Wills and inheritance
Wills, Probate and Inheritance
You own a flat here, you have a salary account and an end of service entitlement, and nobody in your family could tell you what would happen to any of it if you died this month. Most expatriates in the UAE are in that position, and it is usually what prompts someone to look for a will lawyer in Dubai.
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The short answer
Assets held in the UAE are dealt with here, under local procedure, by local authorities. A will made in another country does not take care of them by itself, and in some cases does not reach them at all. For a family with a mortgage, a joint account and children at school, that gap is worth closing while it is still paperwork.
On this page
Ten free minutes
Enough to say whether this needs a lawyer at all.
Why a will matters if you hold assets in the UAE
A property registered in Dubai, an account with a UAE bank, a shareholding in a UAE company and a car on UAE plates are all local assets. They move through local procedure, on documents the relevant authority accepts, whatever your nationality and whatever you have signed at home.
What happens to assets left without a will
Where no valid will covers assets held here, distribution follows the default legal position rather than the one you assumed. Couples who take it for granted that everything simply passes to the surviving spouse are the ones most often caught out.
The first problem is access, not distribution
Long before who inherits what is settled, the family has a practical problem. Accounts, transfers and company interests generally cannot be dealt with until the estate has been put through the proper process, and that takes time a household with rent and school fees to pay may not have. A will does not remove the process. It removes the argument about what you intended, and that argument is what adds the months.
Which law applies to your estate
There is a body of personal status law that applies to Muslim parties, and separate civil personal status provision covering non-Muslims. Which of them governs an estate held here, and when a non-Muslim can ask for something else to be applied, is the question the outcome turns on. Both extremes are asserted confidently online and neither is safe to act on.
Registering a will in the UAE
More than one route, and they are not interchangeable
Non-Muslims holding assets here have more than one route available for registering a will. The routes differ in which assets they cover, where the document is enforced, who is eligible, what language it has to be in and what it costs, and those conditions have been changed before. Choosing the wrong one is a common and expensive mistake, because a will that does not reach the asset you were most worried about has not done its job.
A will you already made abroad
People often assume the will they signed at home covers everything they own anywhere. Whether a will made outside the UAE has effect over assets held here, and what has to be done to give it effect, is not a question to assume in either direction. A foreign document also needs legalisation and certified legal translation before it can be put in front of anyone here.
Matching the will to the assets
Start with a list of what you hold and where each item sits: property, accounts, company shares, vehicles, and anything outside the UAE. The choice of route follows from that list. Drafting first and checking afterwards whether the document reaches the property is the wrong way round. Our page on real estate lawyers in Dubai covers how property here is held and registered, often the largest item in an estate.
Guardianship of your children
This is the part that will not wait
For parents, guardianship matters more than the distribution of money, and it is the clause most often left until later. If both parents die, or if one dies while the surviving parent is outside the country, someone has to hold authority over the children immediately, and where nothing has been recorded that gets sorted out at the worst possible moment.
Temporary cover and permanent appointment
The problem splits in two. Who looks after the children in the days straight after a death, and who holds authority over them afterwards. They are not necessarily the same person, and a will can address both.
Choose a guardian who is actually available
A guardian on another continent, with no UAE visa and no ability to travel at short notice, is a name on a page. Many families name someone local for the immediate period and someone closer to home for the longer term. Speak to the people concerned before naming them. Custody and guardianship during a parent’s lifetime are dealt with by our family lawyers in Dubai.
What a will should cover
Will lawyers in Dubai see the same gaps repeatedly, usually in the things people did not think of as assets.
Property
Identify the property as it appears on the title deed, not by a description that could fit two units. Say who it goes to, what happens if that person dies first, and what is to happen to any mortgage still outstanding.
Bank accounts, cash and end of service
List the banks rather than the account numbers, which change. Deal with joint accounts explicitly, because a joint account is not always the straightforward arrangement the name suggests. Include end of service entitlements and anything else held by an employer.
Shares, vehicles and possessions
A shareholding in a UAE company often carries conditions in the company’s own documents about what happens on a shareholder’s death, and those can cut across a will, so the two are read together. Vehicles are registered assets and need naming. One clause usually covers personal possessions, with specific gifts for the few items that matter.
Assets abroad, the executor, and money left to children
Two wills drafted in different countries without reference to each other can revoke one another by accident, so say what exists elsewhere before anything is drafted. Name the person who will carry out the will, and an alternative. If your children are minors, say who manages money left to them, because a gift with nobody authorised to administer it creates the dispute it was meant to prevent.
Administering an estate after a death
Probate lawyers in Dubai spend more time on this than on drafting, because it is the stage where families get stuck.
The first days
Register the death and obtain the death certificate. If the death happened abroad, that certificate will need legalisation and legal translation before it is any use here. Gather title deeds, bank details, visa and identity documents, vehicle registration and any will. Do not start disposing of anything.
Opening the estate and paying the debts
An estate held here is dealt with through the courts, and the heirs have to be established formally before any asset moves. Liabilities come before distribution, including loans, credit cards, an outstanding mortgage and sums owed to the authorities, so an asset the family was counting on sometimes has to be sold.
Transferring the assets
Each category has its own transfer procedure. Property goes through the land registry, a vehicle through the traffic authority, a shareholding through the company’s own registration. Any of them can be held up by a mismatch between the name on a passport and the name on a title deed, which is worth checking now.
When the heirs disagree
Most of the contested work an inheritance lawyer in Dubai handles starts in one of three ways: a property nobody can agree to sell, an asset that moved before the estate was opened, or a will whose validity is challenged. If you think an asset has been moved or a document is not genuine, say so early, because the evidence is easier to secure at the start than six months in.
What to bring to a first meeting
For a will: a list of what you own and where each item sits, the title deed for any property, the names and dates of birth of your children, the names of the people you want to inherit and of the person you want to appoint, and any will you have already made anywhere.
For an estate: the death certificate, the deceased’s passport and Emirates ID, any will, title deeds, bank and loan statements, vehicle registration, and documents proving each claimed heir’s relationship. Say which documents were issued outside the UAE, because those need legalisation and legal translation.
Common questions about wills and inheritance in Dubai
Do I need a UAE will if I already have one at home?
At the very least you need that question answered before you rely on the foreign document. A will made abroad combined with assets held here is the arrangement that causes the most difficulty, and whether the document reaches the local asset cannot be assumed either way.
What happens to a joint bank account when one holder dies?
Do not assume the surviving holder simply carries on using it. Joint accounts are not always as straightforward as the name suggests, and the treatment is one of the first things to check rather than take for granted.
Can I leave everything to my spouse?
That is what most people want, and whether a will can achieve it depends on which framework applies to your estate and on the route you register through. It is the most common reason people take advice before drafting rather than after.
What do wills and probate cost?
It depends on the route chosen, on how many assets and countries are involved, and on whether an estate is agreed or contested. Registration charges are set by the authority rather than by us. Our legal fees page explains how our charges are structured, and we confirm the basis in writing before we start.
Speak to a will lawyer in Dubai
If you own property here, if you have children at school in the UAE, or if you are dealing with the estate of someone who has died, the first step is a short conversation about what is held and where it sits.
Call +971 50 747 9570, email help@lawyerindubai.ae, or use our contact page. Bring a list of your assets, or whatever documents you already have, and we will tell you what needs to happen and in what order.
What this costs
The first ten minutes are free. After that a standard fee applies and you are told what it is, in writing, before any work starts. Court and government fees are set by the court and are separate from ours.
Tell us what happened
Ten minutes, no charge, and a straight answer about whether you need a lawyer for this.