Service
Transmission of Shares and Securities
Moving shares, bonds, debentures and mutual fund holdings out of a deceased holder's name and into the names of the people entitled to them, with the succession documents the registrar will actually accept.
When a holder dies, the securities do not vanish and they do not need to be sold. They have to be moved into the names of whoever is entitled, and the registrar or depository will not do that on a death certificate alone. It needs to know who inherits, and India gives several different answers to that question depending on the family.
Where there is a nomination the process is short. Where there is a will it may need probate. Where there is neither, the position is governed by the succession law that applies to the family, and the registrar will ask for a succession certificate, a legal heirship certificate or an indemnity with no objections from the other heirs, depending on the value involved.
Who this is for
- Families settling an estate where the deceased held shares, bonds, debentures or mutual fund units.
- Surviving joint holders who need the folio put into their sole name before anything can be sold.
- Nominees who have been told a nomination is not enough, or who are unsure what a nomination actually gives them.
- Heirs facing a holding split across several companies, several registrars and both physical and demat form.
- Non-resident heirs of an Indian estate, who face attestation and remittance questions on top of the succession one.
- Families where an earlier death was never dealt with, so the holding now has to pass through two generations at once.
Where transmission gets caught
- Assuming a nomination decides who inherits. A nominee receives the holding, but a nominee is not automatically the owner as against the heirs. Where the family position and the nomination differ, that has to be handled openly rather than discovered later.
- Value thresholds treated as one rule. What a registrar accepts changes with the value of the holding, and the threshold for physical securities is not the same as for demat. The document set has to be built for the actual holding.
- A will that nobody has proved. In some jurisdictions a will affecting immovable and movable property requires probate, and a registrar asked to act on an unproved will will decline.
- The wrong succession law applied. Which statute governs the estate depends on the deceased, not on convenience, and building the file on the wrong basis wastes the entire exercise.
- Holdings dealt with one at a time. An estate with eleven companies and three registrars needs one document set built once and used eleven times, not eleven separate efforts.
- Dividends and corporate actions in the gap. Money continues to accrue between the death and the transmission, and it is not automatically paid over with the shares.
- Seven years passing. A holding left in a deceased name long enough goes to the IEPF, and then it is a different and longer claim.
What’s included
- Establishing the full estate position across companies, registrars, depositories and fund houses, including holdings the family did not know about
- Advice on which succession route applies: nomination, will, probate, succession certificate or legal heirship certificate
- Transmission requests in the prescribed forms to registrars, transfer agents and depository participants
- Survivor requests where the holding was joint, which is a lighter process than a claim by heirs
- Preparation of affidavits, indemnity bonds and no objection declarations from co-heirs in the formats registrars accept
- Coordination of the document set so one properly assembled bundle serves every company in the estate
- Attestation, notarisation, apostille and consular formalities for heirs who are outside India
- Recovery of dividends, interest and redemption proceeds that accrued between the death and the transmission
- Working out entitlements from bonus issues, splits and rights offers that fell in the same period
- Dematerialisation of physical holdings once the folio stands in the correct names
- Splitting a holding between multiple heirs where the family has agreed how it is to be divided
- Identifying holdings already transferred to the IEPF, which are claimed separately and take longer
- Escalation through investor grievance channels where a registrar does not act within the prescribed time
- Succession applications where the estate has to be established through a court, which is a separate engagement and a court timeline rather than a claims one
How it runs
Find the whole estate first
Most families start with the two holdings they know about. We look for the rest: consolidated account statements from the depositories, a mutual fund search across the registrars, old certificates, dividend warrants, bank statements showing credits from companies, and the IEPF records where something has already been transferred. Doing this once at the start is what makes a single document set possible.
Settle the succession basis
We establish which route the estate actually runs on: a nomination on the folio, a will and whether it needs probate, or an intestate succession governed by the law applicable to the family. This decides every document that follows. Where the family position and the register do not match, we say so plainly at this stage rather than after money has been spent.
Build one document set and use it everywhere
The affidavits, indemnities, no objection declarations, identity and address proofs and succession documents are prepared as one bundle sized to the highest threshold in the estate. Each registrar then receives a complete request rather than a partial one, which is what keeps eleven holdings from becoming eleven separate arguments.
Follow it through to credit, and sweep up what was left
We track each request, answer deficiencies, and confirm the credit in each heir's name. Then we go back for what does not move automatically: dividends and interest that accrued after the death, corporate action entitlements, and any holding that had already gone to the IEPF and needs its own claim.
FAQs
There is a nominee. Is that not the end of it?
It is the end of the registrar's question and not necessarily the end of the family's. A nomination tells the company or depository who to hand the holding to, and that makes transmission to the nominee comparatively simple. Whether the nominee then keeps it, as against the heirs under the will or under succession law, is a separate question and the courts have had a great deal to say about it. In most families this is academic because the nominee and the heir are the same person. Where they are not, it is far better to deal with it openly at the start than to have it surface as a dispute after the holding has been sold.
Do we need a succession certificate?
Not always, and it is worth checking before you start, because obtaining one is a court process that takes time and costs money. Where there is a valid nomination, or where the holding was joint and a survivor remains, you generally do not. Where the value of the holding falls below the prescribed threshold, registrars are permitted to act on a lighter set of documents: an affidavit, an indemnity bond and no objection from the other heirs. A succession certificate becomes the realistic route where the value is above the threshold, there is no nomination, there is no will, or the registrar is not satisfied with what else has been offered.
How long does transmission take?
Where there is a nomination or a surviving joint holder and the documents are complete, registrars work to prescribed service timelines and it is a matter of weeks rather than months. Where succession has to be established from scratch, the time is not in the transmission at all: it is in obtaining the underlying document, and a succession certificate or probate is a court timeline that nobody can compress. This is the honest answer to why two families with similar holdings can have very different experiences.
My father died in 2009 and nothing was ever done. Is it too late?
It is not too late, but the shape of the work has probably changed. Dividends unclaimed for seven consecutive years take the underlying shares into the IEPF, so a holding left untouched since 2009 has very likely moved. That is not a loss, it is a different claim, and it runs under the IEPF service rather than this one. It also usually means transmission and an IEPF claim have to be prepared together, because the Authority needs the succession position settled before it will release anything. Long gaps also mean a second death sometimes has to be dealt with in the same file.
The heirs do not agree. Can you still act?
Not on this kind of mandate, and the reason is worth understanding. Transmission work assumes the family agrees who is entitled and needs help proving it to a registrar. A genuine dispute between heirs is a different thing: it is a succession dispute, it is decided by a court, and each side needs its own representation. We will not take a mandate from one heir and pursue a holding another heir is contesting, and clause 2.5 of our Terms of Engagement says so in terms. What we can do is set out the position and tell you what a registrar will require in each scenario. If the dispute has to be litigated, that is a separate engagement, agreed separately, and if we are already acting for the family jointly we will ordinarily have to stop rather than take one side.
Enquiries
Ready to talk about Transmission of Shares and Securities?
A 30-minute conversation is usually enough to establish where you stand and what it will take.