Families Navigating an Inheritance

For families holding an estate that has not yet been settled.

Someone has died, and a family that is grieving has been handed an administrative problem it did not ask for. There is a business stake, property in more than one state, an account nobody has the details for, a pension, and possibly a will whose terms do not match what the family expected. The questions arrive faster than the answers.

The work in front of you has a sequence, and following it removes most of the difficulty. Establish what the estate contains. Establish which law governs it. Secure access to enough money for the family to function while the rest is resolved. Then deal with the assets themselves. Families who take these in order settle estates with far less conflict than those who begin with the distribution.

Scenario 1

The estate is frozen and the obligations are not

Banks, registrars, and companies will not release anything until the court grants probate or letters of administration, and that regularly takes many months. School fees fall due during it. Household costs continue. Any loan secured on estate assets still has to be serviced. The first question is not who inherits what. It is where the family gets money in the next six months, and it is answerable.

Scenario 2

Nobody has a complete list

Estates are rarely documented in one place. There are share certificates from the 1990s that were never dematerialised, a property whose title was never perfected, a domiciliary account, a pension nobody has claimed, and a business whose shareholding exists in more than one version. We work with the family to assemble a single record of what exists, what it is worth, and what is required to transfer each item.

Scenario 3

More than one framework may apply

Nigerian succession runs on statutory, customary, and Islamic law at the same time, and which governs depends on the marriage, the religion, the ethnic origin, and the location and type of each asset. One estate can touch more than one. Certain assets are not fully at the testator's disposal at all. These questions are settled with a private client lawyer, and we make sure the lawyer is working from a complete financial picture rather than a partial one.

What we do here

Assemble the full inventory of the estate: assets, liabilities, accounts, policies, and business interests, in every jurisdiction.

Identify where the family can access liquidity while administration runs, and what can be released ahead of the grant.

Work alongside the family's lawyers, who determine which framework governs and handle the application, so that the financial and legal work proceed together.

Advise the beneficiaries on what to do with what they receive, which is a different question from how it transfers and is usually the one nobody has thought about.

Estate matters are handled with your legal advisors.

WealthHat does not provide legal advice and does not draft or administer estate documents.

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