Four barriers, and only two of them are American

An inheritance from Russia to the US rarely arrives on a lawyer’s desk as a question of law. It arrives as a wire that did not land, a bank that has asked for documents nobody kept, or a client who has just discovered that the six-month window closed four months ago.

It helps to separate four barriers that operate independently of one another. The first is the Russian probate procedure itself: deadlines, notarial formalities, and title registration. The second is Russian currency control, which decides whether this heir may move money out of the country at all. The third is the compliance posture of the receiving US bank. The fourth is US information reporting to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Sanctions are a fifth layer, but only in specific configurations, and treating every Russian estate as a sanctions matter misdirects the work.

These barriers do not queue up politely. An heir who clears the first is routinely stopped by the second, which is the one least likely to have been considered at the outset.

Who counts as a US person, and why the label matters twice

The phrase carries two different meanings in the same file, and conflating them causes avoidable errors. For sanctions purposes, a US person includes US citizens and permanent residents wherever located, entities organized under US law, and anyone physically present in the United States. For tax purposes, the test runs on citizenship, lawful permanent residence, or substantial presence.

The two definitions overlap heavily but not perfectly, and the consequences differ: one determines what the heir is prohibited from doing, the other determines what the heir is obliged to report. A client can be outside the sanctions definition and squarely inside the tax one, or the other way around.

The six-month clock nobody reminds you about

Under Article 1154 of the Russian Civil Code, an heir has six months from the date of death to accept the estate. Citizenship and residence are irrelevant to the deadline, and no one has a duty to locate or notify an heir living abroad. Foreign heirs frequently learn of the estate from relatives well after the clock has started.

Missing the deadline does not extinguish the right, but it changes the procedure: either every heir who already accepted consents to the late acceptance, or the heir petitions a Russian court to restore the deadline and must show that the reasons for the delay were legitimate. Both routes are slower and less predictable than a timely filing.

The first practical step costs nothing: the Russian Federal Notarial Chamber maintains a public register of probate files, searchable by the decedent’s name and date of death, and accessible from abroad.

Claiming the estate without traveling

Travel to Russia is not required. Two channels work.

• A power of attorney executed before a US notary public, apostilled by the secretary of state of the relevant state, then translated into Russian with the translation certified by a Russian notary.
• Execution before a Russian consular officer in the United States, which removes the apostille step but has become slower in practice given how few consular posts remain and how far out appointments run.

An application to accept the estate may be mailed to the notary, but the signature must be authenticated the same way. This is where time is most often lost: a power of attorney executed without an apostille, or translated in the United States rather than in Russia, comes back for redoing with weeks left on the clock.

Real property, deposits and company interests behave differently

What happened to arrive in the estate largely determines how difficult the file will be.

Real property. Once the certificate of inheritance is issued, title is registered in the Russian real property register. The heir then chooses between holding and selling. On a sale, Russian personal income tax applies, but inherited property carries a three-year minimum holding period running from the date of death rather than the date of registration. Clear that period and the exemption is available regardless of Russian tax residence; fall short of it, and a Russian tax non-resident faces a 30 percent rate with no deductions. That single distinction often argues for patience over a quick sale.

Bank deposits. Balances pass to the heir and the bank opens an account in the heir’s name. This is usually where the currency control problem surfaces.

Limited liability company (LLC) interests. The charter may condition transfer of the interest on the consent of the remaining participants; without consent, the heir receives a payment representing the actual value of the interest rather than the interest itself. Separately, transactions in company interests involving persons from states on Russia’s unfriendly list can require clearance from a subcommission of the Russian government commission on foreign investment, with the application filed through the Russian Ministry of Finance. The precise scope of that requirement is a question of Russian law that moves frequently and should be confirmed with Russian counsel for the specific transaction.

The binding constraint is usually Russian currency control

Clients arrive braced for a sanctions problem. In most files involving an inheritance from Russia to the US, the operative restriction sits on the Russian side.

Effective 8 December 2025, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) lifted the caps on transferring foreign currency abroad for Russian citizens and for individual non-residents from friendly states. It simultaneously kept the restrictions applicable to individual non-residents from unfriendly states: those employed in Russia may transfer amounts corresponding to their salary, and those not employed in Russia may not transfer funds abroad at all. On 1 June 2026, the CBR extended that regime through 7 December 2026 inclusive.

The consequence reframes the file. What governs is the heir’s currency status, not where the heir lives. An heir who retains Russian citizenship and lives in Chicago remains a Russian currency resident and is outside the prohibition. An heir who holds US citizenship only, with no Russian citizenship or residence permit, falls inside it, and cannot wire the inherited funds out of a Russian account for as long as the current regime stands.

The regime is revisited roughly every six months, so the timing of a sale and the timing of the outbound transfer are worth planning against the current window. Funds remain available for use within Russia in the meantime.

Why the wire never lands

The second barrier is American, and it is also, more often than not, not a sanctions prohibition.

Russia’s largest banks such as Sberbank, VTB, Alfa-Bank, and, since November 2024, Gazprombank appear on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List) maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury. Where such a bank sits anywhere in the payment chain, the receiving US institution is looking at a transaction involving blocked property. The detail that surprises clients: the money is not bounced back to the sender; it is blocked, and recovering it means applying for an OFAC specific license.

Even with no listed party anywhere in the chain, the payment may still fail. Correspondent relationships between US and Russian banks have largely been dismantled, and many Russian banks simply have no dollar route left. Layered on top is de-risking: a US bank may refuse an incoming payment or close an account without stating a reason, and for many compliance functions, Russian-origin funds trigger enhanced review by default. It’s not a legal decision, but a commercial one, which is close to unreviewable but responsive to the quality of the documentation presented.

The document package that answers the compliance question

An inheritance from Russia to the US is among the most explainable sources of funds a compliance officer will see, provided the chain is assembled before the money moves (all documents should have a notarized translation into English):

• the certificate of inheritance, apostilled and translated;
• the death certificate;
• title and transaction documents for the asset, including the sale contract and proof of payment;
• a valuation report where the amount invites questions;
• a statement for the Russian account showing the credit and its basis;
• a short source of funds letter tying the documents into a single narrative.

The letter matters more than its length suggests. No compliance officer is obliged to reconstruct a chain of reasoning from unfamiliar documents in a foreign language, and most will not. Assemble the package before the wire is sent rather than after the first query. Once a payment has been frozen pending review, the negotiating position is materially worse.

What the IRS expects even though no tax is due

A bequest from a foreign decedent is not subject to US federal income tax in the hands of the recipient. That is exactly why the reporting is missed.

• Form 3520, Part IV, is required where aggregate receipts from a foreign individual or foreign estate exceed USD 100,000 in a tax year. The penalty for failure to file runs at 5 percent of the amount per month, capped at 25 percent, and is untethered from any tax liability.
• A Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) is required where inherited Russian accounts push the aggregate balance above USD 10,000 at any point in the year.
• Form 8938 applies once the specified foreign financial asset thresholds are crossed.

Basis deserves separate attention: as a general matter, inherited property takes a basis equal to fair market value at the date of death, which drives the gain on any later sale, and amounts are converted at the rate on the date of receipt. The reporting workstream belongs with a US tax adviser and should run in parallel with the legal one, not after it.

When the matter turns into a sanctions matter

Everything above describes an ordinary estate, and most matters involving an inheritance from Russia to the US are ordinary. There is no general embargo on dealings with Russia by US persons.

The character of the file changes in three situations: the decedent was on the SDN List; the estate includes an interest in an entity that is itself blocked under the 50 percent rule; or the inherited asset is already blocked in the United States. In each case, accepting the inheritance does not unblock anything, and dealing with the property requires a specific OFAC license.

That scenario runs on different rules and will be treated separately in our next article.

A working sequence

• Search the Russian probate register and fix the date of death as the start of the six months.
• Establish the heir’s Russian currency status before promising any timeline for the funds.
• Execute and apostille the power of attorney early, not in the final month.
• Build the documentary chain before the wire is sent, not after a refusal.
• Screen the file for sanctions exposure before the first payment rather than after a block.

An inheritance from Russia to the US seldom fails because something was prohibited. It fails because a deadline passed, a power of attorney was executed the wrong way, or money moved before the paperwork was ready. Each of those is fixable in advance and close to unfixable afterwards.