Do I Need an Irish Solicitor for Probate? The Rule for Executors Abroad

The question arrives in two forms. The first is from an executor who has done the home-country probate themselves and would like to do the Irish one the same way. The second is from a solicitor or attorney abroad who is administering the estate and wants to know whether they can deal with Dublin directly. The answer to both is the same, and it is not a sales line. For an executor living outside Ireland, the Irish grant runs through an Irish solicitor in practically every real case, partly because of a statutory rule and partly because of how the Probate Office works. This article sets out both, so that you can see exactly where the requirement comes from.

The Personal Applicant Route, and Why It Does Not Travel

Ireland has a personal applicant procedure. An executor or administrator who lives here can apply for a grant without a solicitor, by submitting the papers to the Probate Office or a district registry and attending in person to swear them. It is used mainly for small, simple estates. It has two features that defeat the executor abroad. The first is the attendance: the personal applicant must come to the office. The second is that the Probate Office requires certain applications to be made through a solicitor regardless, and those categories cluster around the foreign element: estates of people who died domiciled abroad without a will, wills in a foreign language, wills that have not been proved anywhere and need an affidavit of foreign law. The office also keeps a general discretion to insist on a solicitor where an application is complex.

A foreign lawyer cannot substitute for an Irish one in this process. A solicitor in England or an attorney in New York cannot lodge an application with the Irish Probate Office, cannot be the solicitor on record, and cannot take on the statutory role described next. What they can do, and often do, is instruct an Irish solicitor as correspondent for the Irish limb, which is the basis on which we act for firms abroad; see Irish probate for foreign lawyers.

The Statutory Rule: Non-Resident Applicant, Non-Resident Beneficiary

The second source of the requirement is a provision of the Irish tax code that most people meet for the first time when they are told about it by the Probate Office. Broadly stated, where the person applying for the grant lives outside Ireland, and a beneficiary who also lives outside Ireland is to receive a benefit of €20,000 or more from the estate, the personal representative must appoint a solicitor practising in Ireland before the grant can issue. The appointed solicitor acts as the estate’s agent for Irish tax compliance in respect of those non-resident beneficiaries, and carries responsibility for that role.

The rule exists because Ireland has no other practical way to ensure that tax due on Irish assets passing to people abroad is dealt with. It is not aimed at executors; it is aimed at the gap that a wholly foreign estate would otherwise leave. Its practical effect is that the typical cross-border estate, with a son in Sydney applying and a daughter in Toronto inheriting, falls inside it. We do not advise on tax and this article does not attempt to; what the rule means for the solicitor’s role on the file is a procedural matter, and that is what we handle.

What the Irish Solicitor Actually Does

It is worth being concrete, because “appointing a solicitor” sounds like a formality and is not. On a non-resident file the Irish solicitor builds the asset schedule with the Irish institutions, obtains date-of-death valuations, applies for PPS numbers for the deceased and the beneficiaries, prepares and files the Revenue Statement of Affairs (Form SA.2), drafts the probate papers in the form the Probate Office requires, arranges for them to be sworn abroad correctly, obtains sealed copies of any foreign grant in the right form, lodges the application, answers the Probate Office’s queries, and after the grant collects the assets, sells any property and distributes. The executor abroad signs what is sent to them and answers questions. The list of what we need from you is in documents for an Irish grant when you live abroad.

When an Irish Grant Is Not Needed at All

The honest counterpart to all of the above: sometimes you do not need a solicitor because you do not need a grant. Irish banks, credit unions, An Post and the State Savings schemes each have a limit, varying by institution but commonly around €20,000, below which they will release a deceased customer’s money on a death certificate and a signed indemnity. Small shareholdings can sometimes be dealt with under a registrar’s small estate procedure. Irish land and buildings always need a grant, as do holdings above the institution’s limit. Before anyone instructs anyone, the asset list decides it, and the Irish Grant Checker runs the same logic in two minutes. The small-holding procedures are described in credit union accounts, prize bonds and small holdings.

Choosing the Irish Solicitor

Three things matter. The first is that the solicitor does non-resident grants regularly, because the foreign-document, PPS-number and swearing-abroad steps are where files go wrong and experience of them is what prevents a rejected application. The second is that the solicitor states the fee in advance and in writing, which Irish law requires and which a well-run practice does without being asked; our approach is in what Irish probate costs when you live abroad. The third is the credential: a Trust and Estate Practitioner (TEP) has taken the international qualification in exactly this field, and the STEP network means your solicitor at home and your solicitor in Ireland speak the same language. Where the estate also carries a dispute, an Irish will that is suspect, or a section 117 question hanging over Irish land, it helps if the same practice can deal with that too.