Certificate of Inheritance
2024-10-01
A certificate of inheritance (gavahi-e enhesar-e veraasat) is obtained after the death of a family member, in order to determine the share of the estate belonging to each of the heirs. Once the certificate of inheritance is obtained, the share of each family member is established, and until it is obtained, the heirs cannot sell, divide, or transfer assets, or withdraw from bank accounts — even by mutual agreement among themselves.
Persons entitled to file the petition
The heirs of the deceased, and any interested person — meaning anyone who has an interest in the deceased's estate — may request the court to issue a certificate of inheritance. If there are multiple heirs or interested persons, it is not necessary for all of them to join the request; action taken by just one of them to sign and submit the petition is sufficient.
Required documents
To obtain a certificate of inheritance, documents such as the death certificate, the identification documents (shenasnameh) of the deceased and the heirs, and a sworn affidavit (estesh-hadiyeh) are required. Based on the affidavit, witnesses testify before a notary public as to who the heirs of the deceased — who died on a specified date — actually are. Once these documents are ready, the petition, along with the documents, must be submitted to the Dispute Resolution Council with jurisdiction over the deceased's last place of residence.
Submitting the petition to the Dispute Resolution Council
The certificate of inheritance is issued pursuant to a petition submitted to the Dispute Resolution Council, following the procedures set out in the Non-Contentious Affairs Act (Qanun-e Omoor-e Hasbi). After reviewing the relevant documents, the court publishes a notice of the petitioner's request, at the petitioner's expense, once in a widely circulated newspaper. If, after one month from the date of publication, no one objects, the court — without holding a hearing or summoning the heirs — issues the certificate of inheritance, which sets out the identity and number of the heirs, their relationship to the deceased, and their respective shares of the estate. Issuance of the certificate of inheritance means that the heirs of the deceased are limited strictly to those persons named in the certificate.
Sample petition for a certificate of inheritance
[Note: the source document includes a sample petition form addressed to the Head of the Dispute Resolution Councils of Tehran Province. The form, as extracted, is a fill-in-the-blank template requesting issuance of a certificate of inheritance, listing the required attachments (death certificate, certified copies of the identification documents of the deceased and the heir(s), a notarized affidavit, a stamped power of attorney for the lawyer, and the hospital's medical certificate of death), and a sample narrative describing the deceased, the date and cause of death, the sole heir, and a request that the court review the matter and issue the certificate of inheritance. Because the original table layout did not survive extraction cleanly, it has not been reproduced verbatim here; clients seeking to use this sample form should request the current version directly from our office.]