Making a will when you live in Dubai: an expat guide

By MyHaven Team·Published 28 October 2026·7 minute read

Living in Dubai does not mean your will has to be registered in Dubai, and the cheapest and most widely used route for a non-Muslim expat is in fact run from Abu Dhabi. This guide is written for someone with a Dubai address, a Dubai bank account and perhaps a Dubai property: the three registries open to you, which one fits, and what the process looks like end to end.

The short answer

If you are a non-Muslim living in Dubai, you can register a will with the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, with the DIFC Courts Wills Service, or at the Dubai Courts notary. All three produce a will that UAE courts recognise. They differ in price, language and process. For most families the ADJD civil will is the sensible default: it costs 950 AED in court fees, it is bilingual by design, the appointment is by video, and it covers assets in every emirate, Dubai included.

Without a registered will, your Dubai assets are distributed under the default rules of the civil personal status law, your accounts are frozen until a court decides, and nobody has been named to look after your children. That is the position this guide is here to change.

The three places a Dubai resident can register

The DIFC and Dubai Courts figures move and depend on the type of will, so they are given here as ranges. The exact fee schedules, with their dates, are in how much a will costs in the UAE, and the registries are compared line by line in DIFC vs ADJD vs Dubai Courts.

Which route fits which situation

A family with a Dubai apartment, two bank accounts and children at school here

The ADJD civil will. It names guardians, covers the apartment and the accounts, and costs a fraction of the alternatives. As a couple, a pair of mirror wills costs 1,900 AED in court fees for both.

Someone who wants an English-only will with a common law feel

The DIFC Courts will. It is drafted and administered in English under rules modelled on English practice, with witnesses, and some people value that familiarity enough to pay for it. If your estate is large and your advisers are in London, it is the route they will recognise.

A single asset, for instance one property and nothing else

Either the ADJD civil will or, if you prefer Dubai, the DIFC property will. The Dubai Courts notary is the least used of the three by expats because the document is in Arabic and the appointment is in person, but it is a valid route.

A Muslim expat living in Dubai

The civil will routes above are built for non-Muslims. Inheritance for a Muslim follows a different legal path, and a will can still be made within it, through the Dubai Courts. MyHaven does not draft that will, and says so before you pay anything.

Dubai property, bank accounts and company shares

• Property. A registered will is what the Dubai Land Department acts on to transfer a title to an heir. Without one, the transfer waits on a court ruling about who the heirs are. A freehold apartment or villa can be left to a named person as a specific gift, identified by its title deed number, with the rest of the estate dealt with separately.
• Bank accounts. A bank freezes an account in a sole name when it learns of the death, and releases it only on a court order. A registered will shortens the path to that order. A joint account is frozen too; the surviving holder does not simply keep it. The detail is in what happens to a UAE bank account without a will.
• Company shares.Shares in a Dubai mainland or free zone company pass under the will like any other asset, and a business that depends on your signature needs to know who inherits your stake. The company’s own constitution may add rules of its own, which is worth checking with the free zone.
• End of service gratuity, life insurance and vehicles.All UAE assets, all covered by the will’s definition of the estate. Insurance follows the policy’s own nomination first.

What a UAE will does not cover is anything outside the UAE. A house in Surrey or a flat in Pune follows the law where it sits, and the usual answer is a separate will there, written so the two do not cancel each other. Our guide to whether a home-country will is valid in the UAE explains how the two fit together.

Children living in Dubai

For parents, this is the reason to do it this month rather than next year. A will names a permanent guardian for your children and, separately, an interim guardian who is already in the UAE and can act on the day. If both parents are gone and no guardian is named, the question of who looks after the children is answered by a court process rather than by you, and a grandparent arriving from abroad has no standing until it is.

The ADJD template asks for both roles, with a backup for each. Choosing them, and the ages that matter, is covered in guardianship for expat children in the UAE.

The steps, from decision to registered will

Whichever registry you choose, the shape is the same: decide, draft, translate if needed, register. On the ADJD route it runs like this.

• Decide. Executor and a backup, who takes the residue and who takes it if they cannot, guardians, and any specific gifts. Full names as on passports, because the will never describes anyone by relationship.
• Draft.On the court’s own bilingual template, which is explained section by section in the ADJD will template explained.
• Translate. Anything added in English is translated into Arabic by a translator certified by the Ministry of Justice, stamp on the page.
• Register. Apply online, pay the court fee once the review clears, attend the video appointment with your original documents, receive the registered copy. The full process is in ADJD will registration step by step.

You do not travel to Abu Dhabi at any point. The application, the fee, the appointment and the registered copy are all handled online, from Dubai or from anywhere else.

What to do next

Our free assessmentasks a few questions about your family and your assets and tells you which route fits before you pay anything. If it is the ADJD civil will, MyHaven drafts it on the court’s template, has the Arabic prepared by a certified translator, and either walks you through the registration or handles it with you. The service fee and the court fee are shown separately on the pricing page, because they are paid to different people.

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