A parent dies leaving a house. The family knows who the heirs are, everyone agrees, and nobody disputes anything.

Five years later the property is still in the deceased's name, because nobody knew the order of the steps — and by then a tenant has stopped paying, or one branch of the family has started treating the house as theirs.

This is the sequence.

Step 1 — The death certificate

Registered with the local authority and issued through NADRA. Everything else depends on it, and delays here delay everything.

Where the death occurred abroad, the foreign certificate will need attestation and, generally, registration in Pakistan.

Step 2 — Establish the heirs

Heirs and shares are fixed by the applicable personal law, not by family agreement. Get this right before filing anything, because an application that omits an heir does not produce a settled result — the omitted heir retains a claim.

The most commonly omitted are daughters, a widow, and heirs living abroad. See who inherits what in Pakistan and, for Christian, Hindu and Parsi families, succession for non-Muslim Pakistanis.

You will also need a succession or heirship certificate identifying the heirs — NADRA issues family registration records that establish the relationships, and inconsistencies in those records are the single most common cause of delay at this stage. See what to do when your CNIC is blocked.

Step 3 — Obtain the right grant

Two different documents for two different kinds of asset, and families routinely obtain only the first:

A succession certificate — for movable assets: bank balances, savings certificates, shares.

Letters of administration (or probate, where there is a valid will) — for the estate more broadly, including immovable property.

A family that obtains a succession certificate, clears the bank accounts and stops there has not dealt with the house at all.

Both may now be available either through the NADRA succession facilitation route — faster and cheaper, but only where every heir is identified, agreed and able to attend for biometric verification — or through the court, which accommodates absent and overseas heirs but takes longer. See NADRA succession certificate or court.

Step 4 — Mutation of the record

This is the step people miss, and it is the one that actually transfers the property on paper.

The grant establishes who the heirs are. Mutation puts their names on the record held by the relevant authority — the land revenue record for most land, or the records of the development authority, cantonment board or society for urban property.

Until mutation is effected:

  • The record still shows the deceased
  • The property cannot be sold to a serious purchaser
  • It cannot be mortgaged
  • It remains exposed to occupation and to fraudulent transfer

See fard, intiqal and the revenue record, and where the property is in a society or an authority-administered scheme, cooperative housing society disputes.

Step 5 — The rest of it

Once the heirs are on the record:

  • Utility connections transferred, and arrears settled
  • Property tax records updated
  • Society or authority membership transferred where applicable
  • Tenancies — if the property is let, the tenant's rent is now payable to the heirs, and the tenancy documentation should reflect it. See evicting a tenant in Karachi
  • Insurance updated

Step 6 — Decide what happens next

The estate is now held by the heirs in their shares. Three options:

Hold it jointly, which requires an agreed arrangement about occupation, income and expenses — documented, because the undocumented version is what produces litigation a generation later.

Sell and divide. All heirs must join in, or act through attorneys. See selling inherited property from abroad.

Partition, where the heirs cannot agree — division by metes and bounds, or sale and division of proceeds by order of the court. See dividing jointly owned property.

Where it goes wrong

Waiting. The commonest failure. Records deteriorate, witnesses die, and empty property attracts occupation.

Doing it informally. An agreed division that is never documented or mutated is not binding, and the next generation revisits it.

One heir taking control. No heir has authority to deal with estate assets before a grant, however senior in the family.

Selling before mutation. A sale by some heirs of property still standing in the deceased's name creates a dispute involving an innocent purchaser as well.

Overlooking an heir, and hoping. They, or their children, will eventually ask.

For heirs living abroad

You do not need to travel. The court route accommodates absent heirs through an attested power of attorney and affidavits sworn before the Pakistani mission — and the power must authorise the specific acts, including receiving consideration if a sale is contemplated.

The realistic bottleneck is coordination: several relatives in several countries each attending their local mission. Start that early, in parallel with the grant. See giving a power of attorney from abroad and inheritance and succession for overseas heirs.

How the firm can help

We administer estates end to end: establishing heirs and shares, obtaining succession certificates, letters of administration and probate through either route, effecting mutation of the record, and completing utility, society and tenancy transfers.

Where the heirs cannot agree, we act in partition and declaration suits; where property has been sold or occupied before distribution, in the litigation that follows.

Contact the firm with the death certificate and whatever property documents exist. Establishing what the estate actually consists of is usually the first and most valuable step.