow question can be answered without the court feeling the need to send it elsewhere.
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And then the phrase that defines the whole proceeding, which appears in the second half of the same section.
Where the questions are too intricate and difficult for summary determination, the Judge is not obliged to refuse. He may still grant a certificate to the applicant who appears to be the person having prima facie the best title to it.
Prima facie the best title is a comparative, provisional standard. Not the person with title. Not the person who has proved entitlement. The person who, on the material as it stands, appears to have the better claim than the others before the court.
Everything practical about this Part follows from that standard, and two consequences in particular should be understood before anybody spends money.
The first is that losing the application is not losing the estate. A family member whose brother obtains the certificate has not been held to have no rights; the court has decided who may collect, on a provisional view, in a summary proceeding.
The second is the mirror image, and it is the one holders forget. Obtaining the certificate is not winning the estate. The holder collects, and the holder then has to account to whoever is actually entitled, and an heir who establishes entitlement in a civil suit can call for exactly that accounting.
So a holder who collects a large sum under a certificate and distributes nothing has not been vindicated by the grant. The grant tells the bank it may pay. It does not tell the holder the money is his, and treating it as if it did is how certificate holders end up as defendants.
It is worth being clear about who the real beneficiary of this design is, because it is not primarily the applicant.
The structure protects the institution holding the asset. A bank, a company, a registrar or a depository needs to know whom it can pay without being sued later, and it needs that answer quickly, because money sitting in a dead person account earns nothing and helps nobody. A summary proceeding producing a document that protects the payer is an efficient answer to that problem.
The heirs are protected differently: not by the certificate, but by the right to have entitlement decided properly elsewhere, and by the power to have a certificate revoked where it was obtained on a false footing.
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Notice is the stage at which an application either becomes straightforward or becomes contested, and it is partly within the applicant control.
The Act requires the Judge to cause notice of the application and of the day fixed to be served on any person to whom, in his opinion, special notice should be given. Who those persons are is informed by the petition itself, because the petition has to state the family and other near relatives with their residences.
Which means the one step that pays for itself here is naming everybody properly and giving addresses that are correct and current. An application that names every near relative and serves them cleanly is an application nobody can later attack for want of notice, and that is worth more than any argument made on the day.
Objections are normal rather than catastrophic, and the usual ones fall into a small number of shapes.
That the applicant is not an heir, or not the only heir. That a near relative was not named or not served. That the deceased ordinarily resided elsewhere, so the court lacks jurisdiction. That an item in the schedule did not belong to the deceased. That there is a will, which takes the matter out of this Part altogether.
Answering those is advocate work, on the record as it stands. What determines how well it goes is whether the petition was prepared from documents in the first place, which is the part that happens months earlier. A supporting notary affidavit and documents in another language rendered through legal translation rather than paraphrased are the two things most often missing from a file at this stage.
Sometimes the honest answer is that this Part is the wrong place for the fight, and recognising it early saves a year.
Where the real question is whether the deceased owned an asset at all, or whether a transfer made during his lifetime was genuine, or whether a will is valid, those are matters for a suit on evidence. A summary proceeding under this Part cannot and will not resolve them, and attempting it produces either a refusal or a grant on prima facie title that satisfies nobody.
We say so when we see it, before taking instructions to prepare a petition. It costs us the work and it is the only defensible position, because a certificate obtained in the middle of a genuine title dispute tends to become the first exhibit in the suit that follows.
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Assuming the application succeeds, what you receive is a document of a particular shape, and its shape explains why the schedule matters so much.
The Act requires the Judge to specify in the certificate the debts and securities set forth in the application. The certificate is therefore an itemised document. It is not a general declaration that the holder is the successor; it is a list, with an authority attached to each item.
Anything not in the application is not in the certificate, and anything not in the certificate is not covered by it. That single proposition is why the schedule, and not the narrative, is the part of the petition we spend the most time on.
Beyond identifying the items, the certificate can carry specific powers, and asking for the right ones is part of the drafting.
The Act permits the Judge to empower the holder to receive interest or dividends on the securities, or to negotiate or transfer them, or to do both. Those are distinct authorities and they matter in practice: a holder empowered only to receive dividends cannot transfer the shares, and a holder who needs to sell a holding to divide its value needs the transfer power on the face of the document.
So the petition should ask for what the family actually intends to do with each item: collect a deposit and close it; receive accrued interest or dividends; transmit shares into the names of the heirs; or sell a holding and distribute the proceeds. Each of those needs a different authority, and going back for one afterwards means another application.
Estates are discovered rather than known, and the Act makes provision for that, which is a mercy worth knowing about.
On the application of the holder, a District Judge may extend the certificate to any debt or security not originally specified in it, and an extension has the same effect as if the debt or security had been included in the certificate when it was first granted.
That is the answer to the dormant account nobody knew about, the old physical share certificate found in a trunk, and the small deposit at a cooperative bank that surfaced after the grant. It is a further application rather than a correction, so it costs time, which is the argument for building the schedule carefully the first time. We prepare these as an application on the existing record.
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A small point, mentioned because it occasionally matters when a certificate is questioned.
The Act requires a certificate under this Part, and any extension of one, to follow the forms given in Schedule VIII so far as the circumstances allow. So the document has a prescribed shape, and a grant departing materially from it is open to comment. The equivalent direction for a caveat, and the Schedule it points to, are set out on our will contest caveat page.
For an applicant the practical use of knowing this is at the collection stage rather than the grant stage: an institution unfamiliar with the document can be shown that its form comes from a Schedule to the Act rather than from local practice.
Now the provision that makes this certificate worth obtaining, and it is addressed to the person who pays rather than to the person who collects.
The certificate is, with respect to the debts and securities specified in it, conclusive as against the persons owing such debts or liable on such securities. A debtor cannot put the holder to proof of entitlement; the certificate answers the question for that debtor.
Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 381 — subject to the provisions of this Part, the certificate shall, with respect to the debts and securities specified therein, be conclusive as against the persons owing such debts or liable on such securities, and shall, notwithstanding any contravention of section 370 or other defect, afford full indemnity to all such persons as regards all payments made, or dealings had, in good faith in respect of such debts or securities to or with the person to whom the certificate was granted.
That second half is the commercially decisive part, and it explains institutional behaviour that otherwise looks unreasonable.
A bank, company or registrar that pays or deals with the certificate holder in good faith is fully indemnified. If the holder turns out not to have been entitled, the disappointed heir claim lies against the holder, not against the institution that paid him.
So when a bank refuses an affidavit, an indemnity bond and an heirship certificate and insists on this document, it is not being bureaucratic. It is declining to accept a risk that the statute allocates elsewhere the moment a certificate is produced. Understanding that makes the counter conversation shorter, and an indemnity bond is a supplement to this document rather than a substitute for it.
There is a phrase inside that provision which is easy to read past and worth stopping on.
The indemnity operates notwithstanding any contravention of section 370 or other defect. So even where the certificate should not have been granted, because the case was one requiring a testamentary grant, the person who paid in good faith is still protected.
The protection runs to the payer and not to the holder. A holder who obtained a certificate in contravention of the restriction has not been cured of anything; the certificate remains liable to revocation, and his liability to account remains. What the provision does is stop the mistake rebounding onto the bank.
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Money is the question asked earliest and answered worst on this subject, so here is what the Act actually provides.
Every application for a certificate or for an extension must be accompanied by a deposit of a sum equal to the fee payable under the Court-Fees Act, 1870 in respect of the certificate or extension applied for. Any part of that sum not expended on the stamp is refunded to the person who deposited it.
The fee is ad valorem, which is to say it is a proportion of the value of the debts and securities for which the certificate is sought. It is not a flat filing fee, and it is not a figure that can be given without knowing the value. Stamping on the supporting documents is a separate matter again and is evidenced through e-stamp paper.
This page gives no percentage, and the reason behind that is the opposite of unhelpful.
The rate comes from the Court-Fees Act, 1870 as amended in your State, and State amendments to that Act are numerous and have been made at different times. A single percentage printed on a national page is wrong somewhere, and it is wrong in the direction that costs a family either a shortfall at the counter or an unnecessary fear of the whole process.
The figure clients are most often misled about on this subject is this one, and it is usually quoted to them by somebody who gains from either exaggerating or minimising it. It is computed with the court, on your stated value, before filing. Ask for the computation, keep it, and keep the receipt for the deposit, because the unexpended balance is refundable to the depositor and the receipt is what gets it back.
There is one more provision that sends people to this Part, and it sits in a different Part of the same Act, which is why it is so often missed.
It concerns recovery of a debt owed to a deceased person through the courts, and it operates as a condition precedent rather than as a defence. A great many families discover it only when a decree they expected does not arrive.
Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 214 — no court shall (a) pass a decree against a debtor of a deceased person for payment of his debt to a person claiming on succession to be entitled to the effects of the deceased person or to any part thereof, or (b) proceed, upon an application of a person claiming to be so entitled, to execute against such a debtor a decree or order for the payment of his debt, except on the production, by the person so claiming, of probate or letters of administration, a certificate granted under section 31 or section 32 of the Administrator-General Act, 1913 and having the debt mentioned in it, a succession certificate granted under Part X and having the debt specified in it, a certificate granted under the Succession Certificate Act, 1889, or a certificate granted under Bombay Regulation No. VIII of 1827 and, if granted after 1 May 1889, having the debt specified in it. Sub-section (2) provides that the word debt in sub-section (1) includes any debt except rent, revenue or profits payable in respect of land used for agricultural purposes.
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Two things, and both of them are things a family will be relying on without realising there is a condition attached.
The court cannot pass a decree against the debtor. And it cannot execute a decree or order for payment on the application of a person claiming by succession. So the bar reaches both the obtaining of the judgment and the enforcement of it.
That second limb catches a situation nobody plans for: a decree obtained by the deceased in his own lifetime, which the heirs then try to execute. The decree exists and is good, and the heirs still cannot proceed on it without producing one of the listed documents.
The provision names what will satisfy it, and the list is closed.
Probate or letters of administration granting administration of the estate. A certificate under section 31 or 32 of the Administrator-General Act, 1913, with the debt mentioned in it. A succession certificate granted under Part X, with the debt specified in it. A certificate under the Succession Certificate Act, 1889. Or a certificate under Bombay Regulation No. VIII of 1827, which, if granted after 1 May 1889, must specify the debt.
The last two are historical and will rarely be in play. The practical reading for most families is the third: a certificate under the Part this page is about, with that particular debt named in it.
The sub-section defines its own term, and the definition is wide with one carve-out.
Debt includes any debt except rent, revenue or profits payable in respect of land used for agricultural purposes. So a loan, a deposit, a security amount, an unpaid price, a dishonoured instrument and arrears of ordinary rent all fall inside the bar, while the agricultural exclusion keeps a specific class of claim out of it.
That exclusion exists because agricultural tenures and revenue are dealt with by other machinery, and it is narrower than it sounds: it covers rent, revenue or profits in respect of agricultural land, not every claim connected with a farm.
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Now the question that decides what an heir should do in what order, and it turns on the precise words of the bar.
The provision says that no court shall pass a decree, and shall not proceed to execute. It does not say that no suit shall be instituted, and it does not say that no suit shall be tried.
Read literally, therefore, the obstacle sits at the end of the proceeding rather than at its door, and that distinction has practical value where limitation is running against the claim.
That reading has judicial support, and we state it with the limitation that applies to our own source.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court has held that the provision bars only the passing of a decree without a succession certificate, and does not bar the institution or the trial of a suit for recovery of the debt.
The report we worked from did not carry the case name or the citation, so this page prints neither rather than inventing one. We would rather tell you that a High Court has taken this view, and that you should have it confirmed with a citation before relying on it, than give you a reference we have not verified. Put that to counsel, and bear in mind that another High Court may read the provision differently on your own facts.
The consequence is about sequence, and it is the most actionable thing in this half of the page.
If a suit can be filed while the certificate is being obtained, then a family facing a limitation deadline on a debt need not lose the claim while waiting months for a grant. The suit protects the limitation; the certificate is produced before the court decides.
Which means the two should run in parallel rather than in sequence, and the schedule in the certificate application must name that debt specifically, because a certificate that does not specify it will not satisfy the bar when the decree is asked for. Where a demand has to go out first, that is drafted as a petition or notice standing on its own feet, never tucked inside the certificate work, and a minor heir share may need a guardianship certificate settled before any of it begins.
There is one belief on this subject that costs families more money than any other, and it is held with complete confidence by the people who hold it.
A depositor fills in a nomination form. Years later he dies. The nominee produces the death certificate, the bank pays, and everybody treats the matter as closed because the paperwork was in order and nobody objected at the counter.
Being paid is not the same as being entitled to keep, and the bank paying you is not a decision about who owns the money.
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
The legal position has been stated by the Supreme Court more than once and in more than one context.
In Shipra Sengupta v. Mridul Sengupta, decided on 20 August 2009, the Court held that a nomination hands over no beneficial interest to the nominee, so the money stays claimable by whoever the deceased own succession law makes entitled. The nominee receives; the heirs are entitled.
Read that against everything above and the practical sequence appears. A nomination tells the institution whom it may safely pay. It does not tell the family who may keep what was paid, and the second question is answered by succession law and by the documents this page is about.
For company shares the question stayed open longer, and it was open in an uncomfortable way, because a judgment of the Supreme Court had used the words absolute owner about a nominee.
That was Aruna Oswal v. Pankaj Oswal, (2020) 8 SCC 79, where observations about vesting under the Companies Act were read by some as making a nominee the owner of the securities. The High Court authority pointed the other way, and an appeal on the point had been pending for years.
Shakti Yezdani v. Jayanand Jayant Salgaonkar, 2023 INSC 1076, decided 14 December 2023 — the holding, set out here as its elements rather than quoted, because its own words are quoted on our will drafting page and we have not set them out a second time here. One, a nominee position under the company nomination provisions and the depository bye-laws stops short of ownership. Two, the vesting language is there for a narrow working reason: so that the company or the depository has a person to deal with from the instant the holder dies. Three, the overriding clause carries that same narrow purpose and does not shut the legal heirs out. Four, a nomination does not operate as a statutory testament, and the company legislation adds no route of inheritance beside a will and an intestacy. Five, that legislation is not concerned with succession at all.
Something genuinely new has happened on nominations, and it is recent enough that a reader working from an older account will have it wrong.
Under the Banking Laws (Amendment) Act, 2025, with the relevant provisions taking effect from 1 November 2025, a depositor may name up to four nominees. For a deposit account the nominations may be made either simultaneously, with a percentage share specified for each so that the shares total one hundred, or successively, so that the claim passes down an order of priority. For a locker or articles in safe custody only the successive option is available, because the contents are often not divisible.
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
It is worth being exact about what the amendment did and did not do, because it is already being described as a change in inheritance.
It changed how many people an institution may be told to pay, and in what order or proportion. It did not change what a nominee is. A nominee named under the new provisions holds what is received in the same character as before, and the entitlement of the heirs is untouched.
So four nominees is four payees, not four owners. A family that updates its nominations and believes it has settled its succession has done something useful for the bank and nothing at all for itself. The document that settles succession is a will; the document that moves a debt or a security after an intestate death is the certificate this page is about.
Where the deposit itself is the problem rather than the entitlement, the bank side of the work is a deceased depositor claim and is handled as such. Where the family is agreed and wants to put the division beyond argument, a family settlement deed or a relinquishment deed signed by whoever is letting their share go does more than any certificate can.
One last feature of Part X, and it matters to both sides of a disputed estate.
A certificate granted under it can be revoked. That follows from the nature of the enquiry: a decision reached in a summary manner, sometimes on prima facie title, cannot be allowed to stand where its foundation turns out to be wrong.
The Act lists them, and reading them is the quickest way to understand how carefully the application ought to be prepared.
Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 383 — the five routes, set out here as their elements rather than quoted, because the Act uses almost identical language for the revocation of a probate grant and we have printed that wording on our will contest caveat page instead of a second time here. One, the proceeding which produced the certificate was flawed at its root rather than merely irregular. Two, it was procured by deceit, whether by putting forward something false or by keeping something material out of sight. Three, it rested on a statement about a matter the law treats as essential to the grant, and that statement was not so — a route that is open whether or not the applicant knew, and good faith is no answer to it. Four, events have overtaken the certificate so that it no longer does any work. Five, a competent court has since decided something, in a suit or other proceeding, about the very debts or securities named in it, such that letting the certificate stand would be improper.
Stop on the third route. It does not ask what the applicant believed, only whether the statement was so, which means a petition under this Part has to be assembled from records rather than from what the family remembers.
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
Our part of this is documentation, and the boundaries are worth stating plainly before anybody engages anybody.
We establish which of the three documents the situation actually calls for, and we say so in writing before any money is taken. We assemble and index the records. We prepare the petition and its verification to the form the Act requires. We prepare the schedule of debts and securities, item by item, with the institution, the account or folio, and the figure as at the date of death. And we keep the file in order while the matter runs.
We do not appear. We do not conduct the enquiry, answer objections in court, or argue entitlement. We do not advise on whether a particular asset is yours, and we do not value anything. Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it.
And there is one thing we refuse outright on this subject. We will not prepare a petition that omits an heir in order to make the schedule simpler, or that describes a disputed asset as undisputed, or that states a relationship we have not seen a document for. Each of those is a statement about a legally essential matter that is not so, and the Act lets a certificate be revoked on that footing however innocently it was made.
Stated as the work it actually is, rather than as a list of promises.
| Stage | What is done | Whose work |
|---|---|---|
| Deciding the document | Which of heirship certificate, succession certificate or probate the facts call for, in writing | Ours |
| Records | Death certificate, relationship proof, the institution statements as at the date of death, indexed and verified | Ours |
| The petition | Drafted and verified to the form the Act requires, with the schedule of debts and securities | Ours |
| Court fee | Computed with the court on the stated value and deposited with the application | Yours, at cost |
| The enquiry, objections, argument | Appearance before the District Judge, answering objections, entitlement | Your advocate |
| After the grant | Producing the certificate to each institution and following each item to payment or transfer | Ours, with you |
Every document that goes into that file is verified against its original, and anything irreplaceable has a certified true copy taken before it leaves your hands. If you would rather understand the position before engaging anybody at all, online legal consultation is the cheapest honest first step on this subject.
Worth knowing before a petition is filed at all: securities carry a value line, published by their own regulator, under which a bond given by the claimant and consents from the rest of the family will do instead of a grant. A family that has not done that arithmetic sometimes petitions for something it did not need. Our guide to nomination and transmission of shares sets out the figures and which form of holding each applies to.
What the preparation leaves you with is a set of papers, not an assurance, and it is put together so that a stranger to the matter can pick it up and work from it.
The written note on which document the facts call for and why. The petition as filed, with its verification and its schedule. The indexed records behind every item in that schedule. The receipt for the court fee deposited. And a dated note of what follows the grant, institution by institution, because the certificate does nothing until it is produced and the production is the part families forget to plan for.
For an estate that will take months, keeping that set current is itself the work, and legal file management exists for that. Families who find at this stage that there was a will after all should stop and read our will drafting page and the note on probate there, because the document they need is then a different one.
Where an heir is a child or cannot act for himself, a second document is needed before anything is released. The authority to receive and hold what comes to him is conferred separately, and a bank will ask for both. See guardianship certificate.
Send us the death certificate, whatever relationship proof exists, and a list of the accounts, deposits, shares and policies with the institution names. We will tell you in writing which document the facts call for, which court would hear it, what the schedule should contain, and what the court fee will be computed on. If what you need is an heirship certificate rather than this, we will say so and charge you for that instead.
Part X of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 was read provision by provision for this page, and one recent change in a neighbouring Part is flagged below as a question rather than as an answer. Section 370(1) provides that a succession certificate shall not be granted under that Part with respect to any debt or security where a right to it is required by section 212 or section 213 to be established by letters of administration or probate, with a proviso preserving a grant to a person claiming the effects of a deceased Indian Christian even where letters of administration could establish the right. Section 370(2) defines security for the purposes of the Part as a promissory note, debenture, stock or other security of the Central Government or of a State Government; a bond, debenture or annuity charged by an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom on the revenues of India; a stock, debenture or share in a company or other incorporated institution; a debenture or other security for money issued by or on behalf of a local authority; and any other security which a State Government may declare by notification in the Official Gazette. Section 371 gives jurisdiction to the District Judge within whose jurisdiction the deceased ordinarily resided at the time of his death, or, where there was no such fixed place of residence, the District Judge within whose jurisdiction any part of the property of the deceased may be found.
On the application and the enquiry, section 372 requires a petition signed and verified as a plaint, stating the time of the death, the ordinary residence at the time of death, the family or other near relatives and their residences, the right in which the petitioner claims, the absence of any impediment under section 370 or under any other provision of the Act or any other enactment to the grant, and the debts and securities in respect of which the certificate is applied for; the section provides that a knowingly untrue averment in a material particular is an offence, its own words referring to section 198 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, which the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 has since replaced. Section 373 requires the District Judge, after such notice as he thinks necessary and on the day fixed, to decide in a summary manner the right to the certificate, and provides that where the questions appear too intricate and difficult for determination in a summary proceeding he may nevertheless grant the certificate to the person having prima facie the best title thereto. Section 374 requires the certificate to specify the debts and securities set forth in the application, and permits the Judge to empower the holder to receive interest or dividends, or to negotiate or transfer, or both. Section 376 allows a District Judge, on the holder application, to extend the certificate to a debt or security not originally specified, with the same effect as if it had been included. Section 377 requires certificates and extensions to follow the forms given in Schedule VIII so far as circumstances allow. Section 379 requires every application to be accompanied by a deposit of a sum equal to the fee payable under the Court-Fees Act, 1870, with any amount not expended on the stamp refunded to the depositor; the rate is ad valorem and subject to State amendment, and this page prints no percentage.
On effect, on revocation and on what a certificate is needed for, section 381 provides that the certificate shall, with respect to the debts and securities specified in it, be conclusive as against the persons owing such debts or liable on such securities, and shall afford full indemnity to all such persons paying or dealing with the holder in good faith, notwithstanding any contravention of section 370 or other defect. Section 383 sets out the five routes to revocation, which we have stated above as elements rather than quoted, the Act using nearly the same words for revoking a probate grant and that wording already appearing on our will contest caveat page. Section 214, which is in Part VIII and not in Part X, provides that no court shall pass a decree against a debtor of a deceased person in favour of a person claiming to be entitled to the effects of the deceased or to any part of them, nor proceed on an application of such a person for execution of such a decree, except on production of probate or letters of administration, a certificate under section 31 or 32 of the Administrator-General Act, 1913 specifying the debt, a succession certificate granted under Part X specifying the debt, a certificate granted under the Succession Certificate Act, 1889, or a certificate granted under Bombay Regulation No. VIII of 1827 and, if granted after 1 May 1889, specifying the debt; and sub-section (2) provides that debt there includes any debt except rent, revenue or profits payable in respect of land used for agricultural purposes. The Andhra Pradesh High Court has held that this bars the passing of a decree without a succession certificate rather than the institution or trial of the suit; the report we read did not carry the case name or citation, so we print none.
On nomination, Shipra Sengupta v. Mridul Sengupta (Supreme Court, 20 August 2009) decided that a nomination hands over no beneficial interest and leaves the money claimable by whoever the deceased own succession law makes entitled; Aruna Oswal v. Pankaj Oswal, (2020) 8 SCC 79, carried observations about vesting that some read as going further for company shares; and Shakti Yezdani v. Jayanand Jayant Salgaonkar, 2023 INSC 1076 (14 December 2023) closed the question, its elements being set out in the box above and its own words are quoted on our will drafting page and we have not set them out a second time here. The Banking Laws (Amendment) Act, 2025, effective from 1 November 2025 as to the relevant provisions, permits up to four nominees, simultaneously with specified percentage shares totalling one hundred or successively for deposits, and successively only for lockers and safe custody. On who the heirs are, the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 governs for Hindus; we have set its provisions out at length on our disownment public notice page and the execution of a will on our will drafting page, and we have not reproduced either here. The removal of section 213 from the statute book by the Repealing and Amending Act, 2025 (assented to 20 December 2025) belongs to those pages; what this page adds is the question of what the cross-reference to it surviving in section 370(1) now does, and that question is marked as ours rather than as settled law. Check every date, period and fee here against the provision as it currently stands and against the practice of the court the application will go to.
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