Inheritance in Russia from Abroad: How to Claim It Without Travelling

Inheritance in Russia from abroad rarely becomes a problem at a convenient moment when you have a free week, an immaculate folder of family documents and a quiet desire to study Russian succession law. More often, a relative has died, an apartment or bank account remains in Russia, the heir lives in Spain, Germany, Israel, Georgia or somewhere even further away, the birth certificate has developed an independent life after several international moves, the property documents are with a relative who is suddenly “not ready to discuss anything yet”, and somebody in Russia announces that they are “already dealing with everything”, without explaining what the reassuring word “everything” is supposed to mean.

At that point many people start looking at flights to Russia before they have even established whether a flight is necessary. In most ordinary cases, an inheritance in Russia can be accepted while you are living abroad, without travelling to Russia simply to make the initial application. The application can be prepared outside Russia and sent to the notary handling the inheritance case, while some or all of the later work may be carried out by a representative if the authority is drafted correctly.

There is also a terminology point worth understanding from the beginning. English-speaking heirs naturally talk about “claiming” or “receiving” an inheritance, while Russian law uses the concept of acceptance of inheritance. The distinction matters because the six-month period is primarily a deadline for accepting the inheritance, not for completing the entire process. You do not have to locate every bank account, register every property right, collect every missing family certificate and restore peace among all branches of the family within those same six months. The last task, in some families, would require rather more than succession law can reasonably provide.

The first priority is accepting the inheritance on time

As a general rule, an heir has six months from the date of death to accept the inheritance, although special periods can apply in particular situations, for example where the right to inherit arises because another heir has refused or failed to accept. That is why I would not begin a cross-border inheritance by trying to create a perfect file containing every title document, historical marriage certificate, bank statement and piece of information about an asset somebody vaguely remembers the deceased once owned.

Those documents may become important later. The first question is much simpler: has the inheritance been accepted within the required period?

If the heir is abroad, an application can be prepared remotely and sent to the Russian notary handling the case. Where it is delivered by somebody else or sent by post, the heir’s signature has to be authenticated in the manner required for the document to be used in Russia. Depending on the circumstances, that may be done by a notary or another official authorised to perform the relevant notarial act. A Russian consular office can also be a practical option for a Russian citizen abroad, because consular officials may perform notarial acts including authentication of signatures and powers of attorney.

If the document is prepared before a foreign notary, another question immediately appears: what must happen to that document before it can actually be used in Russia? Depending on the country and the applicable international arrangements, an apostille may be required, another form of legalisation may apply, or additional legalisation may not be necessary at all; a Russian translation also has to be dealt with correctly. This is why “have it notarised locally and send it to Russia” is not quite the universal instruction it sounds like.

Postal delivery requires particular care. It is not enough simply to have the signature authenticated while the six-month period is still running and then leave the document on the kitchen table for another fortnight. The application must be sent within the applicable period, and evidence of the date of dispatch should be retained. In an international case I would not test the limits of Russian inheritance procedure by handing an envelope to a postal operator in Lisbon at 11:47 p.m. on the final day and hoping that everybody later agrees on what happened; the document, signature authentication and delivery method are better checked in advance, with enough time left to correct something if necessary.

How do you find the Russian notary handling the inheritance case?

This is often the first practical problem for an heir abroad, especially where communication with other relatives is poor or has stopped altogether. Fortunately, you do not have to rely entirely on the family group chat.

The Federal Notarial Chamber maintains a public inheritance-case register where it is possible to check whether an inheritance case has already been opened and which notary is handling it. For somebody sitting in Madrid who has been told only that “your sister has already gone to a notary”, this can be considerably more useful than another three pages of inheritance theory.

If no inheritance case has yet been opened, the first heir to apply will normally approach a competent notary within the relevant notarial district. Once the inheritance case has been opened, the other heirs do not each start their own separate case with a notary of their choice; they submit their claims and documents to the notary who is already handling the existing case.

This also explains a situation that otherwise feels surprisingly personal: “Why do I have to deal with the notary my sister chose?” Because once the inheritance case exists, a second heir does not open a second inheritance case. There is one case relating to the same deceased person, and the other heirs join it.

The system is not a ticket office with one final ticket going to the fastest relative, however. Another heir reaching the notary before you does not by itself give that person priority over your inheritance rights. If you are entitled to inherit and your period for acceptance has not expired, you still need to submit your own claim into that same case.

Where should documents be signed if you are abroad?

The apparently simple advice “just go to a local notary” becomes considerably less simple when the original reaches Russia and somebody discovers that it needs an apostille, the translation has been prepared incorrectly or the document does not contain the power the Russian notary actually needs.

For that reason I prefer to reverse the usual order. First determine what the Russian side of the inheritance requires, then prepare the foreign document accordingly. Depending on the country, the correct route may involve a Russian consular office, a foreign notary plus an apostille, another form of authentication or a treaty that removes some of those formalities.

This can also be a separate piece of work for me. I can review the situation first, prepare the wording of the inheritance application or power of attorney and identify the formalities likely to apply to documents signed in your country before you spend money on notarisation, translation and international delivery. It is much cheaper to correct two paragraphs before signature than to discover three weeks later that a beautifully sealed original has travelled across Europe only to become a very impressive document that cannot actually be used.

The point is not to create as many documents as possible. It is to create the document that is actually needed.

Can the inheritance be handled through a representative?

Yes, and for a person living abroad a properly authorised representative can often deal with much of the practical work in Russia, but the power of attorney must match what that representative is expected to do.

If the representative is going to accept the inheritance on behalf of the heir, the authority to accept an inheritance must be expressly included. A general sentence authorising somebody “to represent my interests before all authorities and organisations” may not be sufficient for that particular act. If, by contrast, the heir has personally signed an application for acceptance, the signature has been properly authenticated and somebody else merely delivers that completed document to the notary, the legal situation is different because the heir has already expressed the decision to accept.

If the representative will continue with the case afterwards, the power of attorney can be drafted around the work that will genuinely be required: submitting and collecting documents, dealing with the notary and public authorities, receiving the certificate of inheritance, handling registration formalities and carrying out other steps connected with the particular assets.

I would avoid both extremes: a power of attorney so narrow that another document is required every second week, and one authorising everything in every country on earth until 2057 simply because one apartment in St Petersburg needs to be inherited. Legal documents generally work better when they are written for the real problem rather than for the owner’s anxiety about every theoretical problem that might ever exist.

There is also an important exception where a legal representative acts for an heir. A legal representative does not need a separate power of attorney merely to accept an inheritance on behalf of the person they legally represent. If, for example, a minor child is the heir, the mother or father acting as the child’s legal representative proves that status with the relevant documents; the parent does not first need to obtain a power of attorney from the child in order to represent the same child.

Do you need all the property documents before making the application?

No, and this is one of the most important practical points for an heir who is abroad. The fact that you do not yet have a complete set of documents for the inherited assets is not a reason to postpone acceptance of the inheritance until the six-month period is nearly over.

You may not yet know which bank held the deceased’s savings, the title documents for the apartment may be with another family member, somebody may remember the existence of a garage several weeks after the funeral, and an old shareholding may emerge from a folder no one had opened in ten years. That can all be dealt with as the inheritance case develops.

The notary will eventually need information establishing the death, the relevant family or testamentary basis for inheritance, the estate, the heirs and other circumstances of the case, but part of that information can be obtained through official systems and notarial enquiries, while other documents can be supplied later.

So a situation in which the property papers are with one sibling, nobody has seen the marriage certificate for fifteen years and everyone has merely heard something about a bank account is inconvenient, but it is not necessarily disastrous. Spending five months waiting for every piece of paper to fall beautifully into place and then discovering that nobody actually accepted the inheritance is considerably worse.

What if the deceased person lived outside Russia?

This is where the answer can no longer be reduced to “there is Russian property, therefore everything is Russian”.

If the deceased lived permanently abroad, it may be necessary to determine separately which law applies, where the succession should be administered and what property, if any, gives rise to a Russian inheritance process. Russian citizenship by itself does not automatically answer all of those questions.

If the deceased lived abroad, the existence and location of property in Russia can determine whether there is a Russian part of the inheritance to deal with. Russian real estate is particularly important, because inheritance of real estate registered in Russia is governed by Russian law and its location plays a central role in determining the Russian inheritance process.

But real estate is not the only possible Russian asset. If there is no Russian real estate, other property located in Russia may still matter, including movable property, so the absence of an apartment does not automatically mean there can be no Russian inheritance issue at all. If there is no property in Russia, however, the need for a Russian inheritance procedure becomes a very different question and has to be considered in light of the applicable law and the particular international situation.

The practical difference is significant. If the deceased lived and died in Russia and the heir happens to live in Spain, the case is usually about organising a Russian inheritance remotely. If the deceased spent twenty years in France, died there, held money in a European bank, owned assets in Russia and made a will abroad, the first question is not “how wide should the Russian power of attorney be?” but what part of the estate actually needs to be dealt with in Russia in the first place.

Inheriting money and being able to transfer it abroad are not always the same thing

This point matters particularly to foreign heirs and people who now live outside Russia.

It is possible to become legally entitled to money held in a Russian bank and still face a separate question about how those funds can actually be paid, used or transferred abroad. Special economic measures, banking rules and restrictions affecting certain categories of clients or transactions have changed repeatedly, and the practical position can depend on the heir’s status, country of residence, the bank involved, the currency and the rules in force at the time the funds are released.

So inheriting money in a Russian bank and being able to transfer that money abroad are not always the same thing.

If bank deposits form a substantial part of the estate, I would check this before treating the amount shown in the inheritance documents as money that can immediately be moved to an account in another country. Sometimes the inheritance issue and the banking issue are two separate problems, and finishing the first does not automatically solve the second.

That is not a reason to abandon an inheritance. It is a reason to understand what the end of the process will actually look like before spending six months assuming that legal title and practical access to the funds are identical.

What happens after the inheritance has been accepted?

Accepting an inheritance and completing the inheritance process are not the same thing. Once the heir has acted within the required period, the notary identifies the heirs, verifies the basis of inheritance, determines the estate and examines the documents and other circumstances of the case; the certificate of inheritance will generally be issued after the relevant period has expired and the circle of heirs can be established.

What happens after that depends on the assets. Real estate may require registration, bank funds raise their own practical questions, and vehicles, company interests and other assets each involve different steps. The heir does not necessarily need to be physically present for each of those stages because much of the work may be performed by a properly authorised representative.

For a person abroad, I therefore prefer to divide the problem into three questions rather than one enormous task called “I need to claim an inheritance in Russia”: what must be done before the deadline, which documents can be collected afterwards, and which later steps can be handled in Russia on the heir’s behalf. Once those questions are separated, the case normally becomes far more manageable than it appeared when everything was mentally placed into the same week.

If the six-month period has already expired, that does not automatically mean the inheritance is lost, but living abroad does not automatically excuse the missed deadline either. It becomes necessary to examine when the heir learned of the death, whether actions may amount to actual acceptance of the inheritance, whether other heirs are involved and whether the situation can be resolved without litigation or requires court proceedings. I deal with that separately in “Missed the Inheritance Deadline in Russia: What to Do After Six Months”, because once the deadline has passed, the legal questions are different from those in a case where there is still time to act properly.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to travel to Russia to accept an inheritance?

Usually not. In many cases an heir living abroad can prepare the inheritance application outside Russia and send it to the Russian notary handling the case, while later steps can be dealt with through a properly authorised representative.

How long do I have to claim inheritance in Russia?

As a general rule, an heir has six months from the date of death to accept the inheritance, although special periods can apply in particular situations. The six months are primarily about accepting the inheritance rather than completing every stage of the process.

How can I find out whether another heir has already opened the inheritance case?

You can check the public inheritance-case register maintained by the Federal Notarial Chamber. If a case has already been opened, the register can identify the notary handling it, which allows you to submit your own claim to the existing case rather than trying to start another one.

Does my representative need a power of attorney?

If a representative is going to accept the inheritance on your behalf, the power of attorney must expressly authorise that act. A legal representative acting for a minor heir does not need a separate power of attorney merely to act for the child in that legal capacity.

Can a foreign citizen inherit property in Russia?

In general, foreign citizens can inherit property in Russia, although special restrictions may apply to certain categories of assets, particularly some types of land. The particular asset should therefore be checked before assuming that inheritance and unrestricted ownership are always the same question.

What if I do not yet have the documents for the apartment or bank account?

Do not postpone acceptance of the inheritance solely for that reason. The priority is to meet the applicable deadline, while documents relating to individual assets can usually be collected as the inheritance case proceeds.

What matters most

If you live outside Russia, inheritance in Russia from abroad can often be dealt with without an urgent flight, several weeks spent near a notary’s office and an attempt to reconstruct the entire family archive in five days. The first job is usually much less dramatic: establish the deadline, check whether an inheritance case already exists, identify the notary handling it, prepare the correct application and determine which documents genuinely need to be produced now.

The sensible order is usually to accept the inheritance on time, then establish the estate and collect the remaining documents, and only after that organise the later work personally or through a representative. If the deceased also lived abroad or left assets in several countries, one more question comes before most of the paperwork: which part of the succession actually belongs in Russia.

And where the estate includes substantial Russian bank funds, there is another question worth asking before treating the case as finished: once you inherit the money, how will you actually be able to receive and use it?

Need to deal with an inheritance in Russia while living abroad?

If you are outside Russia, I first look at the deadline, the Russian part of the estate, whether an inheritance case has already been opened, which notary is handling it and which documents are actually necessary now, rather than starting with the question of when you should buy a plane ticket.

You deal directly with a Russian-qualified lawyer reviewing the Russian legal side of the inheritance. I can prepare or review the inheritance application, draft a power of attorney where one is actually required, identify the formalities that apply to documents signed in your country and explain which parts of the process can be handled remotely. If further representation in Russia is needed after that, the scope of that work can be determined separately rather than assuming from the beginning that you need somebody to “handle everything”.

If the deceased lived abroad, assets are located in several countries, substantial funds are held in Russian banks or a dispute with other heirs has already developed, the first task is to identify the Russian part of the case and the actual legal problem before producing documents at random.

For more about this work, see “Russian Inheritance Lawyer.”

This article provides general information only and is not individual legal advice. The correct inheritance procedure depends on the deceased person’s place of residence, the assets involved, the legal basis for inheritance, the country where the heir lives, the documents available and any restrictions affecting the particular property or transaction.