China Property & Inheritance Lawyers for Overseas Families

Legal help in China, from wherever you are

Shanghai Qiming Law Firm advises overseas Chinese families and foreign clients on property and inheritance matters in mainland China. Much of our work is done for people who cannot travel to Shanghai: heirs living in North America, Europe and Australia, and investors who hold property in China but live elsewhere.

We handle the whole chain, not just the courtroom part: confirming who the heirs are, completing notarisation and authentication of documents abroad, registering the transfer of title, calculating what tax is payable, and — where a sale is intended — preparing the property for transfer.

What we do

• Inheritance of property — statutory and testamentary succession, wills, renunciation of inheritance, inheritance notarisation, transfer registration, and disputes between heirs.
• Property disputes — sale and purchase contract disputes, title confirmation, second-hand residential transactions, and lease disputes.
• Corporate equity — share transfers, confirmation of shareholder status, and disputes over company resolutions.
• Contract and debt recovery — breach of contract, debt repayment, and enforcement of judgments.

How we work with clients abroad

Three steps, in this order, and most of it happens before anyone books a flight:

1. Eligibility and documents. We confirm the applicable law, identify every heir whose consent or signature will be needed, and produce a checklist of documents to be obtained locally.
2. Notarisation and authentication. Documents signed outside China generally need notarisation in the country of signature, followed by an apostille where that country is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, or consular legalisation where it is not.
3. Registration or litigation. We act under a notarised power of attorney, so the client does not have to attend in person.

Start here

If you are at the beginning of a file, read inheriting Chinese property from abroad: whether nationality affects the right to inherit, which country's law decides the shares, the three routes to a certificate in your own name, and what can be done without travelling.

If the immediate question is documents, go straight to what a Chinese registration office actually accepts — what is examined, and why files are returned. Or browse all guides.

If you are weighing up whether to go to court at all, our China court fee calculator works out what the court itself would charge: the case acceptance fee in bands, the preservation fee for freezing assets, and the cost of enforcing a judgment, all on the rates in State Council Order No. 481.

Why families choose us

Our lawyers split work by specialism rather than each handling everything, and we keep a panel of academic advisers drawn from Fudan University, Tongji University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and East China University of Political Science and Law. For cross-border matters that combination matters: the property question is often straightforward, while the document chain and the tax position are where cases fail.