OP - there is no need to apologize. We all know that sometimes we simply don't want to tell the whole story due to various reasons. However, I am troubled to the fact that being a lawyer, you failed to observe that the devil is in the detail. So whatever you have been told may not even work.

Nevertheless, I am not so optimistic about the return of the money. Specifically, I am on defense on your late wife's relatives. Per my observation (personal or otherwise), relatives and money can't mix up together for the Chinese. FWIW - assuming the money is in the possession of one of the relatives. The matter becomes very simple - get the money out and that's it. The relative could even wire the money without you being in Wuhan (IIRC).

Without all the legalese (as it is not estate), it should take minutes, or hours at worst, to get the money. I simply don't see all the fuzz, all the questionings, etc.

IMHO - don't have your hope up.

@Gary: I certainly understand your point about money and relatives. However, all moral arguments used to justify keeping it go out the window after the young heiress is introduced into the equation. I.e who could possibly deprive her of her future education? Furthermore since OP actually made the track to Wuhan, he can go to the bank with the account holder. One more thought @op,if you believe the account holder is too clueless to interact with the bank，hiring a bilingual accountant to join you for the bank visits might be worthy of consideration. Just to provide a (Shanghai) frame of reference, we pay around 600 per day for supplementary financial services of this ilk.

Gary K,

Have you thought about Western Union or MoneyGram?

You can fly with your son and then wire the money via either WU or MG to your son with US address. So upon return your son can go to WU or MG authorised dealer to pick up the money and put it in the bank account.

By doing that you loose some transaction fee but it is relatively pain free and secure and fast. I believe CITIC Bank offers such service.

To those who were concerned that someone in my son's Chinese family would try to derail the wire transfer, my son's uncle took him to the bank today and a wire transfer was arranged. Other than the US bank giving me a Swift Code that was 3 digits too small (We found longer code on the Internet), it seemed to go smoothly on the Chinese end. Will check in the next day or 2 whether the wire actually will be deposited in my son's account. From what I could tell with short phone calls with my son, the bank was cooperative in performing the wire transfer.

I will follow up, hopefully when the wire transfer goes through and shows up in the US bank.

FYI, my wires to New York reliably show up at 8a Eastern Time on the same business day.

Money came through this morning. Process itself is apparently not difficult and bank didn't get real picky when actual wire papers were being filled out.

One thing that could be troublesome is justifying the purpose of the transfer (apparently to the Chinese government). However, if you know what is coming, you should be able to put together (or have some institution) put together a writing that would show certain expenses. The banks can't really read or understand the English in any meaningful way. In this instance, a bill from my son's college worked with no further questions asked.

Try out services like westernunion. China could have tight control over large amount of money flowing out of country, but lots of Chinese citizens do that anyways with those services.

My son just returned from Wuhan 2 weeks ago. Told me that between incomplete Swift Code and inexperience of bank employee it took about 1.5 hours to complete the application although no one was giving him a hard time.

A completely uncomplicated bank visit for something "routine" but not totally basic -- e.g. informing bank about change of passport -- routinely takes 1+ hrs, so that sounds pretty reasonable!

tb