Probate is a court’s formal certification that a will is genuine and that the executor named in it has authority to act. Under Section 213 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, obtaining it wasn’t optional for a defined set of estates: no executor or legatee could establish their rights in any court without a grant of probate first. The Repealing and Amending Act, 2025, which received Presidential assent on 20 December 2025, deleted Section 213 entirely.
Who the old rule actually bound was narrower, and stranger, than most people assume:
- It applied to wills made by Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and Parsis - and specifically not to Muslims or Indian Christians, whose testamentary succession runs under their own personal law.
- It applied only where the will was executed within the original civil jurisdiction of the High Courts at Bombay, Calcutta and Madras - now Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.
- It also caught wills made anywhere else in India, if they disposed of immovable property situated inside those same three cities.
A Rule Keyed to Colonial Geography, Not to the Estate
The result was a rule keyed to the administrative geography of British India rather than to anything about the estate itself. Two families with identical wills and identical assets faced entirely different procedural burdens depending on which side of a colonial-era jurisdictional line their flat happened to sit. For the estates it did catch, probate meant a court process that routinely took years and carried court fees scaled to the value of the estate - all before an heir could act on a will nobody was disputing.
Probate Is Now a Tool Rather Than a Toll Gate
With Section 213 gone, probate becomes optional across the board. An executor can now act on a will directly, and a beneficiary can establish rights under it, without a prior grant. Probate remains available, and is still worth obtaining where an estate is contested, where a bank or registrar wants the comfort of a court order before transferring an asset, or where the executor wants the finality a grant provides. It is now a tool rather than a toll gate.
The repeal is prospective. A savings clause preserves rights, obligations and liabilities already accrued, so probates already granted stand and proceedings already underway aren’t disturbed by the change.
Institutional Habit Outlives the Statute
The practical catch is that a century-old requirement doesn’t disappear from institutional habit the moment it disappears from the statute. A great deal of published estate-planning guidance still describes probate as mandatory in the three metros, and banks, registrars and transfer agents may keep asking for a grant out of practice rather than obligation. Knowing that the legal requirement was removed - and when - is what makes it possible to push back on a demand that no longer has a statute behind it.
Ask which statute a demand for probate now rests on. Section 213 was deleted with assent on 20 December 2025, and much published guidance still describes the requirement as live - knowing it was removed, and when, is what makes it possible to push back.
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