International Probate & Irish Assets

The deceased lived abroad; the assets are here. Non-resident executors, foreign lawyers and diaspora families — the Irish grant extracted without anyone boarding a plane.

Every week, somewhere abroad, a family discovers the same fact the hard way: the grant of probate they extracted at home means nothing to an Irish bank, an Irish share registrar or the Irish Land Registry. Ireland does not reseal foreign grants — where Irish-situate assets are substantial, a fresh Irish grant must be extracted here, under Irish rules, with Irish paperwork. This page is the speciality built for that moment: estates of people who lived — and died — outside Ireland, leaving property, shares, accounts or land inside it.

Most people arrive at these pages while grieving. We run these files with that in mind: plain answers, no pressure, and matters moved forward so you don’t have to carry the process as well as the loss.

Who This Service Is For

  • Non-resident executors and administrators: named in a will (or entitled on intestacy) to an estate with Irish assets, living in the UK, US, Australia, Canada, the EU or anywhere else — the entire Irish side run remotely;
  • Foreign lawyers, attorneys and notaries: instructed on a home-country estate that turns out to include Irish assets — we act as your Irish agent, extract the grant, and report to you;
  • Diaspora families: the parent or grandparent who emigrated but kept the home place, the site, the credit union account or the shares — the classic Irish-abroad estate;
  • Foreign nationals with Irish assets: no Irish connection at all beyond the holiday home, the investment apartment, or the shareholding in an Irish-registered plc — Irish probate still applies;
  • Non-resident beneficiaries: entitled under an Irish estate and needing the Irish machinery explained, monitored — or, where the estate has stalled or the will is suspect, challenged.

What Actually Has to Happen

The cross-border estate runs on a sequence, and getting the sequence right first time is most of the value:

  • The jurisdiction analysis: which law governs what — Irish immovables under Irish succession law, movables generally following domicile — and therefore which grant, to whom, on what entitlement;
  • The right Irish grant: probate, administration with will annexed, or intestate administration — identified from the foreign picture, with a court-sealed certified copy of any foreign grant anchoring the application;
  • The foreign documents, done properly: death certificates, wills in translation with certified translations, documents sworn before notaries abroad, affidavits of foreign law where the Probate Office requires one;
  • The Revenue machinery: the SA.2 Statement of Affairs completed correctly, PPS numbers obtained for non-resident parties (started day one — it is the commonest bottleneck), and the mandatory solicitor-as-agent appointment where applicant and beneficiaries are abroad;
  • The application, right first time: lodged through eProbate, names and details consistent across every document — because rejected applications lose their queue place entirely;
  • After the grant: Irish accounts closed, shares transferred or sold, Irish property sold from abroad (we run the conveyance alongside the estate), and the proceeds distributed internationally — with tax questions routed to the accountants on each side, always.

Why the Cross-Border File Rewards a TEP

The TEP credential — Trust and Estate Practitioner, through STEP, the international body for estate specialists — exists substantially for this work: an international network, a shared vocabulary with the foreign lawyer on the other side of the file, and specialist training in exactly the conflict-of-laws and administration questions cross-border estates raise. Add the practice’s litigation half and the international estate gets something rarer still: if the Irish will is suspect, the section 117 or legal-right-share question touches the Irish property, or the estate simply sticks, the same door handles it — conflicts rules respected, always. Distance changes the logistics, not the standard: everything runs by email, video and courier, in whatever time zone the file lives in.

Your Corridor, Mapped in Detail

Each major corridor has its own page — the documents your jurisdiction produces, what Ireland does with them, and the corridor’s particular bottlenecks:

From the UKThe closest corridor - sealed British grants, the post-Brexit positionFrom the USAExemplified copies, apostilles, the diaspora reconstruction fileFrom AustraliaThe time-zone-proof method for the longest corridorFrom CanadaProvincial grants and the transatlantic file in briefFor Foreign LawyersCorrespondent Irish counsel - scoped, quoted, reportedSelling Irish PropertyGrant and sale as one file, run in parallel

Frequently Asked Questions

No — and this surprises almost everyone: Ireland does not reseal or simply recognise foreign grants. Where the Irish assets are of sufficient value (the working threshold institutions and the Probate Office apply is €20,000 and upwards, though banks vary), a fresh Irish grant must be extracted through the Irish Probate Office — a full application with its own Revenue Statement of Affairs (SA.2), its own papers and its own rules about who is entitled to apply. The foreign grant is not wasted: a court-sealed certified copy of it usually anchors the Irish application and identifies the correct Irish applicant. But it opens no Irish doors by itself.

Irish Assets, Foreign Estate?

Send the death certificate, the will or foreign grant, and a note of the Irish assets - we reply with the grant type, the document list, the realistic timeline and the costs, before any commitment. No visit to Ireland required.

Call 01 5827148

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