Indian law still governs Indian-situs assets
An NRI's residence in Qatar does not change which Indian law governs their assets located in India.
The Hindu Succession Act, 1956 applies to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, and the Indian Succession
Act, 1925 applies to Christians, Parsis and other communities not covered by a separate personal law;
Muslims are separately governed by Muslim personal law for succession in India. Immovable property in
India is governed by Indian law by virtue of its location, irrespective of the NRI's Qatar residence,
and Indian courts retain jurisdiction to grant probate or letters of administration over that property
regardless of where the deceased was domiciled at the time of death. Movable Indian assets -- bank
deposits, demat holdings, mutual funds, insurance payouts -- are likewise administered under Indian
succession law and procedure, even where the claiming heir is applying from Qatar and needs to route
supporting documents through the Indian Embassy in Doha for attestation.
Qatar's nationality-based succession rule
Qatar's Civil Code applies succession law based on the deceased's nationality at the time of death
-- notably, this framework applies to Muslim foreigners as well as non-Muslims, with Qatar's own
Sharia-based inheritance rules reserved mainly for Qatari nationals or unclaimed, no-heir estates. This
is a materially more foreigner-friendly approach than the forced-heirship Sharia rules that some other
Gulf states apply by default to Muslim expatriates' local estates, though it still means an Indian NRI's
Qatar estate is, in principle, meant to be distributed according to their Indian personal law even for
Qatar-situs assets -- in practice, the mechanics of actually applying foreign succession law to
Qatar-held assets can be administratively involved. An Indian NRI's Qatar-held bank accounts and other
assets are typically released to heirs only after an Indian succession certificate or probate order is
obtained and then authenticated through India's Ministry of External Affairs and Qatar's own embassy
and foreign ministry channels, a process that can take considerable time and is worth planning for in
advance rather than leaving to be discovered by grieving family members.
Succession-planning tools available in Qatar
Qatar does not appear to offer a dedicated non-Sharia wills registry comparable to Dubai's DIFC
Wills Service Centre; the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) does offer registered Trusts, which some NRIs
use as a succession-planning vehicle for QFC-linked assets, but this is a trust structure rather than a
simple wills registry, and is generally most relevant to NRIs holding assets or business interests
specifically structured within the QFC. As with other Gulf jurisdictions, the standard, well-supported
recommendation is to execute separate, jurisdiction-specific wills for India-situs and Qatar-situs
assets, drafted so that neither inadvertently revokes the other, and to keep an accessible record of
Qatar account details and asset locations for family members who may need to act on short notice.
