Who applies for Form 5173, the executor or the US bank?
The estate's representative applies; the custodian does not. The bank or broker holding the US-situs assets is the party that wants the certificate, but it is a bystander in the process — it freezes the account and waits. The application belongs to whoever is administering the estate of the non-resident who died, and in practice that is the executor, or an heir where no executor has been appointed. That matters for planning, because the institution cannot be pushed into releasing the holding and the family cannot hand the filing to it. Expect the custodian to state its requirement and then hold that position until IRS clearance reaches it.
Does the estate need Form 5173 if no US estate tax is due?
Usually yes, because the release is not conditional on the arithmetic. The certificate is what the institution has been told to wait for, and a computation that ends at nil is still a computation that has to be shown. So an estate with modest US-situs holdings and nothing to pay can find the assets frozen on the same footing as a large one. The work in that situation is mostly evidential: identifying the US-situs assets, valuing them at the date of death, and supporting the position taken on the estate tax filing so that the request for the certificate rests on a complete record.
Can an heir apply for a transfer certificate with no executor appointed?
Heirs of a non-resident decedent do appear in this process, not only executors, which matters where nobody was formally appointed — common when the estate is being administered under the law of another country and no US-facing representative exists. The person entitled to the frozen asset then has to establish that entitlement before the request will carry any weight. Practically, the first piece of work is documentary rather than fiscal: proving who died, who inherits, and under which law, in a form the IRS and the custodian will both accept. Skipping that step is a common reason a family's correspondence goes round in circles.
Why will the brokerage not release my late mother's US shares?
Because the custodian is holding them pending IRS clearance, and the transfer certificate is that clearance. This is the practical bottleneck in a cross-border estate: the institution has no discretion it is willing to exercise, so the holding stays where it is until the certificate arrives. The sequence also runs the other way from what most families expect. The estate tax filing comes first, the certificate follows it, and only then does the account move. Understanding that order early usually shortens the whole exercise, because the effort goes into the filing that unlocks the certificate rather than into further letters to the brokerage.
How long does a transfer certificate take to come through?
The honest answer is that the timetable belongs to the IRS rather than to the family, and no custodian or adviser can compress it. What can be controlled is everything before the clock starts: whether the estate tax filing is complete when it goes in, whether the US-situs assets have been identified and valued properly, and whether the authority of the person making the request is documented. An incomplete submission is a common avoidable cause of delay, because it restarts correspondence rather than advancing it. Families administering an estate in this position are usually better served by planning around the wait than by chasing it.
Do we file the estate tax return before requesting the certificate?
Yes — the certificate follows the estate tax filing rather than standing on its own, and that ordering is worth knowing at the outset. Requests made ahead of the filing tend to produce correspondence instead of a certificate. So the work is sequenced backwards from the custodian's requirement: inventory the US-situs assets, value them at the date of death, settle the position on the estate tax filing, file it, and then apply. Where beneficiaries are pressing for distribution, setting that sequence out in writing at the start tends to take the heat out of the wait.
What happens if I have not filed for several years?
Missed years are handled as one package, not one at a time, because the route chosen for the first year determines the relief available for the rest. Each country has a disclosure or relief programme with its own conditions, and entering the right one — before the authority contacts you — is usually what keeps penalties down. Filing quietly outside a programme forfeits that protection. See catching up on missed returns.
How would a foreign tax authority know I am resident there?
Mostly from information you or your bank already provided. Account-opening forms ask you to self-certify tax residence, and that certification is reported between authorities under the Common Reporting Standard or, for US accounts, under the FATCA framework. Beyond that: employer and payroll filings, property registries, immigration records and the tax filings of anyone who paid you. The realistic planning assumption is that the data arrives. See FATCA and information reporting.
