Is my UK, Indian or home-country will valid in the UAE?
By MyHaven Team7 minute read
A lot of expats arrive in the UAE with a will already made at home and assume it travels with them. It does not, at least not in the way they hope. This guide explains what a home-country will can and cannot do for the assets you hold here, what the law says, what your family would have to go through to rely on it, and the simpler arrangement most people settle on.
The short answer
A will made in the UK, India, the Philippines or anywhere else is not automatically recognised by a UAE court. It is not void, but it is not ready to use either. Before a court here acts on it, the document has to be attested for use in the UAE, translated into Arabic by a certified legal translator, and accepted by the court as valid under the law of the country where it was made. That is months of work for your family, at the worst possible time, with no guarantee of the outcome.
A will registered in the UAE for your UAE assets avoids all of that. It is written in the form the court already uses, in both languages, and it sits in the register where the court will look for it. Most expats keep their home will for the assets at home and add a UAE will for the assets here, written so the two do not cancel each other.
Why a foreign will is not automatically recognised
Three things stand between a foreign will and a UAE court.
- Language. The onshore courts work in Arabic. An English, Hindi or Tagalog will is read only through a certified translation, which has to be produced and stamped before anyone can file it.
- Proof.The court has no way of knowing that a document signed in Manchester or Mumbai is genuine, or that it was executed properly under that country’s rules. That is what attestation and, where the home country requires it, a grant of probate are for. Each step is a separate office and a separate fee.
- No register entry. The UAE keeps registers of non-Muslim wills precisely so that a court can find the instruction it is meant to follow. A foreign will is not in any of them. Until it is recognised, the court has nothing on file and the default rules are what it has to work from.
None of this is a judgement on the quality of your home will. A perfectly drafted English will is still a foreign document to a court in Abu Dhabi or Dubai, and the family holding it has to prove what it is before it counts.
What the 2022 law actually says
Federal Decree-Law 41 of 2022 on civil personal status is the law that governs non-Muslim foreigners living in the UAE. Two of its provisions matter here.
- Article 1 applies the law to non-Muslim foreigners residing in the state, unless one of them chooses to apply the law of their home country instead. So UK law, or Indian law, can in principle govern your estate. Choosing it is not the same as having your home will accepted: the court still needs the document in a form it can act on, and it may ask the family to prove what that foreign law says.
- Article 11lets a person leave all of their assets in the UAE to whoever they choose by will, and provides that where there is no will the surviving spouse takes half and the children share the rest equally. It also lets an heir ask for a different law to be applied, unless there is a registered will to the contrary. The phrase that does the work is “registered”.
Put plainly: the law gives you the right to decide, and it ties that right to a will the UAE system can see. A registered UAE will is the instruction the court is told to follow. A foreign will is an instruction the court has to be persuaded to follow.
What it takes to use a foreign will here
If your family did decide to rely on your home will for a UAE bank account or a flat in Dubai, this is roughly what they would be asked for. The order and the names of the offices vary by country; the shape does not.
| Step | What it involves | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| Prove the will at home | In common law countries such as the UK, a grant of probate or its equivalent. Elsewhere, a court or notary certifying the will. | Your executor, in the home country |
| Attest the documents | The will and the grant are certified by the home country's foreign ministry, then the UAE embassy there, then the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs after arrival. | Your executor, usually through an attestation agent |
| Translate into Arabic | Every page, by a translator certified by the UAE Ministry of Justice, with the stamp on the translation. | A certified legal translator |
| Apply to the court | A petition to the court where the assets sit, asking it to recognise the will and appoint the executor. The court may ask for evidence of the foreign law. | A UAE lawyer, in most cases |
| Deal with each asset | Bank, land department, company registry and vehicle registry each act on the court's order, one at a time. | Your executor, with the order in hand |
Each of those steps costs money and, more importantly, time. While they run, bank accounts in your sole name are frozen, which is the subject of what happens to a UAE bank account without a will. A registered UAE will replaces the first four rows with a document the court already holds.
UK, Indian, Filipino and other wills
A UK will
England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own rules, but a will from any of them is proved by a grant from the home court before it can be used abroad. There is no treaty between the UK and the UAE that makes a UK will enforceable here. A UK will usually also contains a clause revoking every earlier will, which is the trap in keeping two wills together below.
An Indian will
Wills made in India under the Indian Succession Act are commonly unregistered, which is fine at home and a problem here, because the UAE court has even less to go on. The Indian consulate in Dubai publishes its own guidance on UAE wills for Indian nationals, and its advice is the same as everyone else’s: make a separate will for your UAE assets and register it.
A Filipino will
A will made in the Philippines must go through probate there before it has any effect, and that process is known for taking years. For a family in the UAE waiting on a frozen account or an unsold flat, a registered UAE will is the difference between months and years.
Everyone else
The pattern holds for Australian, South African, Canadian, European and most other wills. Some countries have simpler attestation routes than others, but no foreign will skips the translation, the court application or the wait.
Keeping a home will and a UAE will together
The arrangement most expats end up with is two wills: one at home for the assets there, one in the UAE for the assets here. It works well, with two rules.
- Each will covers only its own territory. A UAE will made on the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department’s own form states that it concerns your estate in the United Arab Emirates only, and that it revokes earlier wills only as far as they touch UAE assets. Your home will is left intact. That wording is in every will MyHaven drafts, because the court’s template contains it.
- Mind the order and the revocation clause. The danger runs the other way. If you make a UAE will today and then sign a new home will next year that revokes “all previous wills”, you may have cancelled the UAE one without meaning to. Tell whoever drafts your home will that a UAE will exists, and have the revocation clause limited to assets in that country.
Two wills written this way do not compete. Each executor deals with their own country, and neither has to go through the recognition process described above. If you are married, a pair of mirror wills for the UAE does the same job for both of you at once.
What to do next
If you hold anything in the UAE, a bank account, a property, a car, shares in a company, the practical step is a will registered here for those assets. The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department route costs 950 AED in court fees for one will and covers assets across all seven emirates; the full comparison with the DIFC and Dubai Courts registries is in which registry is right for you, and every fee is in how much a will costs in the UAE.
Our free assessmentasks a few questions about your family and what you own and tells you which route fits before you pay anything. You can read the law itself on the UAE government’s legislation portal at uaelegislation.gov.ae.
Frequently asked questions
- Is a UK will valid in the UAE?
- Not automatically. A UK will is not void here, but before a UAE court acts on it the will has to be proved at home, attested for use in the UAE, translated into Arabic by a certified translator and accepted by the court. A will registered in the UAE for your UAE assets avoids that process.
- Is an Indian will valid in the UAE?
- An Indian will faces the same recognition process as any other foreign will: attestation, certified Arabic translation and a court application in the UAE. The Indian consulate's own guidance is to make a separate will for UAE assets and register it here.
- Does a UAE will cancel my home-country will?
- No. A will on the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department's template states that it covers your estate in the UAE only and revokes earlier wills only as far as UAE assets go. The risk runs the other way: a later home will that revokes all previous wills can cancel the UAE one, so have its revocation clause limited to that country.
- Can I choose my home country's law for my UAE estate?
- Federal Decree-Law 41 of 2022 lets a non-Muslim foreigner choose the law of their home country. Making that choice still works best through a will registered in the UAE, because that is the document the court is told to follow; a foreign will still has to be recognised first.
MyHaven is not a law firm and this guide is not legal advice. It explains how the process works so you can make your own decisions. What that means
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