Your Parent Died in Ireland and You Live Abroad: What Happens Now

Most of what is written about international probate concerns the person who died abroad with assets in Ireland. This is the other, more common, Irish story: the parent who never left. Everything they owned is in Ireland, from the family home to the post office book, and the children who inherit it are in London, Boston, Melbourne and Vancouver, with perhaps one still at home. The estate is entirely Irish, which makes the legal picture simpler than a cross-border one. The logistics are what need managing, along with the family dynamics that distance produces. This article walks through it in the order it happens.

First: Who Has Authority

Until a grant of representation issues, nobody has authority over the estate. If there is a will, the executor it names is the person entitled to apply for probate. If there is no will, Irish intestacy rules decide who takes and who may apply, which for a widowed parent generally means the children equally. The executor abroad can act from abroad; see the non-resident executor of an Irish estate. The sibling in Ireland who is not the executor has no authority at all, however helpful they are being, and the informal arrangement under which one child “minds the money” before a grant is the most reliable generator of family disputes we see. Secure the house, keep the paperwork, pay nothing and sell nothing until the grant is in hand.

The Solicitor Requirement When the Children Are Abroad

An entirely Irish estate still meets the non-resident rule the moment the executor and a beneficiary are both outside the State. Broadly, where the applicant lives abroad and a non-resident beneficiary is to receive €20,000 or more, an Irish solicitor must be appointed before the grant issues, acting as the estate’s agent for Irish tax compliance. A parent’s estate divided among children abroad falls inside that rule in almost every case. The practical detail is in do I need an Irish solicitor for probate? Where the executor is the sibling still in Ireland, the rule may not bite, but the children abroad will still need PPS numbers for the Revenue form and the executor will still find a solicitor the practical route for a house sale.

The House

The family home is usually the estate’s main asset and its main logistical problem. Three decisions come early. Whether anyone is living in it, and on what basis: a sibling who moved back to care for the parent has no automatic right to stay, but may have a claim if promises were made, as described in promised inheritance and proprietary estoppel. Whether it is to be sold or transferred to one child, which the will may decide or the beneficiaries may agree. And who clears it, which is the task distance makes hardest and which Irish house-clearance and estate agents handle for a fee. The sale itself runs as an ordinary Irish conveyance alongside the estate, with contracts signed by the executor abroad and couriered. The sequence is in selling Irish property from abroad.

The Accounts, the Shares and the Post Office Book

The rest of the estate is collected after the grant. Irish banks and credit unions release funds on sight of the grant and the executor’s instructions; small balances may release on a death certificate and indemnity without one. Prize bonds, State Savings and An Post accounts have their own procedures. Shares in Irish companies are transferred or sold through the registrar. Money arrives in the solicitor’s client account and is distributed from there to beneficiaries abroad by international transfer. Where an account had been forgotten for years it may have been transferred to the Dormant Accounts Fund, from which the estate reclaims it, as explained in closing an Irish bank account from abroad.

The Revenue Form and the PPS Numbers

Before the grant issues, the Statement of Affairs (Form SA.2) must be filed with Revenue, listing the assets, the beneficiaries and what each receives. It requires a PPS number for each beneficiary. Children who emigrated twenty years ago may have one from before they left; grandchildren born abroad will not, and obtaining PPS numbers from abroad is the slowest single step on the file. We start it immediately. The form is explained in the SA.2 Statement of Affairs explained. We do not advise on tax; whether any Irish or foreign tax arises for a child abroad is for an accountant, and the beneficiaries’ own advisers at home often need to be involved.

The Family Questions Distance Makes Worse

A parent’s estate is where Irish succession law’s protections are most often invoked. A child of any age who was left out or under-provided can apply under section 117 within six months of the grant, a period the court cannot extend; a will that left the house to the child who stayed, with nothing to the four who left, is the classic case, and it is argued from both sides. A will that was changed late in life, in favour of the person who was closest, raises the questions in capacity and undue influence. These questions do not go away because the family is spread across the world; they get harder to discuss. Most of them are better resolved by one early, candid conversation with everyone on the call than by proceedings, and the practice is built to offer both.