US Letters Testamentary and Irish Assets: What an American Executor Needs

The Irish-American estate has a shape of its own. A grandparent emigrated in the 1950s, built a life in Queens or Dorchester or the South Side, and died there decades later with a will admitted to probate in a county court. Somewhere in the paperwork is an Irish thread: a share certificate in a company that no longer trades under that name, a bank book from a branch in Castlebar, a field that was never signed over, a half-share in a house that a brother still lives in. The executor holds letters testamentary from the surrogate’s or probate court and assumes they will do. They will not. This article explains what the Irish side needs from an executor in the United States, and how the whole thing is done from there.

Why Letters Testamentary Mean Nothing in Ireland

Ireland does not reseal or recognise grants from any foreign court. That includes letters testamentary and letters of administration from every one of the fifty states. An Irish bank, an Irish share registrar or Tailte Éireann (the Land Registry) can act only on an Irish grant of representation issued by the Irish Probate Office. The rule is the same for an executor in Boston as for one in Birmingham, and the background to it is in why Ireland won’t reseal your foreign grant.

The US grant is still the foundation of the Irish application. Where the deceased died domiciled in a US state and a court there has appointed you, the Irish Probate Office will normally issue the Irish grant to you, as the person the court of the domicile has entrusted with the estate. To do that it needs to see the US grant and will in a form it can rely on, which brings us to the first American peculiarity.

Exemplified Copies, Apostilles and Notaries

A photocopy of the letters, or even a plain certified copy from the clerk, is not enough. The Irish application is founded on an exemplified copy of the letters testamentary and the will, which is a copy certified by the clerk of the court and authenticated by the judge, so that a foreign court can rely on it. Some Irish practitioners also ask for an apostille from the Secretary of State of the issuing state, under the Hague Convention, and we will tell you at the outset whether one is needed for your file. Order these early; some county courts take weeks.

The Irish probate papers themselves are sworn in the United States before a notary public. US notaries are plentiful and inexpensive, and the Irish Probate Office accepts papers sworn before them, provided the notary’s details and seal are complete. We prepare the papers so that the jurat, the part the notary completes, matches what Dublin expects, because an incomplete jurat is one of the commonest reasons an application is returned. The detail of swearing abroad is in swearing Irish probate papers abroad.

PPS Numbers for People Who Never Set Foot in Ireland

Before any Irish grant issues, a Revenue form called the Statement of Affairs (Form SA.2) must be filed, and it requires Irish PPS numbers for the deceased and for each beneficiary. The grandparent who emigrated in 1955 may have one on an old record, or may not. The grandchildren in Connecticut certainly do not. Obtaining a PPS number for a non-resident, or tracing one for a deceased person, is a documentary process with its own queue, and it is the single slowest item on most US files. We start it on day one, in parallel with everything else. The full explanation is in the PPS number bottleneck.

The Cold Assets: Shares, Old Accounts and the Field

The Irish-American file is usually old, and old assets have to be reconstructed. A share certificate in Allied Irish Banks from 1988 has passed through capital reorganisations, registrar changes and in some cases nationalisation and relisting; the holding has to be traced with the current registrar before it can be valued, let alone transferred. The procedure is in Irish shares in a foreign estate. A bank account untouched for fifteen years may have been transferred to the Dormant Accounts Fund, from which it can be reclaimed by the estate, and we cover that in closing an Irish bank account from abroad.

The field is the hardest and the most common. Irish land is governed by Irish succession law whoever owned it and wherever they lived, and a very large number of Irish-American families discover that the land was never transferred out of a previous generation’s name at all. The grandfather who emigrated was himself a beneficiary of an estate in Ireland that nobody ever administered. That is a different problem from the one you thought you had, and it has its own article: the land is still in your grandfather’s name.

The Solicitor Requirement

Broadly, where the person applying for the Irish grant lives outside Ireland and a beneficiary living outside Ireland is to receive €20,000 or more, Irish law requires an Irish solicitor to be appointed before the grant issues, acting as agent for the estate’s Irish tax compliance. Personal applications to the Probate Office require attendance in person. For a US executor the Irish limb therefore runs through an Irish solicitor in practically every case, and we explain the rule in do I need an Irish solicitor for probate? US attorneys who want the Irish side handled while they keep the main administration will find the lawyer-to-lawyer version on Irish probate for foreign lawyers.