Updated August 17, 2026. Quick answer: In Michigan, whether an heir needs a state credential depends on a line the statute itself draws, and the line is the answer; on the dealer question, a dealer is not required — the state does regulate transfers here, and this is not one it routes through a dealer; and on inheritance itself, the code names inheritance and then bounds what naming it buys you. Something has to be filed: 30 days, counted from taking physical possession of the inherited firearm. Every answer below is quoted from Michigan’s own code with the section named and linked, because this is a subject where being roughly right is not a category that exists.
What Michigan law settles, in four lines
| Question | What the code says | Section |
|---|---|---|
| Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card? | Depends | MCL 28.422(8) |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | Yes — 30 days | MCL 28.422(6), (8) |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | No | MCL 28.422(8) |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | Named, but limited | MCL 28.422(8) |
What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in Michigan: the person who died and the person inheriting are in the same state, and the firearm is an ordinary rifle, shotgun, pistol or revolver. Machine guns, suppressors, short-barrelled rifles and anything else registered under the National Firearms Act run on a separate federal track that is not this page, and neither is moving a firearm across a state line. The federal layer is set out separately.
Does the heir need a permit, licence or card
Whether an heir needs a state credential depends on a line the statute itself draws, and the line is the answer. In Michigan that answer reads depends. The section that settles it is quoted here rather than paraphrased:
An individual who has inherited a firearm shall obtain a license as required in this section not later than 30 days after taking physical possession of the firearm.
Does anyone have to be told, and by when
30 days, and the number is the smaller half of the answer. What it counts from is taking physical possession of the inherited firearm — which is the part a comparison table drops and the part that decides whether the deadline has already passed. It goes to the licensing authority that issues the license — the police chief/commissioner of the city, township, or village of residence, or the county sheriff outside an organized police department — which must then electronically enter the information into the statewide pistol entry database maintained by the Michigan Department of State Police.
The sentence that answers this is the one already quoted above, under Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card?. MCL 28.422(6), (8) settles both questions in the same breath, which is itself part of the answer — there is no separate inheritance provision to read.
Does it have to go through a licensed dealer
A dealer is not required — the state does regulate transfers here, and this is not one it routes through a dealer. The claim that an inherited firearm always has to be transferred through a licensed dealer is not true as a flat statement in any state in this table, and in Michigan the section that settles it reads:
The person authorized to dispose of property under the estates and protected individuals code, 1998 PA 386, MCL 700.1101 to 700.8206, is not required to obtain a license under this section if the person takes temporary lawful possession of the firearm in the process of disposing of the firearm pursuant to the decedent’s testamentary bequest or the laws of intestacy.
What the code says about inheritance itself
The code names inheritance and then bounds what naming it buys you. Being named and being released are different things. What follows the naming is the bound — a window that closes, a route that only works one way, or an exemption from the paperwork but not from the licence.
This section does not prevent the transfer of ownership of pistols to an heir or devisee, whether by testamentary bequest or by the laws of intestacy regardless of whether the pistol is entered into the pistol entry database.
What is specific to Michigan
- Michigan’s inheritance sentence has a drafting tension inside it that a 2024 amendment left behind: the paragraph introduces itself as being about pistols while the sentence that creates the duty says firearm, and the chapter defines those as two different things. MCL 28.422(8)
- The clock starts at physical possession, not at the death and not at any probate step, and the licence application is itself the report. MCL 28.422(6), (8)
- The person settling the estate may sign the heir’s licence application — including when that person is the heir. MCL 28.422(6), (8)
- The statute also tells police what they may not do: a firearm moving under a will or an intestacy is not to be seized while a qualifying heir works through the process. MCL 28.422(8)
- An heir who already holds a Michigan concealed pistol licence is outside the licence-to-receive requirement to begin with. MCL 28.422(8)
What this page does not tell you
- The permit answer is a genuine “it depends”. It is recorded that way because the statute draws a line rather than giving one answer, and flattening it to yes or no would be wrong in half the cases.
- This is what the statute says, not what a court or a police department has done with it. No case law and no agency guidance was read. Where a code is silent, this page reports silence rather than filling it in.
- City and county rules sit on top and are not here. Several of these states let a city license or register firearms separately, and a local rule can add a step the state code does not mention.
- Who may possess is a separate question from how it transfers. A federal or state bar on possession — a felony conviction, a protective order, an involuntary commitment — attaches to the person and reaches an inherited firearm exactly as it reaches a bought one.
- A gun trust is a different mechanism and is covered separately. What a gun trust does and does not do is its own question, and it is mostly a federal one.
- This is general information, not legal advice. On this subject a wrong step is not a paperwork problem, so the sections are linked for you to read and a probate lawyer in the state is the right next call if anything here is close.
Sources
Every answer on this page comes out of a 51-jurisdiction table built from statute text: 204 cells, 201 of them read from a state’s own code and 3 from an official state publication, with 0 resting on a secondary source of any kind. 175 quotations were machine-checked against the bytes of the page each came from, with 0 failures. 22 of the 204 cells are flagged because the text is verbatim but the date of the copy it came from could not be confirmed at the state’s own site.
| What it supports | Section | Tier | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card? | MCL 28.422(8) (Act 372 of 1927, § 2) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | MCL 28.422(6), (8) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | MCL 28.422(8) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | MCL 28.422(8) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
The other states with their own page: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maryland, Washington, Texas. All 51 jurisdictions are in the by-state table.
General consumer information, not legal advice. State codes are as published by the cited source on 2026-08-17 and change without notice; the statute and a lawyer in the state govern.