Proving Kinship with Polish Records for a UK Estate

When someone dies in England or Wales and the people entitled to the estate include relatives in Poland, each relationship has to be shown on paper. In practice that means a Polish birth, marriage or death entry for every link between the claimant and the deceased, obtained as an official copy (odpis) from a civil registry office or a certified copy from a state archive, then translated into English.

Below: which record proves which link, who may order it, and how to make it usable in the UK. This guide is general information, not legal advice. Entitlement is decided under the law that governs the estate, so a UK solicitor should confirm who inherits, and a Polish lawyer or notary is needed for any step in Polish proceedings.

What the UK side usually asks for

Where there is no will, the Administration of Estates Act 1925 sets the order of entitlement. If there is no spouse, civil partner, child or parent, the estate passes to brothers and sisters of the whole blood, then of the half blood, then grandparents, then uncles and aunts. Under the statutory trusts, the children of a sibling who died first generally take the share their parent would have taken. Only when nobody qualifies does the estate pass to the Crown as bona vacantia.

The Government Legal Department’s guidance on claiming an estate is a useful benchmark for what a kinship claim needs. It asks for a family tree with dates of birth, marriage and death, and for full birth certificates showing the parents’ names, plus marriage certificates, for each person between the claimant and the deceased. Documents not in English need a certified English translation. Privately administered estates usually need a similar file. Our guide to bona vacantia and Polish-born estates covers the Crown side in more detail.

Which Polish records prove each link

Polish civil entries (akty stanu cywilnego) record births, marriages and deaths, and each carries the parents’ names, which chains one generation to the next.

Link to prove	Polish record	What it shows
Deceased and a sibling share the same parents	Birth entry (akt urodzenia) of each	Child’s name, date and place of birth, parents’ names including the mother’s maiden name
A married woman is the same person as the girl in the birth entry	Marriage entry (akt małżeństwa)	Both spouses’ names and maiden names, dates and places of birth, parents’ names, surname taken after marriage
A relative died before the deceased, so their children step in	Death entry (akt zgonu)	Name, maiden name, date and place of birth and death, marital status, spouse, parents’ names
A nephew or niece descends from the sibling	Birth entry of the nephew or niece	Parents’ names linking them to the sibling

The contents of a short copy are set out in Article 48 of the Act of 28 November 2014 on civil status records (Prawo o aktach stanu cywilnego). Even the short birth copy names both parents, with their maiden names.

Living relatives in Poland are identified through the family records themselves and through the relatives’ own cooperation. The national population register (PESEL) holds current personal data, but it releases another person’s data only to someone who shows a legal interest, or with that person’s consent where the applicant has a factual interest. Any approach to a possible heir should go through the solicitor handling the estate.

Who may order Polish copies

Article 45(1) of the 2014 Act lists who may receive a copy of a civil status entry: the person it concerns, their spouse, ascendants, descendants and siblings, a legal representative or guardian, anyone who shows a legal interest (interes prawny), courts, prosecutors and certain public bodies. The gov.pl service page adds that a legal interest must arise from legal provisions and be supported by documents. A brother or sister of the deceased can therefore order the deceased’s birth entry as of right. A nephew, niece or UK solicitor usually has to rely on legal interest, and the civil registry office decides whether the documents supplied are enough.

Where to apply: a request can go to any civil registry office (urząd stanu cywilnego, USC) in Poland, not only the one where the event was registered (Article 44(5)). Polish consulates can help applicants abroad.
Online: the online route through gov.pl is limited to the person concerned, their spouse, children and parents (Article 45(2)). Siblings and anyone relying on legal interest apply in writing or in person.
Fees and timing: gov.pl lists 22 zł for a short copy, 33 zł for a full copy and 17 zł for a power of attorney, with 7 calendar days for entries in the electronic register and 7 to 10 working days for entries still in paper books.

Older registers are in the state archives

Civil registry offices keep birth entries for 100 years and marriage and death entries for 80 years, counted from the end of the year the entry was made (Article 28), with a longer period if the person is still alive. For older paper books it runs from the closing of the book (Article 128). The books then go to the regional state archive, and the registry office no longer issues copies from them (Article 130(3)). Ask the archive for a certified copy instead. Our guides to the 100-year rule and to records in the state archives explain the split.

Full copies, multilingual extracts, apostille and translation

Full or short copy

A full copy (odpis zupełny) reproduces the entry word for word, with any later annotations. A short copy (odpis skrócony) gives the current content in a set format (Article 44). For a kinship file the full copy is usually the better choice: it shows corrections and name changes, which matter when names differ between countries.

Multilingual extracts

Poland issues a multilingual short copy (odpis skrócony wielojęzyczny) under CIEC Convention No. 16, signed in Vienna on 8 September 1976, which has been in force for Poland since 1 November 2003. Parties to the Convention accept these extracts without translation or legalisation, but the United Kingdom is not a party, so the Convention gives these extracts no special status there; expect to need a translation. The EU’s multilingual standard forms under Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 have not covered the UK since 1 January 2021.

Apostille

Poland and the UK are both parties to the Hague Apostille Convention. In Poland the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues the apostille on civil status copies. The fee is 60 zł per document, the copy must carry the office’s round seal, the official’s name stamp and a signature, and photocopies and printouts from online platforms cannot be apostilled. Whether an apostille is needed depends on who will receive the documents, so ask the solicitor, the Probate Registry or the Government Legal Department before paying for one.

Certified translation

The Government Legal Department asks for a certified English translation of each non-English document. For probate, HM Courts and Tribunals Service accepts a translation of a foreign death certificate from a licensed translation company, or form PA19 where the translation came from elsewhere. Translations by a Polish sworn translator (tłumacz przysięgły), who appears on the Ministry of Justice list, are generally accepted in practice, but the receiving body has the final say, so confirm its requirements first.

Bridging Polish and English names

The weak point in most files is the moment a Polish name becomes an English one. A man born as Stanisław Kowalczyk may appear in the UK as Stanley Kowalczyk, Stanley Kowal or Stanley Kay. Useful bridges include:

UK naturalisation papers, which often record the Polish name, date and place of birth; see naturalisation records of Poles in the UK.
Deed poll or other change-of-name evidence, and marriage certificates that show the former name.
Polish feminine surname endings: Kowalska is the female form of Kowalski, so a sister’s entry will not match her brother’s surname letter for letter.

Add a short note explaining each variant and the document that supports it. Our guide to anglicised Polish surnames lists common patterns, and the GRO index helps find the UK entries under their English forms.

Gaps: war losses and records outside Poland

War losses. Many registers were destroyed during the Second World War. A duplicate copy of the register, or a parish register, sometimes survives where the civil book does not.
Former eastern territories. Books from pre-war provinces now in Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania were partly handed over to Poland after the war; those still within the storage periods are held by the civil registry office of the City of Warsaw (the so-called księgi zabużańskie). The transfer was incomplete, and the remaining records are in archives in those countries, where access rules differ.
Jewish registers. In parts of partitioned Poland, Jewish births, marriages and deaths were recorded in separate civil registers for the Jewish community. Survival varies greatly by town.

When a link cannot be proved from a primary record, the UK solicitor decides what secondary evidence to offer, and the file should say plainly what was searched and not found.

A worked example (fictional)

Jan Kowalczyk was born in 1928 in a village near Rzeszów, came to Britain after the war as John Kowalczyk and died in Leeds in 2025, unmarried, childless and without a will. His parents had died in Poland decades earlier. His sister Maria, born 1931, married in 1953, took the surname Nowak and died in 2010. Her two children live in Poland. A brother, Stefan, died as a child in 1944.

Under the 1925 Act, Maria’s children would take her share as siblings’ issue. To show it, the file needs:

John’s UK death certificate and evidence that he is Jan born 1928, such as his naturalisation file.
Jan’s birth entry, still at the registry office because the 100-year period has not ended.
Maria’s birth entry, showing the same parents.
The parents’ death entries, if the solicitor wants proof that they died before Jan.
Maria’s 1953 marriage entry, linking Maria Kowalczyk to the surname Nowak.
Maria’s 2010 death entry, showing she died before her brother.
The birth entries of both children, naming Maria as their mother.
Stefan’s 1944 death entry, showing he died as a child; the 80-year period has passed, so the book may now be in the state archive.

Maria’s children can order their own and their mother’s entries as descendants. For Jan’s birth entry they would need to show a legal interest, since a nephew is not on the Article 45 list.

How the evidence file is usually organised

A family tree from the deceased to each claimant, with full names, Polish and English forms, and dates of birth, marriage and death.
An index table listing each relationship and the documents that prove it.
The Polish copies in the order of the tree, each followed by its certified translation.
A note on name variants and on any record that could not be found.
The UK certificates, and naturalisation or change-of-name papers.

Send good-quality copies first and keep the originals until asked. For the UK side, see our guides to certificates in England and Wales and probate records.