Home Affairs Department
To facilitate the management of the estate of a person who died on or after 11 February 2006, the Secretary for Home Affairs is empowered under the Probate and Administration Ordinance, Cap. 10, to provide upon application the following service for estate beneficiaries :
for the administration of a small estate made up of money not exceeding $50,000 in aggregate value, to issue a Confirmation Notice exempting persons dealing with the small estate from the intermeddling provisions.
To be eligible for the issue of a confirmation notice, all the properties beneficially owned by the deceased person in Hong Kong as at the date of death should be wholly made up of money not exceeding $50,000 in aggregate . The deceased person also did not hold any property as trustee or as the manager of a Tso or Tong.
If at the date of death, the deceased person beneficially owned other properties in Hong Kong not being money (such as securities, business, landed property, motor vehicles, safe deposit box, jewels, Mandatory Provident Funds, insurance policy), or debts (such as tax liabilities, bank loan, overdraft, credit card debt), this confirmation notice shall not be applicable.
The applicant should be either the executor of the deceased person or the one entitled in priority to administer the estate.
Probate And Administration Ordinance, Cap.10
Section 15 states that The Official Administrator may, where the whole of an estate does not, in his opinion, exceed $150000 in value, without any legal formality, get in and administer the same in a summary manner, for the benefit of the persons he may deem interested therein, without a grant or other legal formality.
This section provides a speedy and inexpensive method of disposing of estates of small value which do not warrant the expensive and more complicated process of obtaining a grant.