When a Non-Citizen Dies Owning Florida Property: Ancillary Administration and the $60,000 Federal Threshold
¿Prefiere leer esto en español? Consulte la guía completa: Herencia en Florida para extranjeros.
Ancillary administration in Florida — what most families search for as Florida ancillary probate — is the case you open when someone who lived abroad dies owning property in this state. When that person was also not a US citizen, a second problem lands on top of it: the non-resident alien estate tax, where the federal exclusion is $60,000 rather than the $15 million a US citizen receives.
The call usually comes from Bogotá, or Toronto, or Taipei. Mom died. She owned a condo in Brickell, or a house she bought in Kendall twenty years ago because a cousin said Florida real estate only goes one direction. Now the building manager wants a death certificate, the bank in Miami will not speak to anyone on the phone, and a relative has told the family there is going to be a tax.
The relative is usually right. What almost nobody tells the family is how much.
Two separate problems land at the same time, and they run on different clocks. One is the Florida proceeding, which is mine. The other is the federal tax, and it is the one nobody warns you about.
A United States citizen who dies in 2026 can pass roughly fifteen million dollars before a dollar of federal estate tax is owed. A person who was not a US citizen and was not domiciled here gets an effective exclusion of sixty thousand dollars. Same country, same condo, same Miami-Dade folio number. A gap of about two hundred and fifty to one, and it widens every single year, because the citizen figure is indexed to inflation and the sixty thousand is not.
Very little is written about this from the Florida side, and most of what exists is written for accountants. This page is written for the daughter in Caracas trying to work out why the Florida lawyer, the bank and the IRS all seem to be waiting on each other.
I handle the Florida ancillary administration. I am not a tax attorney or a CPA — where the federal estate tax return and treaty analysis are involved I work alongside other professionals, and I will tell you at the outset which parts are which.
Where should I start if I am new to this?
Start with the page that matches your question. This one is about the federal tax exposure of a non-citizen decedent. The two below cover the Florida procedure itself.
| If you are asking | Read this |
|---|---|
| What ancillary probate is, when it is required, how a Florida case runs, and what it costs | Florida ancillary probate for non-residents |
| Who can serve as ancillary personal representative, and how an out-of-state or foreign executor qualifies here | Out-of-state executor in Florida |
| The federal estate tax on a non-citizen decedent, and the $60,000 threshold | You are on it |
Everything below assumes the Florida side is understood, or that you will read it after.
Do I need a lawyer for ancillary probate in Florida?
Yes, in almost every case. Florida requires a Florida Bar member to appear for a personal representative unless that representative is the estate’s only interested person — and a foreign family almost never is.
That is a practical consequence of what an ancillary administration is. You are asking a Florida circuit court to grant authority to a person it has never heard of, appointed by a court in another country, over property it can see on the tax roll but cannot verify anyone has a right to. Someone has to assemble the authenticated copies — usually apostilled under the Hague Convention, which is the word the foreign court or consulate will use — the translations, the oath, the designation of resident agent, and the proof that the foreign appointment is what it claims to be. Probate for a foreign national is not a harder case in principle. It is a case with more moving documents.
Families call this an ancillary administration or an ancillary probate depending on where they read about it. Florida’s statutes use administration; the work is identical either way. Whichever word you typed, the first question is always cost, so let me answer it directly. Florida Statute §733.6171 sets out a presumed reasonable fee schedule based on the value of the estate, and while that section is written for formal administration, it is the benchmark everyone in Florida works from. On top of the attorney’s fee sit the filing fee, the certified copies, the recording costs, and — in the cases this page is about — the accountant’s fee for the federal return. The ancillary probate cost in a foreign matter is almost always driven by that last line, not the first.
To a family weighing whether to hire anyone at all: the Florida case is rarely the expensive part. The expensive part is the eighteen months the money sits frozen because nobody opened the right proceeding at the right time.
A word about free forms. There are free online Florida probate form packets and DIY templates circulating. They are drafted for a resident decedent with a Florida will. Filing a blank form packet in a nonresident matter tends to produce an order the bank will not accept, which means doing it twice. If cost is the obstacle, tell me — a scoped engagement is usually cheaper than a rejected filing.
Is there a shortcut if the Florida property is worth under $50,000?
Sometimes, yes. Under §734.1025, a foreign personal representative of a testate nonresident whose Florida property does not exceed $50,000 may file an authenticated transcript of the foreign proceedings instead of opening a full ancillary administration.
There are real conditions attached. The decedent has to have died with a will. The filing has to happen within two years of the date of death. And the property in Florida — the property this procedure reaches — has to fall under the fifty-thousand-dollar line.
In my experience this section is almost never raised. Families with a modest Florida bank account, a timeshare in Kissimmee or a small lot bought decades ago get quoted a full ancillary probate in Florida as though there were no alternative. Sometimes there is, and it is worth half an hour of somebody’s time to check.
Two cautions. It is not available in an intestate estate, and a surprising number of foreign decedents died without a will Florida will recognise. And it solves a Florida problem only — if the estate is over the federal filing threshold, that return is still yours to deal with.
Can a will made abroad be used in Florida?
Often yes, and there is a third route almost nobody raises. §734.104 — “Foreign wills; admission to record; effect on title” — lets an authenticated foreign will be admitted to record in Florida where it was executed as chapter 732 requires and has already been admitted to probate in the proper court of another state or country.
The effect is the point. Once admitted, the foreign will is as valid and effectual to pass title to Florida real property as if it had been admitted to probate here. The petition needs authenticated copies of the will, the foreign petition for probate and the order admitting it — or, where that country requires no petition, an authenticated copy of the will alone.
It becomes available two years after the death, or once the foreign personal representative has been discharged, where no Florida administration is pending. So it is not the fast answer. But for a family that let years pass and now needs clean title in order to sell, it is often the right one, and it costs less than an ancillary administration opened late.
Why is the estate tax exclusion $60,000 instead of $15 million?
Because a nonresident non-citizen gets no citizen exclusion at all. The estate gets a $13,000 unified credit under IRC §2102(b)(1) — enough to erase the tax on the first $60,000.
Run that credit against the IRS rate table and the first sixty thousand dollars comes out untaxed. That is where the number everybody quotes actually comes from. People search for the nonresident alien estate tax exemption, type the number into the box, and attach the word “official” or “IRS” to it, because they have heard the figure and cannot believe it. The figure is real. The IRS simply does not call it an exemption.
That matters for how you talk about it. The IRS does not call it a sixty-thousand-dollar exemption. It calls sixty thousand the filing threshold, and the difference is not pedantry — it is the reason the arithmetic behaves the way it does at the margin.
Here is the second thing nobody explains. The filing test is not simply “US assets over $60,000.” The executor must file Form 706-NA if the date-of-death value of the US-situated assets, together with the gift tax specific exemption and the amount of adjusted taxable gifts, exceeds the threshold. Lifetime gifting is in the formula. A family that gave away US property years ago and thinks the Florida condo is comfortably under the line can be wrong about that.
Third: the tax above the line is not a flat forty percent, whatever you have read. The schedule is progressive from eighteen percent. The first dollar over $60,000 is taxed at 26%. The 40% everyone quotes does not appear until the taxable amount exceeds a million dollars.
| Decedent, dying in 2026 | Effective federal exclusion |
|---|---|
| US citizen | $15,000,000 (indexed annually) |
| US domiciliary, not a citizen | $15,000,000 (indexed annually) |
| Nonresident, not a citizen | $60,000 (fixed — never indexed) |
The line at the bottom of that table is the whole argument. IRC §2102(b) carries no inflation adjustment. The citizen number has gone up every year for decades — it is $15,000,000 for 2026 under Revenue Procedure 2025-32. The sixty thousand has not moved since the 1980s, and it will not move next year either. The gap is not a quirk. It is a policy that compounds.
Which assets count toward the $60,000?
Only US situs assets — and for a foreign national the situs rules are stranger than anyone expects. The one that catches Florida families is real property. A Miami condo is US situs, always, without argument.
That single asset is usually the whole problem by itself. Past it, things get counterintuitive. Under §2104(a), stock is US-situs only if it was issued by a domestic corporation. Situs follows the issuer, not the brokerage. And under §2105(b)(1), a US bank deposit not connected with a US trade or business is excluded from the nonresident’s gross estate.
Put those two together and you get the asymmetry that catches every single client I have had this conversation with. Cash sitting in a Miami bank account is generally not in the taxable estate. The exact same money, in the exact same institution, invested in Apple stock, is. Same bank, same statement, different answer.
Here is how the rest of a typical inventory sorts out.
| Asset | In the US gross estate? | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Florida real estate | Yes — always, regardless of how it is financed or who lives in it | §2103 |
| Stock in a US corporation | Yes — situs follows the issuer, not the custodian or the account address | §2104(a) |
| US mutual funds and ETFs | Generally yes — shares of a domestic fund are stock in a domestic corporation | §2104(a) |
| Tangible property physically in Florida | Yes — the car in the garage, the art on the wall, the jewellery in the safe | Reg. §20.2104-1 |
| US bank deposit | Generally no — where not connected with a US trade or business | §2105(b)(1) |
| US Treasuries and portfolio debt | Generally no | §2105(b)(3) |
| Life insurance on the decedent’s own life | No — “shall not be deemed property within the United States” | §2105(a) |
| Interests in US LLCs and partnerships | Unsettled. There is no clean answer and I will not pretend otherwise — this one goes to the tax professional every time | — |
Be careful with all of it: these are estate tax rules and they do not carry over to gift or income tax. But for the question this page is about — is the estate over $60,000, and does someone have to file — the table above is often decisive, and it is why a real inventory has to come before anybody guesses.
That inventory does double duty. It is what the federal return is built from, and it is also what the ancillary administration in Florida has to describe when the petition is filed. Do it once, properly, rather than twice.
What if the surviving spouse is also not a US citizen?
Then the $60,000 problem gets very much larger, in two separate ways at once. The estate tax for non-US citizens is hard enough with one non-citizen in the picture; with a non-citizen spouse it is the part of the subject I find families are almost never warned about.
A married couple from Bogotá or Caracas or São Paulo buys a condo in Miami. Both names go on the deed. One of them dies. Every instinct says the survivor already owns half of it and the estate tax question is about the other half. Both halves of that instinct are wrong.
Nothing here changes the Florida side. The ancillary probate runs the same way whether the surviving spouse is a US citizen or not. The difference is entirely federal, and it is decided by the deed and by records nobody thought to keep.
Can a non-citizen surviving spouse claim the marital deduction?
Not without a trust. A nonresident’s estate is allowed a marital deduction under §2106(a)(3) — but only “under the principles of section 2056,” and section 2056 contains a trapdoor. §2056(d)(1) provides that where “the surviving spouse of the decedent is not a citizen of the United States,” no deduction shall be allowed.
Not a reduced deduction. None. The rule that lets a US couple pass everything to each other tax-free at the first death simply does not apply, and it does not apply even where the surviving spouse holds a green card — domicile is the test for the exclusion, but citizenship is the test for this one.
How does joint ownership between non-citizen spouses affect the estate tax?
It removes the half-and-half rule the couple were almost certainly relying on. Read the rest of that same sentence, because this is the half nobody quotes. §2056(d)(1) also provides that “section 2040(b) shall not apply.”
§2040(b) is the comfortable rule. For a qualified joint interest between spouses — a tenancy by the entirety, which is how most Florida married couples hold a deed, or a joint tenancy with right of survivorship where the two spouses are the only joint tenants — exactly one-half of the value goes into the deceased spouse’s gross estate, and nobody has to prove who paid for what.
Switch that off and you fall back to §2040(a), the original consideration-furnished rule, which includes the value of the whole property in the decedent’s gross estate “except such part thereof as may be shown to have originally belonged to such other person and never to have been received or acquired by the latter from the decedent for less than an adequate and full consideration in money or money’s worth.”
In plain terms: the surviving spouse gets credit only for what she can prove she contributed, out of her own money, and that money must never have come from the decedent. The burden is hers. The evidence is bank records from another country, from years ago, in another language and another currency.
Work the arithmetic on an ordinary Brickell two-bedroom. A $900,000 condo, held by the entireties by a couple who were both Colombian citizens. Intuition says $450,000 in the gross estate, against a $60,000 exclusion. The statute says $900,000 in the gross estate unless the widow can document her own contribution — and if the husband wired the purchase funds, as is very common, her documented contribution is zero.
That is the single most expensive sentence on this page, and the records that answer it are the records families throw away.
And no, he could not simply have given it to her. The question every widow asks next is whether the condo could have been put in her name during his lifetime instead. Gifts between spouses are unlimited only where the recipient is a US citizen. §2523(i) disallows the gift marital deduction outright where the donee spouse is not a citizen, and substitutes an enlarged annual exclusion in its place — $194,000 for 2026 under Revenue Procedure 2025-32, against $19,000 for everyone else. A $900,000 condo does not fit inside that, in one year or in five.
What is a QDOT, and when is it too late to use one?
It is the one way back to the deduction, and it closes nine months after death. §2056(d)(2) restores the marital deduction for property passing to a qualified domestic trust. §2056A sets the conditions: at least one trustee must be a US citizen individual or a domestic corporation; the instrument must provide that no distribution other than income may be made unless that US trustee has the right to withhold the tax; the trust must satisfy the regulations designed to make sure the tax is ultimately collected; and the executor must make the election.
A qualified domestic trust defers the tax rather than forgiving it. Under §2056A(b) the estate tax comes back on distributions of principal during the surviving spouse’s life, and on whatever remains in the trust when she dies. What it buys is time, and the ability to keep the Florida property in the family rather than selling it to pay a bill nine months after a funeral.
The deadline is the thing to hold onto. §2056(d)(2)(B) allows property to be treated as passing to a QDOT if it is transferred to the trust, or irrevocably assigned to one, before the date on which the estate tax return is filed. That return is due nine months after death. A trust that does not exist yet, for a family that has not yet finished arguing about who is in charge, in a country eight hours away, is the reason this planning window closes on people.
Drafting and electing a QDOT is tax counsel’s work, not mine. My part is knowing on the first call that this is live, saying so, and getting the right person into the file while there is still time to use it. In practice that means the QDOT conversation and the Florida ancillary administration should start in the same week, not nine months apart. If nobody raises it until month eight, there is nothing left to raise.
What if the Florida property has a mortgage?
Then the answer turns on a single line in the loan documents that nobody has looked at in years: whether the estate is personally liable for the debt.
Start with the bad news, because it surprises people. A nonresident’s estate does not deduct its debts and expenses in full. §2106(a)(1) allows only “that proportion of the deductions specified in sections 2053 and 2054 … which the value of such part bears to the value of his entire gross estate, wherever situated.”
So a $600,000 mortgage on a Florida condo does not produce a $600,000 deduction. If the Florida property is ten percent of the decedent’s worldwide estate, the deduction is ten percent of the debt — $60,000. The family carries the whole mortgage and deducts a tenth of it.
Then the price of admission. §2106(b) provides that no deduction is allowed at all “unless the executor includes in the return … the value at the time of his death of that part of the gross estate of such nonresident not situated in the United States.” To deduct anything, the estate has to disclose the entire worldwide estate to the IRS — the apartment in Bogotá, the business in Taipei, the accounts in Switzerland.
That is a genuine decision, not a formality, and I have watched families take a long moment over it. An estate that claims no deductions has no such disclosure obligation. An estate that wants the mortgage deduction opens its whole life to a foreign tax authority.
Now the good news, and it is substantial. Under Treasury Regulation §20.2053-7, where the estate is liable for the debt, the property goes into the gross estate undiminished and the mortgage is deducted — which lands it in the §2106 proration described above. But where the estate is not liable, “only the value of the equity of redemption (or the value of the property, less the mortgage or indebtedness) need be returned as part of the value of the gross estate.”
A genuinely non-recourse mortgage — nonrecourse, in the language most loan documents use — never enters the proration at all. It nets against the property before the gross estate is measured. The same $700,000 condo with the same $600,000 debt is a $700,000 asset with a partial deduction in one case, and a $100,000 asset in the other. Which one you are in was decided at a closing table years before anybody died, and it is worth pulling the note before you assume. Do it early. The loan documents are something the Florida probate file will want in any event, and they are far easier to obtain from a servicer while the account is still open.
Why is the bank asking for an IRS transfer certificate?
Because a US institution that releases a nonresident decedent’s assets can be held liable for the estate tax. The IRS transfer certificate, under 26 CFR §20.6325-1, is what removes that liability.
Until the certificate arrives, the bank will not move. This is the practical chokepoint, and it is the reason most families end up calling a lawyer. The Florida court order is not the thing the transfer agent is waiting for. The certificate is.
What is IRS Form 5173?
It is the legacy number for the transfer certificate, and it is worth explaining because the whole industry still uses it. Banks ask for “a 5173.” Law firm websites reference it. Compliance departments have it written into their checklists.
There is no current IRS form by that number. I looked, twice. The present procedure is an affidavit-and-documents submission — not a numbered form you download and fill in. So when a bank tells a family to “send us Form 5173,” the family goes looking for a PDF that does not exist and concludes it has been given the runaround. It has not. It has been given an old name for a real thing.
One trap while you are here, and it is the IRS’s own warning. Where the estate qualifies under Part B of the transfer certificate procedure, the IRS instructs: do not file Form 706-NA. “Unnecessary use of the Form 706-NA will delay the issuance of a Transfer Certificate.” Filing a return the estate did not owe, in the belief that more paperwork moves things faster, is one of the few ways to make a twelve-month wait longer.
When is an IRS transfer certificate not required?
Three exceptions are worth knowing, because one of them is the reason a Florida ancillary administration can be worth opening even in a case where you were not sure it was needed.
- No certificate is required where the US gross estate does not exceed $60,000 (for deaths after 1 January 1977).
- No certificate is required for a decedent who was a US resident.
- No certificate is required “for property administered by an executor or administrator appointed, qualified and acting within the United States.”
Read that third one twice. It is the reason a properly opened Florida ancillary administration is not merely a procedural hoop. It can remove the single longest delay in the whole matter — and it is the one place in this entire process where the Florida work and the federal problem line up in the family’s favour.
Why does the Florida case finish before the IRS does?
Because the two clocks run at different speeds. A Florida ancillary administration is often substantially complete in months. The IRS publishes a processing time for a transfer certificate of “12 to 18 months from the time the IRS receives all necessary documentation” — which is not the date you first wrote to it.
Nobody tells the family that at the beginning. I have watched this play out more than once. The Florida side goes well. Letters of ancillary administration issue, the Florida probate creditor period under chapter 733 runs, claims are barred under §733.702, the personal representative has clear authority to sell, lease or mortgage the Florida property under §734.102. The family thinks they are finished. Then the brokerage says it needs the transfer certificate, and there are eleven months left on that request, and the answer to “how long does ancillary probate take” turns out to have been the wrong question all along.
The sequencing point is simple once you see it. The federal return is due nine months after death, and the certificate request is generally made with that filing. If nobody starts the tax side until the Florida case is underway, the nine-month deadline has usually gone and the twelve-to-eighteen-month clock has not even started.
So, two pieces of advice at the first meeting. Start the federal side early enough that the accountant is working while the Florida petition is being prepared, not after. And if you are anywhere near the line, open the Florida administration properly, because a representative who has been appointed and qualified here, and who is acting in Florida, may take the certificate requirement off the table for the property in that representative’s hands.
Can the Florida property be sold before the tax is resolved?
The personal representative has the authority. Whether the sale closes is a different question, and selling an inherited Florida property out of a foreign estate is where deals die.
Authority first: §734.102 gives the ancillary personal representative power to sell, lease or mortgage the Florida property. That part is straightforward, and it is one of the strongest reasons to open the ancillary administration in Florida rather than wait.
Does the IRS have an automatic estate tax lien on Florida property?
It does, and nothing about it is recorded. IRC §6324(a)(1) provides that unless the estate tax “is sooner paid in full, or becomes unenforceable by reason of lapse of time, it shall be a lien upon the gross estate of the decedent for 10 years from the date of death.”
Nothing is filed. Nothing is recorded. No notice goes to anyone. The lien attaches automatically on the date of death and sits on the Florida parcel for a decade, and it will not appear on the title search the way a mortgage or a code lien does.
Florida title underwriters know this. When the seller is the estate of a nonresident non-citizen, expect the underwriter to want one of three things before it will insure: the transfer certificate, a certificate of discharge under §6325(c), or an escrow of sale proceeds sufficient to cover the exposure. The statute does provide that property used to pay court-allowed administration expenses is divested of the lien — which is another quiet argument for running the Florida ancillary administration properly rather than informally.
This is the mechanism behind a sentence I have said to a lot of families: the sale is not blocked, but the money does not all arrive on the day of closing.
How much is withheld when a foreign estate sells Florida real estate?
A foreign estate selling US real property is a foreign person disposing of a US real property interest, which brings FIRPTA withholding under IRC §1445 into the closing. The general rate is 15% of the amount realized — not 15% of the gain, and not 15% of what is left after the mortgage is paid off.
Two exceptions come up often enough to be worth naming. Where the buyer acquires the property as a residence and the amount realized is $300,000 or less, no withholding is required. Between $300,000 and $1,000,000, a residence purchase draws a reduced rate. Above that, or for any investment purchase, the full 15% applies.
Stack the two together and you have the honest answer to the question in this heading. Yes, the property can be sold. But between a §6324(a)(1) lien the underwriter will insist on addressing and a §1445 withholding the closing agent is obliged to take, a meaningful share of the proceeds does not reach the family on the day of the sale. Families who understand that in month one make good decisions about whether to sell at all. Families who discover it at the closing table do not.
What is the heir’s tax basis in the Florida property?
Date-of-death fair market value, in the ordinary case — and this is the part of the story that ends well.
§1014(a)(1) gives property acquired from a decedent a basis equal to its fair market value at the date of death. The provision reaches property required to be included in the gross estate under chapter 11 — and under §2103 the Florida real estate is exactly that. A condo bought in 1998 for $120,000 and worth $900,000 the day she died reaches the heirs at $900,000.
Now set that beside the withholding. FIRPTA takes 15% of the amount realized. The actual taxable gain, measured from a stepped-up basis, is often small and sometimes nothing at all. A family that sells for $910,000 has roughly $10,000 of gain — and has just watched $136,500 leave the closing table.
That money is not gone. It is reclaimed by filing a US return for the year of the sale, and to file, a foreign heir who has never had any US tax presence needs an ITIN — applied for on Form W-7. That application takes time, and it is the step families discover last. Start it when the property is listed, not when the refund is due.
Basis turns on facts I do not control and belongs with the accountant. But the shape of it is worth knowing before anybody panics about the withholding.
Does a tax treaty change the $60,000?
It can, substantially. The US has estate tax treaties with fifteen jurisdictions, and §2102(b)(3)(A) lets a treaty substitute a prorated share of the full citizen credit for the flat $13,000. This is the one place where the non-resident alien estate tax is not the same for everybody, and it turns entirely on where the decedent was from.
That is a different order of magnitude from the flat credit. The IRS treaty table lists fifteen: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. A German or British decedent with a Florida condo is in a genuinely different position from a decedent whose country is not on that list.
Fifteen is the number, and I would check it against the IRS table rather than against another law firm’s page. Charts circulate that add Norway and Sweden to the list. Both of those estate tax conventions were terminated and neither appears on the current IRS table. A family that plans around a treaty that no longer exists gets a very unpleasant surprise.
Is there a US–Taiwan estate tax treaty?
No. Taiwan appears on neither the IRS estate and gift tax treaty table nor the Treasury Department’s treaty page. I checked both independently, because of who actually calls me.
A Taiwanese decedent who owned Florida real estate receives the bare $13,000 credit under §2102(b)(1) — an effective exclusion of $60,000 — with no treaty relief available. The same is true across most of Latin America: there is no US estate tax treaty with Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Peru or Mexico. Between Taipei and Bogotá that covers a large share of the families who own property in South Florida, and none of them get a treaty.
Does the US–Canada relief come from a treaty?
Yes — but not from a standalone estate tax convention, which is why the two government sources look like they disagree.
Canada appears on the IRS estate and gift tax treaty table, yet Treasury’s treaty page shows no separate Canada estate tax convention. The explanation is on the IRS table itself: the estate tax provisions are located in Article XXIX B of the United States–Canada Income Tax Treaty. The relief was folded into the income tax treaty rather than given its own instrument. It is real, it is in force, and it is simply not where you would think to look for it.
For the Toronto and Montreal families who make up a good share of these calls, that is worth knowing before anyone concludes there is no treaty.
Treaty analysis beyond that is exactly the part I do not do alone. It is country-specific, it turns on domicile as the treaty defines it rather than as you would define it, and it belongs with someone who does this work.
Can the estate tax be avoided or reduced after death?
Mostly not, and I would rather say so plainly than sell you something. The US estate tax for non residents is fixed by facts that were settled the day the person died — what they owned, where it was situated, and where they were domiciled. Almost everything written about how to avoid it is pre-death planning, and that window has closed.
Four things are still genuinely available, and three of them have deadlines.
- The QDOT election, where the surviving spouse is not a US citizen. This is the large one, and it closes when the return is filed — nine months after death.
- Correct treatment of the mortgage. A non-recourse note nets against the property before the gross estate is measured, rather than being prorated away under §2106(a)(1). Nobody applies this for you; somebody has to read the loan documents.
- Treaty relief, if the decedent’s country is one of the fifteen. §2102(b)(3)(A) substitutes a prorated share of the full citizen credit for the flat $13,000, which is a different order of magnitude.
- An accurate situs inventory. Not a dodge — arithmetic done properly. Bank deposits, Treasuries and life insurance proceeds sit outside the gross estate, and estates get this wrong in the direction of overpaying more often than you would think.
What is not available: retitling the property after death, gifting it out of the estate, or discovering that the condo belonged to somebody else all along. Those conversations end badly.
What should the family do first?
Five things, in this order, before anyone signs anything.
- Inventory the US assets by situs, not by where the statement comes from. Real property, then stock by issuer, then everything else. This determines whether there is a federal filing at all.
- If the property was jointly owned and the surviving spouse is not a US citizen, start gathering contribution records now. Wire confirmations, closing statements, the source of the down payment. Under §2040(a) the burden is on the survivor, the records are usually abroad, and they get harder to find every month.
- Find out whether there is a will, and whether it has been admitted anywhere. The answer decides whether §734.1025 is even on the table.
- Put the nine-month date on a calendar today. Not the Florida dates. The federal one. It is the return deadline, and it is also the outer limit for a QDOT election.
- Call before the bank says no. Almost every genuinely bad outcome I have seen in these matters was a timing problem, not a legal one.
If a relative who was not a US citizen died owning property here, call me at (305) 224-6811. I handle the ancillary probate in Florida. I will tell you in the first conversation which parts are mine and which parts need the accountant, and roughly what each is going to cost. If it is easier in Spanish, la guía completa está aquí.
What else do families ask about non-citizen estates?
Short answers below — each has more behind it than a paragraph holds.
Is ancillary probate the same as ancillary administration?
One proceeding, two names. Searchers use ancillary probate; the Florida Statutes use ancillary administration. Both mean a Florida case opened alongside the main one abroad — full definition on my ancillary administration in Florida page.
Does the $60,000 threshold apply to green card holders?
Not necessarily. The test is domicile, not immigration status, and a lawful permanent resident domiciled here is generally treated as a US domiciliary with the full $15,000,000 exclusion. Domicile is fact-specific. Note that this cuts one way only: a green card does not fix the marital deduction problem above, because §2056(d) turns on citizenship, not domicile.
Is there a Florida estate tax on top of the federal one?
No. Florida repealed its estate tax and collects nothing at the state level, and there is no Florida inheritance tax either — the full answer is here. The exposure discussed on this page is entirely federal.
What if the Florida property is the only US asset?
Then the whole question is its date-of-death value against the $60,000 threshold, plus adjusted taxable gifts. A single Florida condo clears that line easily in most of the state.
Is a US bank account subject to estate tax for a nonresident?
Generally no. Under §2105(b)(1) a deposit with a US bank that is not effectively connected with a US trade or business is excluded from the gross estate. The same money invested in the stock of a domestic corporation is included, because under §2104(a) situs follows the issuer rather than the custodian. The bank may still want a transfer certificate before it releases the funds — that is a liability question, not a tax question, and the two are often confused.
Do I have to tell the IRS about assets outside the United States?
Only if the estate wants deductions. §2106(b) allows no deduction for expenses, indebtedness, taxes or losses unless the executor reports the date-of-death value of the non-US portion of the gross estate on the return. An estate claiming no deductions has no such obligation.
How much can a non-US citizen inherit from a Florida estate?
Any amount. Florida places no cap on what a beneficiary may inherit based on citizenship or immigration status, and there is no Florida inheritance tax. The $60,000 figure on this page is about the decedent, not the beneficiary. Whether a non-citizen beneficiary owes anything is a question for the tax law of the country where that beneficiary lives.
Last updated: 23 August 2026. What changed: added the non-citizen surviving spouse and QDOT analysis (§2056(d), §2040(a), §2056A); added mortgage and worldwide-disclosure rules (§2106(a)(1), §2106(b), Reg. §20.2053-7); added the §6324(a)(1) estate tax lien and FIRPTA withholding on sale; expanded the situs table; resolved the Canada treaty question to Article XXIX B of the US–Canada Income Tax Treaty. Figures verified against IRC §§2040, 2056, 2056A, 2102, 2104, 2105, 2106, 6324 and 6325, Rev. Proc. 2025-32, the current Form 706-NA instructions, 26 CFR §§20.2053-7 and 20.6325-1, the IRS estate and gift tax treaty table, and the 2025 edition of the Florida Statutes.
José Lorenzo, Fla. Bar No. 107002, admitted 2013. Lorenzo Law, Miami, Florida.
This page is general information about Florida ancillary administration and federal estate tax rules. It does not constitute legal or tax advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Federal tax figures change, and situs, domicile and joint-ownership questions are fact-specific — do not act on this page without advice on your own facts.