Foreign Grants of Probate and Resealing

James Foster was a keen amateur investor in stocks and shares and during his forty year career in the City of London. He had built up quite a large portfolio of mostly London-listed stocks and shares.

During that time, some shares went up in value, some went down and others met quite a different end. For instance, one international conglomerate he had invested in had delisted from the London Stock Exchange and was now listed only on the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong. He had unwittingly become a shareholder in an overseas company.

Unaware that this geographical relocation and the involvement of a new, Hong Kong-located share registrar meant a new set of compliance requirements if he wanted to do anything about these shares, he held onto them, and remained blissfully ignorant of the trouble this could cause in the future.

When Mr Foster died in 2023, his granddaughter Fiona was appointed his Executor. As principal residuary beneficiary, she was counting on the sale of the shares, worth approximately £24,000 GBP, to amplify the residuary estate.

Fiona’s local UK stockbroker had not been able to help, so, with no financial expertise but a great deal of common sense, Fiona sourced information online about what she needed to do to begin the process in Hong Kong. She was shocked at the complexity of selling shares there, where the shareholder is deceased and the estate representative is a foreign resident. She learned that one of the first things she needed to do was to apply for a reseal of the Grant of Probate in Hong Kong.

What is a reseal in Hong Kong?

In brief, a reseal is a way to get an existing, United Kingdom-issued Grant accepted for use with local financial and other institutions in Hong Kong. It avoids the need for the much more lengthy and costly process of obtaining a ‘full’ Hong Kong Grant of Probate. A lawyer in Hong Kong must act on the Executors’ behalf, and prepare and submit an application comprising various documents to the Probate Registry in Hong Kong, to have the United Kingdom-issued Grant or Confirmation resealed (literally, sealed a second time) by the Court as evidence that the Court in Hong Kong recognises its authority.

After considerable time spent approaching Hong Kong law firms with little success (and shock at the high cost), a simple phone call to Louise at Finders International for help, reassured Fiona that a UK-based solution was at hand. Louise explained that at Finders they had a partner in Hong Kong and would be able to take care of all the paperwork and legalities to complete the resealing. Finders’ experience in dealing with these matters meant that Fiona could pay an all-in price, get answers to her questions, and feel confident that the work was being progressed, without having to get minutely involved with international legal jargon and complex bureaucracy. Receiving the proceeds of sale of her grandfather’s accidental investment in Hong Kong was the step that ultimately enabled her to finalise the winding up of the estate, and finish her long-postponed Masters Degree.

Towards the end of her life, Marjorie White had funds with a UK bank, which she moved to a bank in Jersey in the Channel Islands, as part of an estate and inheritance planning review, hoping to maximise its worth. It worked – to a point. But she had not known that, on her death in 2021, the value of the account was such that the bank would not release the funds to her Executor, her son Michael, without first supplying a Jersey Grant of Probate.

Contrary to popular belief, while it shares a currency and postal system for example, for legal purposes, Jersey is a distinct jurisdiction, apart from the United Kingdom jurisdictions of England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and also apart from other Channel Islands or ‘British Isles’ jurisdictions such as Guernsey or the Isle of Man.

Grants issued in the United Kingdom cannot be used to release assets in Jersey: a local Grant called a Greffier’s Certificate of Jersey Grant of Probate must be obtained, where one is required at all. However, since Michael had already extracted a Grant in England & Wales, when he contacted Finders for help, he was pleased to discover that this qualified his mother’s estate for ‘Fast Track’ probate in Jersey. When the estate meets the necessary criteria, a ‘Fast Track’ process means a more streamlined and much quicker process to obtain the Grant in the Jersey Greffe (Court).

For a clearly explained fee, Finders helped Michael to comply with Jersey’s strict requirements and ultimately obtain the Jersey Grant, and get the Jersey account closed, and the monies back into the UK estate.