Succession certificate

Succession Certificate and Letter of Administration is issued to the successor on behalf of a deceased person that establishes the ownership of legal heirs /successors over the deceased persons movable and immovable property. It is required for inheritance claim in Pakistan when one's family member is deceased and deceased's property should be transferred to the legal heirs as per the sharia law. It is recently given in NADRA's https://succession.nadra.gov.pk/ jurisdiction from court to lessen the burden of courts as NADRA has a full database of Pakistani citizens. Though there are still people in rural areas, whom I assume, don't have NICOP or CNIC. For instance, our housemaid's whole family doesn't have CNIC. How do we know that? We asked her to submit her CNIC copy while hiring. Anyway coming back to the succession certificate, so now NADRA is issuing it. Before stepping out to get one, keep in mind that not all NADRA regional offices have authority to issue it rather only some big branches are made as succession facilitation centers. For example, in Karachi, the regional office on Saudabad is not a succession center but the branch in the EOBI building at Karsaz road (Formerly known as Awami Markaz) is a succession center.

After finding the nearest succession facilitation unit, the second thing is document requirements. Following documents should be appended along with the application:

1. Death Certificate of the Deceased 
2. Family Registration Certificate (FRC) 
3. List of the legal heirs and copies of their Identity cards 
4. Details of immovable and moveable property in respect of which the Succession Certificate or Letter of Administration is applied 
5. An affidavit attested by the Oath Commissioner must mention the following: 
6. Details of moveable and immoveable properties 
7. Details of Legal heirs and their shares as certified to be provided in the personal law of such legal heirs 
8. Any other document deemed appropriate by the Authority 

 So here the question arises what is moveable and immoveable property. A movable property can easily be moved from one place to another, without changing its shape, size, quantity, or quality. Common examples are vehicles, books, utensils, timber, shares, cash, bank account, Arms, Jewelry, etc. Whereas immoveable property majorly includes land property. Though this whole process seems simple it requires quite a lot of effort to collect the above-mentioned documents and can only be done after several visits to the NADRA office. Let me take you through one-by-one document requirements: i)Death certificate should be collected from the area of residence's union council by showing death certificate of hospital and graveyard document.

 ii) FRC It is a very tricky and time-consuming step as NADRA family trees are not 100% accurate so they are using this succession certificate as a tool to correct their database as well.  for example, if the heirs are married and have their updated CNIC. Not all family members will be linked together so in order to do that siblings have to update their CNICs which add up to additional time. Like in our case when I updated my CNIC on my husband's name somehow my father's name was not in my family link tree. Similarly, my mother and eldest sister were not linked so this all needs time and visits to NADRA offices either by updating CNIC or any method NADRA staff guide e you to do.

iii) Details of property in case of bank balance you need to get the letter from the bank stating the last amount a deceased person has in their bank and in case of property, of course, property papers are required.

iv) Affidavit requires stamp paper with all the details like property and people claiming for it. It must have details of the property and a list of legal heirs with their relationship with the deceased. This can be downloaded from here Affidavit sample and after duly filling it, should be stamped by oath commissioner. Don't worry about it, you may find several service providers around the SFU (Succession facilitation unit) just get it typed and the impression of left-hand thumb plus signature from each legal heir on the affidavit is required.

I hope this above information is helpful and it serves the purpose. Drop-in comments if further clarity is required.