Cross-border succession · Bank accounts · Information, not legal advice — as at 24 August 2026
The bank has frozen my late parent’s account abroad — what now?
First, the reassurance: the freeze is protection, not confiscation. Every bank in Portugal, Spain, Italy and France freezes a customer’s account on notice of death — so that nothing leaves it except to the right people. It opens again on a predictable key, the same two-part key in all four countries: formal proof of who the heirs are, in that country’s own form, plus proof that the inheritance-tax position has been dealt with. A UK grant of probate is not that key — there is no resealing — but the local process that is can usually be run entirely from where you live, under a power of attorney.
It is one of the most common phone calls we get: a parent has died, there is an account in Portugal, Spain, Italy or France — often the account that paid the utility bills on the holiday home — and the bank has stopped answering in anything but form letters. Here is what is actually happening, and the path out.
Why the bank froze the account
Because the law tells it to. In all four countries a bank that learns of a customer’s death must hold the balance until two things are proved: who the heirs are, established in that country’s own legal form, and that the tax office has been satisfied — each country makes the tax clearance a legal precondition of release. The freeze protects the family: it is the reason no one else can empty the account first.
The key that opens it — country by country
- Portugal: the heirs are established by the habilitação de herdeiros, and the bank releases against it together with proof of the stamp-duty position — for spouse, children, parents and a recognised unmarried partner that tax is nil, but the estate must still be declared by the end of the third month, and the bank waits for that proof.
- Spain: banks route deceased-customer files through central inheritance departments, which release against the notarial deed (or declaration of heirs) and the stamped inheritance-tax form. The six-month tax clock and the bank’s own document checks run side by side.
- Italy: the release follows the filed dichiarazione di successione — the tax office’s receipt is the document every Italian bank asks for — together with the heirs’ identity and tax codes. Much of this exchange happens by certified email, lawyer to bank, without anyone travelling.
- France: the bank’s bereavement service releases against the notaire’s acte de notoriété; where the heirs live outside France it must also see a certificate from the French tax office, except for small balances. Funeral costs and small balances have their own faster lanes.
Will the UK grant of probate open it?
No — there is no resealing, and no foreign bank releases against an English grant. Apostilled and translated it serves as useful supporting evidence of the will and the executors, but the account opens only to the local process. The good news inside that answer: the local process does not wait for probate at home — the two run in parallel, and the foreign account is often released before the English estate is finished.
Do I have to travel?
No. Each heir signs a power of attorney at home — with an apostille — and everything else happens under it: the tax numbers, the heirship formalities, the tax filing, the correspondence with the bank, the release into the heirs’ own accounts. Signing the powers of attorney in the first week is the single biggest thing a family controls: it compresses every stage that follows.
Where does the money actually go?
Directly from the bank to the heirs — never through us. We are the lawyers who produce the key; the bank pays the family. It is a deliberate design (why we never hold your money), and it means the release, when it comes, is final and clean.
What if the account is the whole estate?
Then the file is at its simplest — no property, no land registry — and it has its own fixed price in each country: Portugal, Spain, Italy or France. Tell us which bank and who survives, and we will tell you exactly what it takes and exactly what it costs.