A client’s father had spent thirty years working in the Gulf and had built carefully — a flat in his home town, mutual funds, two bank accounts, a modest portfolio in the country he’d worked in. When he died, none of it was in dispute. And yet it took his family the better part of two years, three lawyers, and a great deal of grief to actually lay hands on what was plainly theirs. Nothing had been hidden. Nothing had been planned, either.

This is the quiet truth of an NRI estate: inheritance does not cross borders on goodwill. It crosses on paperwork — and the paperwork for two countries is among the most tangled there is.

A nominee is not an heir, and a will valid in one country can sit untouched for years in another.

Where it actually goes wrong

Three mistakes recur. The first: assuming a bank or mutual-fund nominee is the same as an heir — it is not; a nominee merely holds the asset in trust for whoever the law, or your will, says inherits. The second: a single will, written abroad, that Indian institutions hesitate to act on — or an Indian will that ignores the assets you hold overseas. The third: property held ‘jointly’ without anyone being clear what that means for succession. Layer on FEMA’s rules about what a non-resident heir may hold and repatriate, and a grieving family ends up negotiating two legal systems at the worst possible time.

The three documents that travel

The fix is unglamorous and powerful. One: a clear India-specific will for your Indian assets — alongside, not contradicting, any foreign will. Two: nominations that match that will on every account, folio and policy, so the two never point in different directions. Three: a named executor who understands both systems, and a written note on how assets can actually be repatriated to heirs abroad. None of it is urgent — until it is, and by then you are not there to fix it.

Start with one afternoon

It need not be daunting. Begin with a single sheet: every Indian asset you hold — each account, folio, policy and property — and, beside it, who is named as nominee and who you actually intend to inherit it. The gaps between those two columns are your to-do list. From there, an India-specific will and matching nominations are a few guided steps, not a lifetime project. One ordered afternoon now can spare your family two disordered years later.

You spent a career building across borders. The last act of that care is making sure it reaches the people you built it for, cleanly. I am not your lawyer; my role is to make sure the financial plan and the estate plan point the same way. Plan the inheritance like the cross-border event it is — not a problem you leave your family to solve. In twenty years, the families that grieved in peace were the ones whose paperwork had been put in order, deliberately, long before it was needed.