When someone dies without a will in India, who inherits is fixed by the succession law the deceased's religion selects: the Hindu Succession Act 1956 for most families, the Indian Succession Act 1925 for the rest, and Muslim personal law for Muslims. A bank can settle a deposit of up to Rs 15 lakh against a claim file the family puts together itself, with no court order involved. The one recent change concerns wills rather than intestacy. Section 213 of the Indian Succession Act was omitted on 20 December 2025, so probate is no longer a precondition to establishing a right under a will, and the intestacy shares are exactly what they were.

WillJini's Inheritance Assistance work begins with the two determinations this page walks through: the applicable succession route, Will-based or intestate, and who the legal heirs are. What follows is the law as it now stands, and what each bank and office actually asks for.

What if you need the Hindu rules or a state procedure?

This page gives the all-India position when a person dies without a will. For the Hindu framework in depth see the Hindu Succession Act explained, and for the vocabulary see intestate meaning under Indian law. State-level certificate procedure lives on the state pages, not here.

Related guides:

• What is the Indian Succession Act, 1925
• Legal heir certificate vs succession certificate
• Difference between beneficiary and nominee

What is the Inheritance Act in India?

India has no single statute called the Inheritance Act. Succession is divided among personal laws, and the two big statutes are drafted as catch-alls rather than as lists of who is included. The Indian Succession Act is not limited to Christians. The inheritance laws in India are residual by design: between them, the statutes in this table reach everyone.

On the Special Marriage Act row, the operative question is not whether the couple married under that Act. It is whether they married under it to someone outside the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jaina group. A Hindu couple who chose a civil marriage stay on the Hindu Succession Act, while an interfaith civil marriage moves the estate to the 1925 Act.

The religion of the person who died selects the statute, and a Special Marriage Act marriage or Scheduled Tribe status can override it.

What are the Rules of Inheritance in India?

Every intestate estate turns on the same three questions: which law governed the person who died, how that law ranks the heirs, and what each institution holding an asset will accept as proof. Dying intestate means dying without a valid will. Once those three answers are known, the statute fixes the shares and the family cannot change them. What remains is proving to each office who the heirs are.

The estate does not pass to the government merely because there is no will; that happens only where the deceased left nobody of kin at all (section 34 of the Indian Succession Act). Nor does the family need a court's permission to be heirs: the court enters only for the specific documents covered later on this page.

Who Are Legal Heirs in India?

Legal heirs are the people the governing succession law itself names, and each statute keeps its own list. For a Hindu man the list is the Schedule to the Hindu Succession Act: Class I runs to sixteen entries, the son, daughter, widow and mother together with twelve entries for the families of children who died before him. Section 9 sets the priority: Class I heirs take simultaneously and to the exclusion of all other heirs, so one Class I heir shuts out every Class II heir, every agnate and every cognate.

Class II is a ranked ladder of nine entries, each earlier entry excluding the later ones. The father stands alone in Entry I. Entry II holds four relations together: the son's daughter's son, the son's daughter's daughter, the brother and the sister. Section 11 makes everyone within one entry share equally, so siblings do not take an entry to themselves.

Class I heir is a term of the Hindu Succession Act alone: the Indian Succession Act does not use it and Muslim personal law has no counterpart.

A nominee is not a legal heir either. Under the Reserve Bank's directions a nominee or survivor is paid as a trustee of the legal heirs, and where a nomination exists the bank cannot insist on a succession certificate, letters of administration or probate at any amount. The nominee receives the money, but the legal heirs own it. The asset-wise position is at nominee vs legal heir.

How is Property Divided When a Hindu Man Dies Without a Will?

The widow, the mother and each son and daughter take one share each, and the family of each child who died before him takes one share between them. Under section 10, multiple widows together take a single share, and a pre-deceased child's branch takes only the single share its parent would have taken.

For instance, a man survived by his wife, a son, a daughter and two children of a son who died earlier leaves an estate in four shares: one to the widow, one to the surviving son, one to the daughter, and one to the late son's branch, which his widow and children divide between themselves. The grandchildren do not take a full share each alongside their uncle and aunt.

Where no Class I heir exists at all, the estate falls to Class II in the entry order described above, and after Class II to the agnates and then the cognates (section 8).

What Happens if the Person Who Died is a Woman?

A female Hindu's estate does not use the Class I and Class II Schedule at all. Sections 15 and 16 of the Hindu Succession Act give it an order of its own.

Her property devolves first on her sons, daughters and husband together, the children of a child who died before her stepping into that child's place; failing them it goes to the heirs of the husband, then to her mother and father, then to the heirs of the father, and last to the heirs of the mother. A childless widow's estate therefore passes to her late husband's heirs before her own parents.

Section 15(2) adds a rule about where the property came from. A flat a childless woman inherited from her father devolves on her father's heirs, not on her husband's family, and property she inherited from her husband or father-in-law returns to the husband's heirs. Kerala adds its own clause for property inherited from a son who died before her.

Who Inherits Under the Indian Succession Act, 1925?

For the families this Act reaches, the split turns on who survives: one-third to the widow where there are lineal descendants, half where the deceased left kindred but no descendants, and the whole estate where there are neither (section 33). The children divide the rest equally (section 37), grandchildren stepping in where their parent has died (section 38). A widower has the same rights over his wife's estate (section 35).

Where the intestate left a widow and no lineal descendants, section 33A gives the widow the first Rs 5,000 of the net estate, with a charge over the property and 4 per cent interest until paid, before the half-and-half division applies to the rest. The figure was set in 1926 and has never been revised. Section 33A does not apply where the deceased was an Indian Christian, whom sub-section (5) excludes by name; a Christian widow takes the plain half under section 33.

Under the Parsi chapter, sections 50 to 56, the estate divides as the table above shows, and a pre-deceased child's share passes into that child's branch (section 53).

How Does Inheritance Work for Muslim Families?

Shariat decides the shares, and no Indian statute codifies them. The Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1937 makes Shariat the rule of decision for a Muslim's intestate succession, and it goes no further than that.

The central Act also carves out one subject in terms: section 2 applies to all questions of intestate succession save questions relating to agricultural land, and Kerala substituted a section without that carve-out, so for farmland the answer depends on the state. Because no statute sets the fractions, how a particular estate divides is worked out under the personal law on the family's actual facts.

Do You Still Need Probate When There is No Will?

Probate certifies a will, so a family with no will never needed it. The court grant that exists for intestacy is letters of administration, and section 212(2) makes even that unnecessary for most families, exempting the intestacy of "a Hindu, Muhammadan, Buddhist, Sikh, Jaina, Indian Christian or Parsi": seven categories covering most estates. Outside them, section 212(1) does require letters of administration before a right to an intestate's property can be established in court.

The recent legal change affects wills rather than intestacy. Section 213 of the Indian Succession Act 1925 was omitted with effect from 20 December 2025 by the Repealing and Amending Act, 2025 (37 of 2025). The Act carries no commencement clause, so it took effect on the day it received the President's assent. Probate is no longer a precondition to establishing a right under a will. It remains available, and some institutions still ask for it.

To recover a debt of the deceased through a court, section 214 still requires a document, and it offers a menu: probate, letters of administration, or a succession certificate with the debt specified in it. A probate petition already filed before 20 December 2025 raises its own questions, which this page does not answer; take advice on a pending petition.

What Will the Bank Ask For?

Check the account for a nomination first, because that single fact decides most bank claims. The Reserve Bank consolidated its instructions on 28 November 2025; a deceased customer's deposits and lockers are now governed by the Responsible Business Conduct Directions for commercial banks, Chapter VII, Section E:

• Where the account carries a nomination or a survivorship clause, the bank shall not insist on a succession certificate, letters of administration or probate, whatever the balance; the nominee or survivor collects as a trustee of the legal heirs.
• With no nomination and a balance up to Rs 15 lakh, Rs 5 lakh at a co-operative bank, and a bank may fix itself a higher limit, the claim settles on the claim form, the death certificate, the claimant's identity document, an indemnity bond and letters of disclaimer from the heirs not claiming, together with either a legal heir certificate or a declaration about the heirs by an independent person who knows the family, is not a party to the claim and is acceptable to the bank. The declaration is not sworn before anyone.
• Above the threshold, it asks for a succession certificate, or a legal heir certificate, or an affidavit about the heirs sworn before a Notary Public, a Judge or a Judicial Magistrate.
• Once the papers are complete, the bank must settle a deposit claim within 15 calendar days.

The children of a son who died earlier are heirs, and the bank will not process a claim that leaves them off the paperwork. The bank requires a complete family list before it will process the claim. The Directions govern banks alone; a pension office, an insurer, the registrar and a property mutation sit outside them.

Which Document Does the Family Need?

The asset the family is trying to transfer decides which document it needs. A legal heir certificate is an executive record from the state's Revenue Department naming the survivors, issued under state administrative practice, so its name, its fee and its timeline differ from state to state. The Reserve Bank's rules accept it for bank claims at both levels.

A succession certificate is a civil court order under Part X of the Indian Succession Act, granted by the District Judge of the place where the deceased ordinarily resided (section 371), on a court fee set by each state's own Court-Fees law. It is confined to debts and securities, so it does not reach a flat or land. Letters of administration appoint an administrator over the estate at large, and after section 212(2) most families obtain them only where a particular institution wants a court-appointed one.

Immovable property moves differently again: the record changes by mutation with the Municipal Corporation or the Revenue Department, separate from both the bank and the court. Which certificate a given asset needs, with the state names and costs, is worked through in legal heir certificate vs succession certificate.

Ancestral Property vs Self-Acquired Property

Self-acquired property is the simple case: the owner may will it to anyone while alive, and without a will it devolves under the orders set out above.

The term ancestral property does not appear in the Hindu Succession Act at all. What the Act regulates is coparcenary property in a joint Hindu family governed by Mitakshara law, and section 6, substituted in 2005, makes a daughter a coparcener by birth with the same rights and liabilities as a son. Its proviso protects dispositions and partitions made before 20 December 2004. Whether a property is coparcenary or self-acquired changes who holds rights in it by birth, so settle that question before the family divides the estate.

Does Writing a Will Change What Happens?

A valid will replaces the statutory distribution with the deceased's own choices, so the orders on this page apply only where there is no valid will. For a Muslim testator the will chapter of the Indian Succession Act does not apply (section 58), and testamentary freedom is itself a personal-law question. Writing one is not a court process: the step-by-step will guide covers drafting, registration before the Sub-Registrar is optional, and a registered will's validity is its own subject. WillJini's will drafting service and family trust creation are the planning routes on offer.

What Does WillJini Handle in an Inheritance Case?

WillJini's Inheritance Assistance service handles the estate transfer from start to finish, in four published steps. It opens with a legal review: a consultation on the assets, the legal heirs and whether a will exists, from which a step-by-step roadmap for the case is built.

The team then identifies the legal heirs and gathers the required declarations, coordinating across family members "even if they are spread across countries", with embassy and e-signature support. That is where the branch rule and the disclaimer letters above get assembled. The filings follow: court filings for succession or probate where the case needs them, liaison with banks, sub-registrars and authorities, and the drafting of affidavits and powers of attorney. The final step is the transfer itself, of "properties, bank accounts, lockers, and investments", into the family's name.

Willjini is India's most trusted Succession Planning company. It has done this work since 2014, and the four steps track the four places an estate genuinely stalls: the governing law, the heir list, the paperwork each institution wants, and the transfer. If the estate in front of you is stuck at any of them, that is what inheritance assistance covers.

FAQs

What is the new inheritance law?

The Repealing and Amending Act, 2025 (37 of 2025) omitted section 213 of the Indian Succession Act 1925 with effect from 20 December 2025, the date of assent, since it has no commencement clause. Probate is no longer a precondition to establishing a right under a will; it remains available, and some institutions still ask for it. The orders of intestate succession were not changed.

Who inherits if there is no will in India?

The heirs the governing law names. For a Hindu man, the Class I heirs of the Hindu Succession Act take first and exclude everyone else; for a Hindu woman, the separate section 15 order applies. Under the Indian Succession Act the estate divides between the widow or widower and the children (section 33), and a Muslim's estate is distributed under Shariat.

Does the Indian Succession Act apply to all citizens?

Its intestacy Part applies to everyone except a Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh or Jain, because section 29(2) makes it the residual law of India rather than a statute for named communities. It also governs anyone married under the Special Marriage Act to someone outside the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jaina group. Parsis have a separate chapter within the same Act.

What is a child entitled to when a parent dies without a will in India?

A share fixed by the parent's personal law. Under the Hindu Succession Act each son and daughter takes one full share of a father's estate, alongside the widow and the mother, and a daughter's entitlement equals a son's; a mother's estate goes first to her children and husband. Under the Indian Succession Act, the children divide two-thirds where a widow survives, the whole where she does not.

How to transfer property if there is no will?

Establish the heirs, then satisfy each holder of an asset. Bank deposits move under the Reserve Bank's rules: on a nomination at any amount, or up to Rs 15 lakh on a legal heir certificate or an independent person's declaration. Debts and securities may need a succession certificate from the District Judge. Land and flats change hands by mutation in the revenue or municipal record.

How can I avoid intestacy?

Make a valid will and keep it current after marriages, births and property purchases. The statutory orders apply only in the absence of one, and a will replaces them with your own distribution. Registration is optional. WillJini can prepare and register a will for you, settling the question before it ever becomes an intestacy.

Is the nominee the owner of the money after death?

No. Under the Reserve Bank's directions a nominee or survivor collects as a trustee of the legal heirs, so nomination decides who the bank pays, not who keeps the money. A life policy is governed by its own nomination regime under insurance law, so read the policy rather than carrying the banking rule across to it.

Is there an inheritance tax in India?

No inheritance tax or estate duty is currently levied in India; India Code records the Estate Duty Act, 1953 as repealed by Act 20 of 2000. Receiving an inheritance is not itself a taxed event. Selling an inherited asset later raises a separate capital gains question, worth a tax adviser's advice before the sale.