Claiming an Estate in China as a Foreign or Overseas Heir

The situation this page is written for

Someone in your family has died. There is an apartment in Beijing, or a bank account in Guangzhou, or a shareholding in a company in Zhejiang. You live in Toronto, or Manila, or Riyadh, and you may not read Chinese. The relatives still in China may be helpful, or unreachable, or the reason you are reading this. The bank will not discuss the account by email, and the notary office does not correspond in English.

Chinese law is not the obstacle: foreign nationals inherit in China on the same footing as Chinese citizens, and mainland China currently levies no estate or inheritance tax. The obstacles are a document chain — every paper you hold must be converted into a form a Chinese notary, registry or judge will accept — and the fact that almost every step assumes you are in the room.

Which country's law decides who inherits

Before any question of shares, one prior question has to be settled, and it is the one most often skipped: Chinese succession law does not necessarily govern the whole estate. Chinese conflict-of-laws rules split it by the type of asset.

• Immovable property — an apartment, a house, land-use rights — is governed by the law of the place where it is located. A flat in Shanghai is decided by Chinese law, whatever the deceased's nationality or residence.
• Movable property — bank deposits, securities, company shares, personal effects — is, on statutory succession, governed by the law of the deceased's place of habitual residence at the time of death.

For most families reading this page, that produces a divided answer. If your father lived in Toronto and died there, leaving an apartment in Beijing and a Chinese bank account, Chinese law decides who takes the apartment, while the law of his habitual residence decides who takes the account — and those two bodies of law may not identify the same heirs or the same shares.

Two consequences follow. First, the order and shares set out in the next section apply squarely to the mainland real property, and to movables only where the deceased was habitually resident in China. Second, a Chinese notary or court will need to be satisfied about where the deceased was habitually resident, which is a question of evidence, not assertion.

Where a will exists, different rules apply again, and a will validly made abroad is not automatically effective in China. If the estate spans two countries, the practical approach is to have this allocation confirmed at the outset — usually alongside a lawyer in the country of residence — rather than after an application has been filed.

Who inherits, and how much

Where there is no will

Book VI of the Civil Code, in force since 1 January 2021, sets a fixed order. First-order heirs are the spouse, the children and the parents of the deceased. Second-order heirs are the siblings and the grandparents, paternal and maternal, and they inherit nothing unless no first-order heir takes.

The categories are broader than they look: children include children born outside marriage, adopted children, and stepchildren where there was a relationship of support; parents include adoptive and step-parents on the same basis. Shares within an order are equal in principle, but a notary or court may depart from equality — an heir who mainly supported the deceased may receive more, one who could have supported them and did not may receive less. Two further rules change who is at the table: where a child died before the deceased, that child's own descendants take the share by subrogation; and where an heir survived the deceased but died before the estate was divided without renouncing, that share passes to the heir's own heirs.

The two mistakes that change the arithmetic

Marital property. An apartment acquired during the marriage is usually joint marital property. Half is the surviving spouse's own property and never enters the estate; only the deceased's half is divided. A widow with two children does not receive a third of the apartment — she keeps her own half and takes a share of the other half.

The deceased's parents. Parents are first-order heirs, and this is where cases quietly multiply. If your grandmother outlived your father by a few weeks and did not renounce, a share of his estate vested in her; on her death it passed to her heirs — your aunts and uncles. A matter for three people becomes a matter for nine, in four countries. Establish first, precisely, who was alive on the date of death and in what order the deaths occurred.

Where there is a will

A legacy-support agreement outranks a will, and a will outranks the statutory order. The Civil Code recognises notarial wills, holograph wills in the testator's own hand, wills written or printed by another with two qualified witnesses, audio and video wills, and emergency oral wills.

One point matters more than the rest for families who have been told otherwise: where several wills conflict, the last one prevails. The older rule under which a notarised will automatically overrode a later will was dropped when the Civil Code took effect. A will validly made abroad is also not automatically effective here — for real property in China, Chinese succession law governs, and the will must still satisfy a Chinese notary or judge on form, capacity and authenticity. See will notarisation for foreigners in China.

Two routes: the notary office, or the court

The notarial route

The ordinary route is a notarial certificate of inheritance from a Chinese notary office, which the registry, the bank or the company registration authority then acts on. It is open only where every heir has been identified and located, every heir agrees on the division, each heir not taking a share has signed a renunciation, the family relationships can be proved by documents the notary accepts, and the asset is clearly the deceased's and free of competing claims.

Since 2016 notarisation has not been strictly mandatory for inheritance registration of real property — the registry may verify kinship itself — but in practice most registries still want a notarial certificate or a court decision, and where an heir is a foreign national they effectively always do.

The court route

Litigation is the route when the notary office cannot act: an heir refuses to sign or cannot be traced; a will is disputed or the original cannot be produced; kinship cannot be documented; the title stands in someone else's name; the property has already been transferred or is occupied by a relative; the estate includes company equity caught in a shareholder dispute.

Jurisdiction lies with the court where the deceased was domiciled at death or where the principal estate is located; disputes over real property go to the court where the property sits. Most estate cases end in court-supervised mediation rather than judgment, which is not a lesser outcome — a mediation decision is enforceable in the same way as a judgment, arrives sooner, and halves the filing fee. Either document is then presented to the registry in place of a notarial certificate. See how the Chinese court system works.

Do not choose between the routes in the abstract. Build the family tree, verify the asset, then put the file to the notary office with jurisdiction. A refusal is useful rather than a setback: it establishes that litigation is the only route, and notary offices will usually say what is missing.

The document chain

What has to come from your side

• The death certificate, and where the deceased died abroad, the local death registration
• Proof of kinship — birth certificates, marriage certificates, adoption records; where your country issues no kinship certificate, a sworn declaration of kinship
• Your identity documents, plus a declaration of identity where the name in your passport does not match the name in the Chinese records
• A signed renunciation from every heir not taking a share
• Your own declaration accepting the inheritance
• A power of attorney, if you are not attending in person
• The will, if made abroad, with evidence of its validity where it was made

Notarise first, then apostille

The order is not negotiable. A birth or death certificate issued by a government registry is already a public document and can be apostilled as it stands. A statement you write yourself — renunciation, acceptance, name declaration, power of attorney — is a private document, and becomes apostillable only after a local notary has taken your signature. Getting this backwards is the commonest reason a package comes back.

The Hague Apostille Convention entered into force for mainland China on 7 November 2023. Public documents from other member states no longer need Chinese consular legalisation: one apostille from the competent authority in the issuing country replaces the old chain. For Canada it took effect on 11 January 2024, with apostilles issued by Global Affairs Canada and by several provincial authorities depending on where the document was issued. From a country that is not a party, the older sequence still applies — local notary, national foreign ministry, then the Chinese embassy or consulate. Background: using apostilled documents in China.

An apostille certifies the signature, seal and capacity of whoever issued or notarised the document. It says nothing about content, so a Chinese office can still reject an apostilled document on substance, form, translation or age. Hong Kong and Macau documents follow their own attestation routes.

Translation

Everything filed in China must be in Chinese, with the seal of a translation company holding the appropriate business scope — often one the receiving office already recognises. Translation done abroad, or by a bilingual family member, is usually refused. Translate after apostilling, because the apostille certificate has to be translated too. More: notarisation and authentication for China.

If you cannot come to China

Most of the process can be handled by an agent. Two things generally cannot: the declaration of whether you accept or renounce must be your own signed and authenticated statement, and some notary offices additionally verify your identity in person or by video. The standard package for an overseas heir is therefore a declaration plus a power of attorney, both notarised locally then apostilled.

What the power of attorney has to contain

• Your full name exactly as in your passport, passport number, nationality and residential address; the same for your agent, with their Chinese identity card number
• The deceased's full name in Chinese characters, their identity or passport number, and the date of death
• The asset identified precisely — the property address exactly as it appears on the title certificate, and the certificate number; the bank, branch and account; the company name and percentage of equity
• An enumerated list of authorised acts: apply for and sign the notarial deed of inheritance, collect the certificate, file the transfer registration, sign registry forms, declare and pay taxes, collect the new title certificate, deal with the bank, sign the contract of sale, receive proceeds into your account, apply for the outward remittance. Chinese institutions read a power of attorney narrowly — anything not listed is not authorised
• If the agent is to sell, either a floor price or an express statement that price is at the agent's discretion
• Whether the agent may delegate to someone else
• A validity period
• Bilingual Chinese and English text, with your signature taken by the notary on the document containing the Chinese

Practical points that cost people months

• Execute several originals. The notary office, the registry and the bank each retain one, and a replacement means another notarisation, another apostille, another courier cycle.
• Some institutions refuse a power of attorney that does not name them, and some want a fresh one if yours is more than a few months old.
• A power of attorney cannot sell property that is not yet in your name. Registration first, then sale.

Registering the property, then selling it

The order of operations does not bend:

1. Obtain the notarial certificate of inheritance, or the judgment or mediation decision
2. Obtain an appraisal, where the registry or tax authority requires one
3. File the transfer with the real property registry as an inheritance registration. Statutory heirs are exempt from deed tax on an inheritance transfer; a beneficiary under a will who is not a statutory heir generally is not
4. Receive the new title certificate in the heirs' names — jointly, where there is more than one
5. Only then, sell

Where there is more than one heir, decide before registering whether title goes into joint names or whether the others renounce or are bought out. Joint title means every later step — listing, contract, tax filing, receipt of proceeds — needs everyone's signature and, for those abroad, another round of authenticated powers of attorney. Note too that renouncing "in favour of" a named person is not one act but two, a renunciation and then a gift, taxed differently from a straightforward division.

The sale

A foreign owner can sell property in China. Purchase-eligibility and holding-period rules vary by city and bite on your buyer, and tax on a sale is a stack rather than a single figure: value added tax and surcharges, individual income tax on the gain, stamp duty, agency commission. For inherited property there are specific rules on how original cost and holding period are computed, and they can carry over the deceased's acquisition date and price — a difference that can amount to a large share of the proceeds. Model the tax before listing, not after a contract is signed. See selling property in China as a foreigner.

You will need a Chinese bank account in your own name to receive the price, and for a non-resident foreign national opening one generally requires attending a branch in person — plan for that at the outset rather than discovering it at completion. Taking the money into a relative's account creates both a tax and a foreign exchange problem, and is the commonest reason these matters stall permanently at the last step. Related: bank account problems foreigners run into in China.

Getting the proceeds out of China

This is a separate legal procedure, not a banking formality, and it is the part most heirs do not plan for. Proceeds from inherited property fall within a specific category of outward transfer of personal property, processed by banks under State Administration of Foreign Exchange rules — a lawful channel with a documentary threshold, not a discretionary favour.

The bank builds a file. It will normally want your identity and nationality documents; the notarial certificate of inheritance or the court decision, establishing that the asset was inherited and by whom; the title records and the contract of sale; tax clearance and payment receipts for every tax arising on the sale; evidence that the renminbi sits in a domestic account in your own name; and in some cases a Chinese notarial or lawyer's certification concerning the inherited property. Missing tax receipts are the most frequent blocker.

Two things to avoid. Do not route the proceeds through the annual individual foreign exchange purchase allowance, and do not split them across relatives' allowances — inherited property transfer is its own category with its own documents, and splitting is both a violation and a destruction of the paper trail you need. And do not sell before the notarial certificate or judgment exists: without it the bank cannot establish the source of funds. See China's foreign exchange rules for individuals.

How long it takes

• Assembling and certifying documents abroad is usually the longest phase, not the Chinese procedure — tracing records, local notarisation, apostille and certified translation commonly run one to three months, longer where a relative in a third country has to sign.
• The notarial route, once the file is complete and the heirs agree, is weeks rather than months, with the registry transfer following shortly after.
• The court route runs longer. Foreign-related civil cases in China are not subject to the statutory trial time limits that constrain domestic cases, which is exactly why they take longer; where a party abroad must be served under the Hague Service Convention, service alone can take many months, and an appeal adds more.
• Sale and completion once title is in your name is usually weeks to a few months, market permitting.
• The outward remittance is weeks once the bank file is complete.

What compresses the timeline is getting the document chain right the first time and settling the division among heirs before filing. What stretches it is an heir nobody can reach and a will everyone has heard about but nobody can produce.

Fees, and why an inheritance case cannot be taken on contingency

Chinese regulation prohibits contingency fee arrangements in inheritance matters. Under the national rules governing lawyers' service fees, risk-based or "no win, no fee" pricing may not be used in marriage and inheritance cases, among other categories. No lawyer licensed in the PRC may lawfully take a percentage of what you recover from an estate, and an offer to do so is a reason to check carefully who you are dealing with.

What is permitted is a fixed fee for the matter or for each stage, an hourly rate, or a fee set as a percentage of the value of the estate — agreed in writing at the outset and payable irrespective of outcome. A written engagement and fee agreement is required in every case. I work in staged fixed fees so you can stop after any stage: assessment (family tree, verification of the asset, the document list specific to your country, and a written view on whether the notarial route is open), credited against the next stage if you proceed; then the document stage (bilingual declarations and power of attorney, instructions for your local notary and apostille authority, translation, filing with the notary office); then transfer registration and, where instructed, the sale and the remittance file. Litigation is priced by stage — first instance, appeal, enforcement — before anything is filed.

Third-party costs are separate and do not come to me: the Chinese notary office fee, usually calculated on the appraised value of the estate under a provincial schedule and often the largest single cost apart from tax; local notary and apostille fees where you live; certified translation; appraisal; the court filing fee, charged on a sliding percentage of the amount in dispute, advanced by the claimant and halved where the case ends in mediation; taxes and agency commission on a later sale; courier.

Because those costs are largely fixed, there is a floor below which collecting an estate costs more than the estate is worth. If your matter is below it, I would rather say so in the first exchange than bill you to find out.

Mistakes that cost overseas heirs the most

• Apostilling a plain photocopy. Chinese authorities check that the notarial certificate and the underlying document are properly bound and sealed together.
• Using the wrong authentication route — a Chinese consulate for a document from an apostille member state, or an apostille from a country that is not a party.
• A name mismatch between passport, birth certificate and the Chinese household register or title deed — married names, transliterations, characters against pinyin. Fixable with an authenticated declaration of identity, but only if you catch it before filing.
• Letting a relative "take care of it" with no written agreement and without ever seeing the registry record. Title registered into one heir's sole name is a much harder problem than an undivided estate.
• Selling first and asking about remittance afterwards.
• Letting authenticated documents sit unused. Some Chinese authorities treat kinship and status documents as current only for a limited period.

Matters I do not take

• Estates too small to bear the fixed costs. Notary fees, translation, apostilles and remittance work do not scale down with the value of the asset.
• Enquiries with no verifiable asset. "My grandfather owned land somewhere in Fujian", with no address, certificate number, account or company name, is not a matter I can open. I do not run speculative asset searches.
• Advice on the law of your own country. I am licensed in the PRC; your home-country estate administration, tax residence and reporting obligations need a lawyer or accountant there, and I am glad to work alongside them.
• Acting for one heir against another where I already act for the family jointly. If a dispute develops mid-matter I will say so, and one side will need separate counsel.
• Anything whose object is moving money out of China outside the lawful channel.
• "Inheritance" approaches that arrive by email. A stranger writing about an unclaimed Chinese estate and a fee to release it is running an advance-fee fraud. There is nothing to recover. Do not send money.

What to send if you want an assessment

Nothing needs to be certified to find out where you stand; photographs are enough at this stage. What is useful:

• The deceased's full name, in Chinese characters if you have them, their nationality, and the date and place of death
• Your relationship to the deceased, your nationality, and where you live
• Who else in the family is or was alive — spouse, children, parents, siblings — and whether any of them died before or after the deceased
• The asset, as specifically as you can manage: property address and title certificate number, bank and branch, company name
• Whether a will exists and where the original is held, and whether anyone in China holds the property or the documents
• Whether you can travel to China, and if so when

What comes back is a written view on whether the notarial route is open to you, what the document chain looks like from your country, how long it should take, and what it will cost, third-party costs included. I am Joy Wang (Wang Zhe), a PRC-licensed attorney at Yingke Law Firm in Beijing, licence number 11101202411865284, working in English and Chinese.