Indian succession is not one regime but several running at once. Testamentary freedom under the Indian Succession Act sits alongside intestate devolution under the Hindu Succession Act and its coparcenary consequences after the 2005 amendment, alongside the Muslim law limits on bequest beyond a third without the consent of heirs, and alongside the probate requirement that applies in some jurisdictions and not others. Around that sit the instruments people actually use: wills and codicils, private trusts under the Indian Trusts Act in revocable and irrevocable and discretionary form, gifts and settlements, family arrangements that record pre-existing rights, and family constitutions that govern a business rather than an estate. Each carries its own tax and stamp consequence, from taxation of trust income in the hands of the trustee and the maximum marginal rate that applies where beneficiaries are indeterminate, to the relative and trust exemptions under Section 56(2)(x), to state stamp duty on a settlement that is assumed to be nominal until it is not. Where the family is international, the position layers again: acquisition and holding of Indian assets by non residents under FEMA, repatriation of inherited assets and the annual limit that governs it, the restriction on non residents holding agricultural land, offshore trusts read against residence and the Black Money Act's foreign asset reporting, and CRS and FATCA exchange that makes an undisclosed structure a temporary one.

Be it writing a will that will actually be admitted, settling a discretionary trust for a minor or a dependant with special needs, moving promoter holding into a structure that survives a generation without fragmenting control, documenting a family arrangement between siblings who have already agreed the commercial terms, planning for an heir who is a US person or a UK resident, setting up a philanthropic vehicle and taking it through registration for exemption, or preparing powers of attorney and advance directives for incapacity rather than death, the same two failures recur: an instrument that is technically valid but contradicted by a nomination or a joint holding, and a structure that solves for tax while creating a governance problem the next generation cannot unwind.

We plan for the dispute rather than only for the transfer. A nomination is a mandate to receive and not a title to keep, and where the demat account, the insurance policy, the provident fund and the will each point in different directions, the estate is litigated regardless of how carefully the will was drafted, so we reconcile them as a set. Because the same team holds the family's corporate and transactional work, a succession structure is built against the actual shareholding, the actual shareholders' agreement and the actual promoter obligations rather than against a description of them, and the confidentiality that private client work requires is held at partner level throughout.