Who is Chieko? ~ an essay of a man who confronted overseas inheritance ~

One of my Japanese clients, who happened to know that his unknown aunt died and he was entitled to inherit her estate in U.S., wrote an essay based on his experience.  Inheriting an estate from overseas is quite difficult and burdensome for everyone, but he managed to do that with the help of people surrounding him (including me, hopefully). Unfortunately it was not written in English, but it is easy to read and quite interesting.

The difficulties in international inheritance based not only on the difference of inheritance system itself but also on the difference of social system surrounding it. For example, we Japanese do not have vital records like birth certificate and marriage certificate. We have family register system instead, which is called Koseki. Generally  Koseki is the only way for Japanese people to prove heirship, but Koseki has no meaning in U.S. inheritance procedure. In order to break this deadlock, another way to prove heirship should be thought out!  This is one of the most difficult but exiting part of international inheritance procedure, and I really like it.