You Have Assets Abroad. Does Your Indian Will Actually Cover Them?

Picture a fairly ordinary NRI client. A flat in Mumbai. A house in London. A bank account in Singapore. Some shares in a foreign company.

He has one Will. It says his "worldwide assets" go to his children. Tidy, simple, done.

Except it isn't — and by the end of this piece, you'll see exactly where that clause falls apart.

Cross-border estates don't answer to one law. Which rules apply depends on what the asset is, where it sits, where the testator was domiciled, and sometimes which personal law governs him. The law that decides who inherits isn't always the law that decides how the asset gets handed over.

Start with Section 5 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925

Section 5 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 is the anchor provision. Immovable property in India is governed by Indian law, regardless of where the deceased was domiciled. Movable property follows the deceased's domicile at death instead.

The Act's own illustration makes this concrete: an Indian-domiciled person who dies in France, leaving movables in France and England plus property in India, still has those movables governed by Indian law. Domicile travels with the person. Immovables don't move at all.

So for our NRI client: the Mumbai flat ordinarily engages Indian law as the law of situs — subject, importantly, to any applicable personal or special law, which we'll come back to shortly. Under the traditional Indian conflict-of-laws approach, the Singapore bank account and foreign shares, being movables, would ordinarily follow the law of his domicile. If that's still India, Indian succession rules apply to them, wherever they physically sit.

Domicile is trickier than it sounds

Domicile isn't citizenship. It isn't nationality. It isn't even residence.

In Sankaran Govindan v. Lakshmi Bharathi, the Supreme Court treated domicile as a mixed question of law and fact — turning on conduct, circumstances, and genuine intention. Years abroad don't automatically mean a new domicile has been acquired.

That should give pause to Indians settled overseas for decades. Foreign passport, foreign house, most of the year spent outside India — none of it settles the question on its own. Whether Indian domicile has actually been abandoned is a factual inquiry, not an assumption you can write into a Will and expect to hold.

Personal law can override the general rule

Here's where Section 5 stops being the automatic answer. Part II of the Succession Act, where Section 5 lives, doesn't apply to Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs or Jains. Before leaning on Section 5, check whether personal or special law takes precedence instead.

Jose Paulo Coutinho v. Maria Luiza Valentina Pereira shows how this plays out. A Goan domiciliary owned immovable property in Bombay. Section 5 would ordinarily point to Indian law governing it. Instead, the Supreme Court held that the Portuguese Civil Code — applicable to Goan domiciliaries — governed succession, even for property held outside Goa.

The special law beat the general rule. Location of the asset wasn't the deciding factor; the testator's legal status was. It's exactly why "Indian law, no argument" is never quite the right way to describe an immovable in India — the answer depends on who owns it, not just where it sits.

Now, the London house

This is where our client's "worldwide assets" clause actually runs into trouble.

In Sankaran Govindan, the Court held that succession to a house in Sheffield followed English law, as the law of the situs — separate entirely from how his movable property was treated. English law will ordinarily govern succession to the London house in the same way.

So his London house doesn't automatically pass under his Indian Will just because the Will says "worldwide assets." Before the property can actually change hands, the heirs may also need an English grant of probate, or an appropriate recognition or resealing process for a foreign grant, before the personal representative can deal with the property in England — a separate procedural layer on top of whatever India requires.

One Will, two countries — does it even hold up?

A Will drafted and signed correctly in one jurisdiction doesn't automatically travel well into another.

India has its own execution requirements. Section 63 of the Succession Act requires, for a Will, that the testator sign it and at least two witnesses attest it in the prescribed manner. If a Will is meant to operate over Indian assets, it should satisfy Indian execution formalities directly, even if the same document is also meant to work abroad.

The reverse holds too. A foreign Will, properly executed under foreign law, isn't automatically effective over Indian assets just because it was valid where it was signed.

None of this means our client needs two Wills. A single worldwide Will can work fine for the Mumbai flat, the Singapore account and the shares. But given the London property, a separate English Will — or at least Will provisions drafted with English formalities in mind — would likely save his heirs a long, costly cross-border probate fight later.

A rule that changed — but not that much

One more thing worth flagging, because it alters recent advice.

Section 213 of the Succession Act used to impose a mandatory probate requirement in specified circumstances — the source of the old rule that Wills covering property in Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai had to be probated. That section was omitted by the Repealing and Amending Act, 2025, effective 20 December 2025.

So the blanket "you must get probate because the property is in one of these cities" line is no longer accurate. But probate hasn't become irrelevant — it can still be the cleanest way to prove title and satisfy banks, registrars or buyers, even where it's no longer legally compulsory. And it changes nothing about what London or Singapore require on their end.

What this actually means for drafting

Before drafting a Will for anyone with assets outside India: pin down domicile, identify the applicable personal law, classify each asset as movable or immovable, establish where it's situated, and check that jurisdiction's succession rules.

The real question isn't "does my Indian Will cover my worldwide assets?" It's whether each jurisdiction — India, England, Singapore — will actually recognise the Will, the disposition it makes, and the person appointed to carry it out.

That's the problem worth solving. A single clause promising "worldwide assets" was never going to solve it.