The message usually arrives late at night, your time. A cousin has sent a photograph of a court notice pasted on a door in Karol Bagh. A bank has written to say the account is under lien and the branch will not discuss it over email. A brother has stopped answering about the sale that was supposed to have been registered eight months ago. Somebody in India needs a decision from you by Monday, and it is Friday evening where you are.
The distance is not what makes these matters difficult. The delay is.
I act for clients living in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Gulf and Singapore, in proceedings before the Supreme Court of India, the Delhi High Court, and the district courts and tribunals across Delhi and the National Capital Region. Almost all of this work is instructed by people who are not in India and who, in most matters, will never need to be.
If you are reading this from a different time zone
- A divorce petition has been filed against you in India, in a city you have no connection with, and the first you heard of it was a summons forwarded by a relative.
- Your children were taken to India on what was described as a holiday. The return tickets have passed.
- You were taken aside at immigration at Delhi airport, or you have been told there may be a look out circular and you are now afraid to book a ticket.
- A parent has died in India. The bank will not release the deposits, the flat cannot be transferred, and everyone you speak to names a different document.
- A will was made and proved in London or New Jersey, and you have been told it does not work in India.
- Property that has been in the family for forty years is occupied by someone else, or has been sold on a power of attorney you do not remember signing.
- Your NRE or NRO account has been frozen against a complaint filed in a state you have never visited.
- A maintenance or protection order has been passed against you in your absence, in proceedings you did not know existed.
None of these need you to be in India to start dealing with them. Several get considerably worse if you wait until you are.
The part that catches people out
Cross-border matters that go badly tend to go badly for one reason. Nobody was watching the file in India while the client was asleep.
Indian litigation runs on dates. A date is listed. Something is filed, or it is not. An order is passed. The next date is fixed. None of that pauses because a party is in another country and does not know it is happening. Orders get passed in the absence of people who were never properly served. Interim arrangements harden into final ones. Limitation runs. Property changes hands. By the time you hear about it from India, the question has shifted from what should we do to what can still be undone, and the second question costs a great deal more to answer.
The other thing people are rarely told: a foreign court order does not do in India what you would expect it to do. A decree of divorce from New Jersey, a custody order from Ontario, a grant of probate from London. Each of these carries weight in an Indian proceeding, sometimes decisive weight. None of them operates on its own. Each has to be brought before an Indian court in a particular way, and each is open to challenge on grounds Indian law sets out. Arriving with a foreign order and expecting it to be executed is the most common and most expensive misconception in this area.
You do not have to be in India for most of it
A power of attorney executed before the Indian Mission in your country, or notarised and apostilled locally, lets proceedings be filed, prosecuted and defended in your name. What it can and cannot authorise comes down to drafting. A badly drafted power of attorney surfaces as a problem at the worst possible moment.
Appearance by video is now routine in most Indian courts for most purposes. Where presence is genuinely required, and in mutual consent divorce it sometimes is, exemption applications and video recording of statements are available. They are granted more often than people abroad expect.
Documents can be executed, attested and sent without a trip. What each one needs by way of apostille, consular attestation or translation depends on the country and the document. Getting it wrong costs a hearing.
A well-run cross-border matter needs you in India once, or not at all. Where a trip genuinely cannot be avoided, I plan it around a listing rather than guess at it.
What actually changes the outcome
Getting the file in front of someone in India early. Not when it becomes serious. When it is first mentioned. The cheapest intervention in every one of these matters is the first one.
Knowing what has actually been filed. Before advice is worth anything, someone has to look at the real record: which proceeding, in which court, what was filed, what orders have been passed, when the next date is. A great deal of what overseas clients are told by relatives turns out, on inspection, to be wrong. Not dishonestly so. Just wrong.
Correspondence that builds a record. These matters settle more often than they are decided, and what shapes the settlement is the paper. Dated, specific, documented correspondence to the other side, the bank, the authority or the police station produces admissions and fixed positions that are worth more later than anything said in a hearing.
Doing the procedural work properly at the start. Service, jurisdiction, the power of attorney, attestation. None of it is interesting and all of it is where cross-border matters are won and lost. A petition that was procedurally defective from abroad is a petition dismissed two years later on a point with nothing to do with the merits.
What I am instructed on
Matrimonial and family. Divorce where one party is abroad, including mutual consent petitions under Section 13B with video appearance and exemption. Transfer petitions before the Supreme Court where proceedings have been filed in an inconvenient forum. Defending 498A, domestic violence and maintenance proceedings from abroad. Recognition and challenge of foreign decrees under Section 13 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
Children. Custody, guardianship and repatriation where a child has been brought to or retained in India, including habeas corpus petitions before the High Court and proceedings under the Guardians and Wards Act. India is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, so these matters run on Indian principles rather than treaty machinery.
Succession and probate. Probate, letters of administration and succession certificates. Estates where the will was made or proved abroad, including grants in India on the basis of a foreign grant under Section 228 of the Indian Succession Act. Disputes between heirs in different countries.
Property. Title and partition disputes in ancestral property, possession and eviction, and cancellation of sale deeds and powers of attorney executed without authority.
Travel restrictions. Look out circulars, including those opened at the instance of a spouse or a complainant in a matrimonial matter, and applications to quash or suspend them.
Frozen accounts. Liens marked on NRE, NRO and resident accounts against complaints registered on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, and applications for release.
Employment. Disputes with Indian employers and with Indian entities of overseas groups: exits, bonds, full and final settlements and equity.
How a matter starts from abroad
Almost every enquiry from overseas arrives with a document attached. A summons, an order, a bank letter, a notice, a decree, a grant, a sale deed. The document is usually the whole question, and I cannot give you an honest answer without reading it.
So the starting point is a document review, ₹3,500. I read the document against the record and send you a written note: what the document actually is, what has happened in the proceeding so far, what deadlines are running, what your options are and what each would involve. A note rather than a call, because you can read it in your own time zone, forward it to family in India, and act on it without needing a second conversation.
Where it is urgent, and you are due to fly, or a payment has stopped, or a hearing is listed this week, a same-day consultation at ₹2,500 is available by telephone or video.
Where there is no document yet and the question is simply what to do, an advisory consultation at ₹1,500 covers up to thirty minutes.
If the matter goes on to a formal engagement, the consultation fee is adjusted against the first invoice. The engagement fee itself depends on the forum, the stage and the volume of correspondence the matter is likely to generate. I discuss it openly before you commit to anything and confirm it in writing before any work starts. Consultations are scheduled to your time zone, and a good deal of my work is for clients who never come to the office.
Send me the document
If something has arrived from India and you are not sure what it is, that is the point at which advice is worth most. A preliminary case review captures the matter, the forum, what documents you hold and any date already fixed.
Questions people actually ask
I have been served with a divorce petition in India. Do I have to travel?
In almost all cases, no. You can be represented on a power of attorney, and your appearance can usually be dispensed with or taken by video. What you cannot do is ignore it. An ex parte order passed in your absence is far harder and more expensive to set aside than the petition would have been to defend.
My children are in India and I hold a custody order from a court here. Is that enough?
It matters, and it is not enough on its own. An Indian court treats a foreign custody order as a significant factor, and the Supreme Court has ordered children returned on the strength of one. But the court decides on the welfare of the child. It is not executing your order. How quickly you act after the retention often matters more than the order does.
I think there may be a look out circular against me. How do I find out before I fly?
There is no public register and you will usually not be told. There are ways of establishing the position, and where a circular exists there are remedies before the High Court you can pursue while still abroad. What you should not do is test it at the immigration counter.
My father died in Delhi leaving a will. Do I need probate?
Probably not as a legal precondition, and for many Delhi estates that was already the position. Section 213 of the Indian Succession Act, which barred establishing a right under a will without a grant, was omitted by the Repealing and Amending Act, 2025. It is worth being precise about what that changed: Section 213 only ever bit on Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs and Jains in the presidency towns of Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, or on immovable property situated there. Whether you should still take out a grant is a separate question, and where heirs or assets sit in more than one country the answer is often yes, because banks and registries want a court document whatever the statute requires.
The will was made and proved in England. Does it work in India?
Not by itself. Where a will has been proved outside India, letters of administration may be granted here with a copy of that will annexed, under Section 228 of the Indian Succession Act. It is a separate proceeding and it needs a properly authenticated copy of the foreign grant.
Somebody has sold family property on a power of attorney. Is that sale valid?
A general power of attorney, an agreement to sell and a will do not by themselves transfer title to immovable property. The Supreme Court settled that in Suraj Lamp & Industries (P) Ltd v. State of Haryana. Whether the transaction can be undone depends on what was actually registered, who is in possession and how long ago it happened. Time is the part that gets worse while you decide. Where cancellation of the deed is the main relief you seek, the limitation period is three years, not twelve.
How long do these matters take?
It depends almost entirely on the forum. A transfer petition is measured in months. A contested partition suit is measured in years. That is a real question with a real answer for your particular matter, and it is worth asking at the outset rather than discovering later.
Can I pay from abroad?
Yes. Fees are billed in Indian rupees and can be paid by international transfer. Court fees, process fees and out-of-pocket expenses are separate and billed at cost.