Does anyone know anything about international wills?

[RuthChan]

I think it is time that DH and I wrote wills to protect each other and our DCs, should anything happen to either of us.
We don't have masses of money or much of value (we don't own a house or anything), but I would feel better knowing that things were taken care of.
The complications are caused by the international nature of our family.
I am British, DH is Japanese and we live in Belgium.
Do we need 3 separate wills each to allow for the different legal set ups in each country?
Do we have to account for our assets in each country separately or together?
Is it possible to write one will each that would be accepted in all three countries?
I honestly don't know where to start with this, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I think you are going to have to talk to a lawyer specialising in international trusts and probate, as all three of those countries have very different inheritance rules.

I had to deal with a lot of complications after DH died while we were living in Japan (both British though) and had a UK-style will but assets in the UK, Japan and several other countries. I got the UK grant of probate first, then had to get it converted into various jurisdictions, though didn't formally do the probate thing in Japan as I was moving back to the UK and only had fairly minimal assets in Japan (car, bank accounts) which seemed to pass automatically to me as spouse.

In any case, I think you should get specialist advice - but it's not cheap, I'm afraid. Perhaps you should try the Law Society (UK) as a first point of contact to see if they can recommend a suitable law firm who might give you a free or cheaper introductory consultation?

But yes, you should definitely get wills sorted (and life insurance if you don't have it), and the sooner the better - you just never know. DH's death was sudden and completely unexpected.

You definitely need specialist advice. My father lived in one country, was employed in another (although he worked globally) and taxed in a third country. As an ex pat he sought advice and to make things simple for when he died he banked offshore. He actually died in Belgium and his body had to be repatriated to the country where he had lived.

The first problem was proving he wasn't domiciled in the UK. He had lived abroad for 35 years, had a burial plot next to my mother abroad etc. If he had been domiciled here the inheritance tax would have been 3x greater than it actually was.

The other problem was he had appointed the offshore bank as executor but the authorities and banks in the country where he had lived could only deal with me directly. That wasn't easy and I don't think I could have managed without the help of a friend who happened to be a director with the Generale Bank and well known.

The chap in the offshore bank, who had much international experience, found the red tape was worse than developing countries such as India which was surprising for a modern European country. Without appropriate planning it could have been far worse.

We live/work abroad (Middle East) but have property in the UK so have our wills there. No real assets in ME but have a property in USA and this thread reminds me I must get off my butt and get on with getting wills done in the USA as the UK one doesn't cover it. (Babybarrister you are right about wills not covering property outside the jurisdition but then you are always right)

Any recommendations for lawyers in America?

exexpat so sorry for your loss

We too need to do this, so I am very interested in the advice given. Mind you we and all our assets except UK pension are in Belgium, so maybe more straight forward.

Thanks for bringing this up . I am in Italy married to a local and we together own a house here. However I do have some money in the UK ( might be all used up by the time we finish renovating the house) - I had thought that one will over here would surfice now I see otherwise.

Real estate definitely complicates things with international wills. Luckily we didn't own any real estate at the time of DH's death, as we'd sold our London flat a couple of years earlier, but we were in the process of buying one house in Japan and another in France. If either purchase had gone through and we hadn't finished sorting out our French wills (which we had started doing, but didn't think there was any need to rush....) it would all have been even more of a nightmare than it was anyway.

Thank you for your input. You have confirmed that I really need to get on with these things.

Portofino: It's interesting that you're in the same boat.
Let me know if you find a good Belgian lawyer!

Oh, it's so complicated!
We are actually domiciled in Belgium, though this is where we have the least assets.

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