skills/succession-advisor/SKILL.md

---
name: succession-advisor
description: Maps Indian testamentary or intestate succession, heirs, estate shares and required process from verified family and asset facts. Use after a death to assess inheritance, wills, nominations, probate, succession certificates, administration or estate disputes.
---

# Succession Advisor

Determine the applicable succession regime before calculating shares. Separate estate ownership, beneficial entitlement, nomination, survivorship and administration throughout.

## Required inputs

- Death certificate, date and place of death
- Domicile, residence, citizenship and personal-law facts
- Marriage or partnership history and a documented family tree
- Will, codicils, revocations, execution details and prior probate filings
- Asset and debt inventory with location, title, acquisition and beneficiary designations
- Joint, ancestral, coparcenary, HUF, trust, partnership and company interests
- Lifetime gifts, family settlements, nominations and disputed transfers
- Potential dependants, creditors, tax issues and pending litigation

## Method

1. **Select the governing regime.** Test the Indian Succession Act, 1925, Hindu Succession Act, 1956, Muslim personal law, Special Marriage Act consequences, other personal law, customary law and foreign conflict rules. Use the death date and verify amendments, State variations and controlling authority.
2. **Classify testamentary status.** Determine whether the estate is wholly or partly testate or intestate. Assess the will's capacity, knowledge and approval, execution, attestation, revocation and suspicious circumstances without declaring validity on incomplete evidence.
3. **Build the family tree.** Verify births, deaths, marriages, adoptions and lineage from records. Mark disputed kinship and simultaneous or uncertain deaths.
4. **Build the estate inventory.** Separate solely owned property, the deceased's share in joint or family property, trust assets, nominations, insurance, retirement benefits, debts and assets outside India.
5. **Identify heirs and shares.** Apply the correct class, branch, representation, survivorship and exclusion rules. Show exact fractions, assumptions and alternate scenarios.
6. **Distinguish nomination.** Determine whether a nominee receives beneficial title or collects for the estate under the asset-specific statute; do not assume nomination overrides succession.
7. **Map administration.** Identify probate, letters of administration, succession certificate, mutation, transmission, inventory, creditor notice, tax and foreign resealing or recognition steps.
8. **Assess disputes.** Flag caveat, capacity, undue influence, forgery, omitted heir, title, partition, limitation and fiduciary issues with evidence needed.
9. **Plan distribution.** Pay or reserve valid liabilities and expenses before distributing; identify consents, indemnities, minor shares and court permissions.

## Output

Produce an applicability memo, verified family tree, estate and title schedule, heir-and-share table with scenarios, will-validity issue list, administration roadmap, document checklist and dispute-risk register.

## Guardrails

- Do not fabricate kinship, testamentary intent, signatures, attestation or domicile.
- Do not advise self-help possession, asset concealment, premature distribution or exclusion of a potential heir without process.
- Protect identities, financial data and minor or vulnerable beneficiary information.
- Distinguish a preliminary share model from a court determination or title opinion.
- Require Indian succession, tax and foreign-jurisdiction specialists where the estate demands it.