An account is not frozen as a penalty. It is frozen because the bank has been told the account holder is dead and it now has no lawful instruction it can act on. Everything from here is about giving it one. Start by finding out which of three situations you are in, because they lead to completely different amounts of work.
Situation one: there is a nomination
The Banking Regulation Act, 1949 provides for deposit nominations in the prescribed manner. Check the nominations actually recorded by the bank and their terms. Where a nomination has been made in the prescribed manner, the nominee becomes entitled, on the death of the sole depositor, to all the rights of the depositor in relation to that deposit to the exclusion of all other persons, unless the nomination has been varied or cancelled. Payment by the bank in accordance with that provision is a full discharge of the bank's liability.
Read the last part of that section carefully, because it is the part families miss. It contains a proviso saying that nothing in it affects the right or claim which any person may have against the person to whom the payment is made. So a nomination gets the money out of the bank. It does not decide who is entitled to keep it. The nominee receives it, and the heirs' claims against the nominee survive intact.
Situation two: the account was joint
If the account was held jointly with an either or survivor style mandate, the surviving holder can usually continue to operate it once the death is recorded. Again, operating the account and owning the balance are different questions, and a surviving joint holder who was added for convenience may find that he holds part of the balance for the estate.
Situation three: no nomination and no survivor
A court document is not always necessary. RBI's 2025 directions provide specified settlement procedures for claims without nomination or survivorship, subject to the balance, documents, any will and any dispute. A succession certificate is one available court route. It is granted in respect of the debts and securities of a deceased person, and its effect is that the person who pays the holder of the certificate is protected: the certificate gives the debtor a valid discharge. That is exactly what the bank wants. Our guide on how to get a succession certificate in India sets out the application, the summary procedure and what the certificate does and does not decide.
The jurisdiction rule is friendlier to an NRI family than people expect. The application goes to the District Judge within whose jurisdiction the deceased ordinarily resided at the time of his death, or, if he had no fixed place of residence at that time, to the District Judge within whose jurisdiction any part of his property may be found. A father who spent his last years in the Gulf and kept a Bengaluru account is squarely within the second limb. The court may also require security from the person to whom it grants the certificate, and a certificate can be revoked, so it is not an unconditional award.
RBI's 2025 directions prescribe claim procedures, supporting documents and threshold rules, with scope for banks to use higher thresholds. Qualifying claims above the threshold can also use specified alternatives to a court certificate. Ask for the bank's current checklist and the written reason for any refusal before choosing a court application.
Check which heirship document the bank accepts
An administrative legal-heir certificate is different from a court succession certificate, but it is not automatically useless for a bank claim. The RBI directions allow specified legal-heir evidence and safeguards in eligible cases. Check the full document combination required for this account. Our comparison of the succession certificate, the legal heir certificate, probate and letters of administration is worth ten minutes before you spend four months.
If there is a will
The omission of section 213 does not make all will-based bank claims identical. RBI's directions distinguish an uncontested will, where a bank may use the specified process without probate at its discretion, from contested claims requiring the applicable court document. Ask which part of the directions the bank is applying.
What to do, in sequence
- Get the death certificate and, if the death was abroad, get it into a form Indian institutions accept. This is the step that most often stalls at the start.
- Write to the bank and ask four questions. Is there a nomination on the account, what type of account is it, what is the balance as on the date of death, and what is the bank's deceased claim policy and threshold.
- Ask about the account type, not just the balance. Non resident rupee accounts and resident accounts carry different consequences at the payout stage.
- Put a power of attorney in place so the correspondence and any filing does not depend on a family member's leave from work.
- Plan the money's onward journey before you release it. Getting the balance out of the bank and getting it out of India are separate exercises with separate limits and paperwork, and our guide on repatriating money from India as an NRI sets out the channel and the documents the bank will want.