The Shareholder Has Died and the Shares Are in the IEPF: Who Files Form IEPF-5?

Most guidance treats these as separate subjects. Transmission is explained as though the shares are sitting safely with the registrar, and IEPF claims are explained as though the original shareholder is alive to file them. A great many real cases are neither: the holder died, the dividends went unclaimed for seven years while the family sorted out other things, and the shares were transferred to the Investor Education and Protection Fund.

You now have to prove two things to two different bodies — that you are entitled to the shares, and that the shares should come out of the Fund. Here is how they fit together.

Why this is harder than either problem on its own

In an ordinary transmission, the registrar holds the folio, examines your documents and moves the shares to your demat account. In an ordinary IEPF claim, the registered holder files Form IEPF-5, the company confirms the claim matches its records, and the Authority releases the shares.

When the holder has died, neither body can act alone. The IEPF Authority releases shares to whoever the company certifies is entitled. The company cannot certify entitlement without the succession documents a transmission would have required. So the transmission evidence has to be produced — it just gets examined as part of the IEPF claim rather than as a separate transaction beforehand.

The order that wastes the most time is trying to complete a transmission at the registrar first. Once the shares have gone to the Fund, the folio no longer holds them, and there is nothing at the registrar to transmit. Families sometimes spend months on that route before being told so.

Who the claimant is

One person files, and who that is depends on how the holding was set up:

• A surviving joint holder: where shares were held jointly, the survivor is the claimant
• A registered nominee: where a valid nomination was recorded against the folio
• The legal heirs: where there was neither, entitlement follows the succession law that applied to the deceased

It is worth being precise about the second and third of those, because the assumption behind most family arguments is wrong. A nomination decides who the company may safely deal with. It does not by itself decide who finally owns the asset, and other heirs are not extinguished by it. Where there is any disagreement in the family, settle it before filing rather than after. Who counts as a legal heir and nominee versus no nominee set out how entitlement is worked out.

Where there are several heirs and one of them is to receive the shares, expect the others to have to consent in writing. Several legal heirs covers how that is handled.

What the claim consists of

The claim is made on Form IEPF-5 through the MCA portal, which generates an SRN. The physical papers then go to the company's Nodal Officer for verification. Alongside the usual IEPF requirements — the indemnity bond, the advance receipt, KYC and a client master list for the demat account the shares will be credited to — a claim on a deceased holder's shares needs the succession evidence:

• The death certificate: of the registered holder
• Proof of entitlement: a succession certificate, a probated will, or a legal heir certificate, depending on the circumstances and the value involved. Which of the three applies.
• Consents or no-objection letters: from the other heirs where one heir is claiming
• The original certificates: where the shares were physical and the family still has them, or the documentation covering their loss where they do not
• Evidence linking the deceased to the folio: — PAN, and an explanation of any difference between the name on the folio and the name on the death certificate

That last point causes more trouble than any other single item. Folios opened in the 1980s and 1990s routinely carry initials, a maiden name, a misspelling or an address the family left decades ago. If the name on the folio and the name on the death certificate do not obviously match, expect to have to bridge the gap with an affidavit and supporting identity documents.

The company's verification report decides the outcome

It is the company, not the Authority, that examines whether you are entitled. The company files a verification report with the IEPF Authority, and the Authority acts on it. In practice this means the quality of what you send the Nodal Officer determines everything downstream.

If something is missing, the Authority can come back asking for more information, and there is a limited window to respond before the claim is treated as incomplete. Watch the email address and the portal you filed from — this correspondence is easy to miss, and a lapsed response window means filing again from the start.

How long it takes

Longer than almost anything published about it suggests. A straightforward IEPF claim is slow; one carrying succession documents through a company's verification is slower, and cases running well beyond a year are ordinary rather than exceptional. A realistic timeline sets out where the time actually goes.

Plan for it. The practical consequence is that the documents you gather at the start should be ones that will still be acceptable much later, and that whoever manages the claim needs to be someone who will still be reachable.

Where these claims fail

The failure patterns are consistent, and all of them are avoidable:

• Entitlement proved for the wrong person: — a nominee filing where the heirs have not consented, or one heir filing without the others
• Name mismatch: between folio, PAN and death certificate, unexplained
• A demat account in the wrong name: — the account receiving the shares has to be the claimant's own, matching their PAN
• Succession document of the wrong type: for the value or the circumstances
• Missing the Authority's request for further information

Why IEPF claims are rejected and how to fix them goes through the rejection grounds in detail, including what to do when a claim has already been turned down.

When only some of the shares went to the Fund

This is common and catches people out. Shares are transferred to the IEPF on the basis of seven years of unclaimed dividends, so a shareholder who held several companies may have some folios in the Fund and others still live at the registrar. The live ones follow the ordinary transmission route under SEBI's July 2026 framework; the ones in the Fund follow this one.

Run both in parallel rather than in sequence. They are separate processes with separate paperwork, and the succession documents you obtain will serve for both.

Before you start

If you are not yet certain what the deceased held, establish that first — filing against an incomplete picture means repeating the exercise. How to find out whether a parent or grandparent left shares behind covers the search, and our free share search will run the IEPF and registrar checks for you at no charge.

This is general information about how these claims are structured, not advice on a particular estate. What a given company's Nodal Officer requires varies, and the succession documents that establish entitlement depend on the personal law that applied to the deceased.