Yes. You can make an Indian will for your Indian assets, and if you own a flat here you effectively need one, because section 5 of the Indian Succession Act puts Indian immovable property under Indian law wherever you were domiciled when you died. Registering it at any Sub-Registrar is optional and costs Rs 100 in Maharashtra. The part worth your attention is none of that.

It is that the answer changed recently, and most of what you will read has not. Until 20 December 2025, a will signed abroad covering a flat in Mumbai, Chennai or Kolkata could not be acted on until a High Court had proved it. That rule was repealed. If you were advised on your Indian will before last December, the most expensive part of that advice is now out of date, and the guidance still sitting on most websites is describing a law that no longer exists.

Where this page sits

This page covers the Indian will an NRI makes for Indian assets: which law reaches those assets, whether a foreign will already covers them, what registration does and does not buy, who may present the will at the Sub-Registrar, and when your family will need a court grant.

If someone has already died and you are trying to release a bank balance or move a flat into your name, this is the wrong page and there are two better ones below.

Related guides:

• Succession certificate for an NRI, for bank balances, deposits and shares after a death
• Transfer of inherited property from abroad, for a flat you have already inherited
• Will registration charges in Mumbai, for what the Sub-Registrar actually charges

Which Law Governs Your Indian Assets If You Live Abroad?

Indian law, for anything immovable, and it does not ask where you live.

Section 5 of the Indian Succession Act splits your estate in two and sends each half somewhere different. Sub-section (1) is the one that matters to an NRI who owns property here:

Succession to the immovable property in India of a person deceased shall be regulated by the law of India, wherever such person may have had his domicile at the time of his death.

Sub-section (2) sends movable property the other way, to the law of the country where you were domiciled when you died. So a single person can have a Dubai bank account governed by one system and a Bandra flat governed by another, at the same moment, under the same section.

This matters because it settles the question most NRIs actually arrive with. A will you signed in London, a trust your American attorney set up, a DIFC registration in Dubai: none of them displaces Indian law for the Indian flat. They may deal perfectly well with everything else you own.

The practical consequence is narrower than it sounds. You are not obliged to have an Indian will. You are obliged to accept that Indian law will decide what happens to your Indian immovable property, and an Indian will for an NRI is simply the most reliable way to tell it what you wanted.

Do You Need a Separate Indian Will, or Will Your Foreign One Do?

A foreign will can be valid in India. The reason to write a separate Indian one is rarely validity.

It is what happens between the death and the transfer. A will drafted for another country arrives in India needing translation, legalisation and an explanation of its own vocabulary, and it usually describes the Indian property in terms an Indian registrar or bank has never seen. Executors named abroad may have no practical way to act here. The document is not wrong; it is simply slow, in a process that is already slow.

Two structures work, and they are not equally safe.

For instance, an Indian will that opens with a standard "I revoke all former wills" and does not restrict itself to Indian assets can revoke the UK will signed three years earlier. That is the error worth paying someone to avoid, and it is the reason the two-will structure is a drafting decision rather than a filing decision.

Where the estate is genuinely split across two countries, an Indian will for an NRI usually wins on that count alone, and the clause limiting its scope has to be written on purpose.

Does an Indian Will Have to Be Registered, and What Does That Buy?

No. Registration is optional, and three of the benefits usually attached to it are not benefits it confers.

Section 18 of the Registration Act 1908 is headed "Documents of which registration is optional", and clause (e) is wills. Nothing turns on it. A will's validity comes from section 63 of the Succession Act, which asks for your signature and two witnesses, and mentions registration nowhere. Nor does registration decide whether an institution will later ask your family for a court grant, which is the other thing people expect it to buy.

So an unregistered will is not weaker, and a registered one is not challenge-proof. What registration buys is custody: a copy sitting with the Registrar that cannot be lost in a house move, destroyed by whoever is unhappy with it, or quietly replaced by a later sheet of paper produced after the funeral. For an estate spread across two countries and a family spread across three, that is worth more than it sounds.

The charge is a state fee, not a national one. Maharashtra's is Rs 100, set under "Wills and Authorities to Adopt" in the state registration fee table, and the same Rs 100 covers presenting the will, cancelling it, depositing it sealed, withdrawing it and registering it after death. A will attracts no stamp duty in Maharashtra at any value. Other states set their own figures, and we do not publish numbers we have not read off the department's own schedule.

One detail saves an NRI a domestic flight. Section 40(1) allows a will to be presented to any Registrar or Sub-Registrar, so you are not tied to the office nearest the flat. If you land in Delhi and the property is in Chennai, the Delhi office can register it.

Can Someone Register Your Will in India While You Stay Abroad?

The Registration Act does not give you that route the way it gives you others, and no decision was found settling it either way. Since registration is optional to begin with, the question is usually aimed at the wrong step.

It is also the most common plan we are asked to execute, so it is worth seeing why the wording gives us pause. Three neighbouring sections of the Act deal with a will. Two of them expressly contemplate an agent acting for the testator. The third does not.

The phrase "duly authorised agent" appears twice, in the two sections either side, and is absent from the one about registration. We are not going to tell you that settles it, because we did not find a decision that says a power-of-attorney holder may never present a will, and inventing one would be worse than the uncertainty. What we can tell you is that the statute offers the agent route plainly for deposit and withdrawal and does not offer it for registration, which is a thin foundation on which to send a relative to a Sub-Registrar with your will and a general power of attorney.

The useful move is to notice that the question has been aimed at the wrong step. Registration is optional. Signing is not. If you are choosing what to do on a trip to India, the signing and the witnesses are the part that has to happen in your presence by law, and section 42 gives you a route to leave the will in official custody afterwards that the Act itself says an agent may use.

When Does Your Family Need Probate, and Which Court?

In far fewer cases than in 2024, and quite possibly none of yours. The rule that forced a family to prove the will in the High Court before they could touch a Mumbai, Chennai or Kolkata property was removed on 20 December 2025, and a great deal of what is still published about NRI wills has not caught up.

Until that date, section 213 of the Succession Act barred an executor or legatee from establishing any right under a will until a court had granted probate or letters of administration. It reached wills made by Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains inside the ordinary original civil jurisdictions of the Bombay and Madras High Courts and the old Bengal territories, and, through clause (b) of section 57, wills made outside those limits so far as they dealt with immovable property inside them. That clause is what caught the NRI: sign in Dubai, own in Bandra, and your executor was in front of the Bombay High Court.

The Repealing and Amending Act, 2025 omitted it. Its Schedule is blunt about it, in three parts: the figures "213" come out of section 3(1), "section 213 shall be omitted", and section 370 is amended so that a succession certificate no longer turns on probate at all. The Act received the President's assent on 20 December 2025 and was published in the Gazette the next day. It carries no commencement clause, so it took effect on assent rather than on some later notified date.

Section 57 itself was not touched, and that is worth understanding rather than glossing. It still exists and still describes those territories. What has gone is the consequence that used to hang off it. So a Bandra flat and a Pune flat now sit in the same position on this question, which was not true a year ago.

Three things follow that matter more than the repeal itself.

An institution can still ask. The Act removed a statutory bar, not a bank's caution. A bank, a housing society or a buyer's solicitor facing a large transfer may still want a court grant, and their comfort is a commercial requirement even where it is no longer a legal one. Probate remains available, and where a will is likely to be disputed it is still the thing worth having. Our page on whether probate is mandatory in Maharashtra and the probate service both work from the current position.

Anything already under way is undisturbed. The Act carries a savings provision protecting rights already accrued and proceedings already begun, so a petition filed before the repeal is not swept away by it.

Check the date on whatever you are reading. Guidance written before December 2025 states the old rule correctly for its time and incorrectly for yours, and that includes a good deal of what an AI assistant will tell you, because the change is recent enough to sit outside much of what those systems were trained on. If something tells you probate is compulsory for a Mumbai will, it is describing the law as it stood before 20 December 2025.

How Should an NRI Sign and Witness an Indian Will?

Signed by you, attested by two witnesses, and the Act adds remarkably little to that.

Section 63(c) sets the whole requirement:

each of the witnesses shall sign the Will in the presence of the testator, but it shall not be necessary that more than one witness be present at the same time, and no particular form of attestation shall be necessary

Three things follow that are worth knowing before you organise anything. The witnesses do not have to be in the room together, so you can sign in front of one colleague on Tuesday and another on Thursday. There is no prescribed attestation wording. And nothing in the section requires an Indian witness, an Indian notary, a consular stamp or an apostille, so if you are being told your Indian will must be apostilled to be valid, that is a step someone has added to the statute.

Choose witnesses who will still be reachable and are not beneficiaries. A beneficiary who witnesses the will is the avoidable problem here, and it is avoidable for free.

Beyond that, the sensible order is: settle which country's assets the Indian will covers, write the limiting clause so it cannot revoke the foreign one, sign it in front of two witnesses wherever you are, and then decide separately whether a Rs 100 registration or a sealed deposit is worth a morning on your next trip. The Indian will for an NRI is a short document. The decisions behind it are the part that repays getting help with, and they are all decisions you can take from where you are sitting.

FAQs

Can an NRI make a will in India?

Yes. There is no restriction on an NRI, an OCI holder or a person of Indian origin making a will governing Indian assets. Section 5(1) of the Indian Succession Act puts Indian immovable property under Indian law wherever the testator was domiciled at death, which is why an Indian will is the natural instrument for it.

Does an NRI will have to be registered in India?

No. Section 18(e) of the Registration Act 1908 lists wills under documents of which registration is optional. Registration does not create validity, does not prevent a challenge and does not remove any probate requirement. It gives you a copy in the Registrar's custody, which is its real value.

What does it cost to register a will in India?

The fee is set state by state. In Maharashtra it is Rs 100, under the entry "Wills and Authorities to Adopt" in the state registration fee table, and a will attracts no stamp duty there at any value. The same Rs 100 covers cancelling, depositing, withdrawing and registering after death.

Can my brother register my will in India if I stay abroad?

The Registration Act does not offer that route as plainly as it offers others. Section 40(1) names the testator, and after death a person claiming as executor or otherwise under the will. Sections 42 and 44 expressly permit a "duly authorised agent" to deposit and to withdraw a sealed will, and section 40 contains no such phrase. Since registration is optional in the first place, the better question is usually whether the trip is needed at all.

Will my Dubai or UK will cover my flat in India?

Not on its own, in the sense that matters. Indian law governs succession to Indian immovable property whatever the foreign will says. A foreign will can be valid here, but it arrives needing legalisation and interpretation, and its executors may have no practical route to act in India.

Will my family need probate if I sign my will abroad?

Not as a matter of law any more. Section 213 of the Indian Succession Act, which made probate the precondition to an executor or legatee establishing any right under certain wills, including a will made abroad covering immovable property in Mumbai, Chennai or Kolkata, was omitted by the Repealing and Amending Act, 2025. That took effect on 20 December 2025, the date of the President's assent, as the Act carries no commencement clause. A bank or a housing society may still ask for a grant before releasing or transferring an asset, which is a commercial requirement rather than a legal one, and probate remains worth obtaining where the will is likely to be disputed.

Do I need two Indian witnesses, or a notary?

Neither. Section 63(c) asks for two or more witnesses who each sign in your presence, does not require them to be present at the same time, and prescribes no form of attestation. Nothing in it requires an Indian witness, a notary or an apostille. Do not choose a beneficiary as a witness.