A few questions about getting an inheritance out of SA

[BrendanH]

Hi folks,

 

So after two years my father-in-laws estate has wound up. The executors of the will are FNB.

 

My wife tried to get her inheritance paid directly into her Australian bank account but unfortunately FNB are refusing to transfer the money unless we financially immigrate.

 

We want to hold off on formal financial immigration until we get citizenship since a lot can happen in the two years until we are elligible for applying for citizenship.

 

The sum of money is also far below our annual limit for moving money out of the country so that isn't the reason.

 

So, is there some law that legislation that is preventing us getting the money paid directly into an Australian account? Are FNB just pulling a fast one? Is there any way to get them to just transfer the money without getting it paid into a South African account then paying fees to get it transferred here to Australia?

[21yearsoutofrsa]

No. FNB are complying with the legislation

[MichKen]

This is interesting... can you send to SA bank account then to an Aus one without financial emigration?

[MrsMupersan]

We used CashKows to do our financial immigration.  We were still on PR when we did this - there didn't seem to be any real reason to wait until Citizenship that we could see.  Cashkows were very efficient and got everything sorted out without any fuss.  They charged a % fee of the inheritance amount.  I can't remember what it was exactly, but I remember it being reasonable for the amount of paperwork and hassle they saved us.  (ever tried dealing with an SA gov dept from overseas? )

 

[bbop]

We also used CashKows and still bank with FNB. We only had to prove that we had PR in another country in order to release our funds (Had not received our visa yet for Australia at the time). We still have a FNB account but had to close all other accounts. CashKows did all the paperwork including the whole SARS thing. Money was transferred with drama.

 

Once you financially emigrate your bank account will need to be a permanent residence blocked account (CashKows arranged this). You can still transfer funds into the account and arrange to have all debit orders to continue as usual, you just need permission to do any other type of transaction by contacting the non resident department, no issues there either.

 

We're not citizens of Australia yet either.