Estate planning for expatriates has become markedly more complicated over the past two years, and not because expatriates themselves have grown more mobile. The rules governing who inherits what, and how much tax falls due before they do, have shifted beneath their feet. A British national living in Dubai with a pension in London, a property in Hong Kong and investments held through a Singapore platform is not dealing with one estate. They are dealing with several, each governed by a different law of succession, a different probate process and, since April 2025, an entirely different basis for UK inheritance tax. A will drafted with one jurisdiction in mind rarely accounts for what happens in the others. Left unaddressed, the result is not simply inefficiency. It is delay, unintended beneficiaries and, in some cases, an estate taxed more than once before a single asset reaches the people it was meant for.

Why Cross-Border Assets Complicate Estate Planning

Conflicting Legal Systems

Every jurisdiction decides for itself who has the right to inherit, in what order, and under what conditions. English law gives testators broad freedom to leave assets as they choose. Civil law jurisdictions often reserve a fixed share of an estate for children or a spouse, regardless of what the will says. Sharia-influenced succession law, still the default position in parts of the Gulf absent a registered will, follows a different formula again. An expatriate holding assets in two or three of these systems at once cannot assume that a single document, drafted under one set of rules, will be recognised or applied the same way everywhere else.

Multiple Probate Processes

Even where the succession rules are broadly compatible, the administrative process is not. A grant of probate obtained in London does not automatically unlock a bank account in Hong Kong or a brokerage account in Singapore. Each jurisdiction typically requires its own probate or resealing process, its own certified documentation and, often, its own local legal representation. Where no local will exists, or where the local will has not been properly coordinated with wills held elsewhere, executors can find themselves managing parallel proceedings in different time zones for a year or more before assets are released.

The UK’s Shift From Domicile to Residence

For decades, UK inheritance tax turned on domicile: broadly, the country a person treated as their permanent home in law, which could differ from where they actually lived. From 6 April 2025, that changed. UK inheritance tax on worldwide assets is now determined by a residence-based test, not domicile. Domicile has not disappeared entirely, it still matters in some transitional and treaty contexts, but for most expatriates it is no longer the concept that decides whether their overseas estate falls within the UK tax net.

What “Long-Term Resident” Status Means

Under the new rules, an individual becomes a long-term resident, and therefore exposed to UK inheritance tax on their worldwide estate, once they have been UK resident in at least ten of the previous twenty tax years. This is a materially different test to the old fifteen-out-of-twenty-year rule for deemed domicile, and it catches some expatriates who would previously have considered themselves safely outside the UK’s reach. UK-situated assets, such as UK property, remain within scope regardless of residence status.

The Tail That Follows You After Leaving

Leaving the UK does not end exposure immediately. Long-term residents who move abroad carry an inheritance tax “tail” of between three and ten years, depending on how long they were UK resident beforehand, during which their worldwide estate can still be taxed in the UK if they die within that window. The tail only resets after ten consecutive tax years of non-UK residence. An expatriate who left the UK in the past few years, having lived there for most of their working life, may still be well inside this window without realising it.

Nil-Rate Bands and Their Limits

The mechanics beneath the headline 40% rate have not changed as dramatically as the residence test itself, but they remain easy to misjudge. The nil-rate band sits at £325,000 per person, frozen since 2009 and due to remain frozen until at least 2030. A residence nil-rate band of £175,000 can apply in addition, where a main residence passes to direct descendants, taking a couple’s combined allowance toward £1 million in the right circumstances. From April 2026, Business Property Relief and Agricultural Property Relief are also being restricted, with relief capped in many cases where it was previously unlimited. Spousal exemptions, meanwhile, are not always unlimited where one spouse is UK-exposed and the other is not. None of this is designed to be navigated without specialist advice, and estates that assume the old domicile-based protections still apply are the ones most likely to be caught out.

Forced Heirship in the Gulf

Why a UK Will May Not Suffice in the UAE

For expatriates based in the UAE, the estate planning conversation has an additional layer. In the absence of a registered will, the succession of a deceased expatriate’s UAE assets can default to forced heirship principles that bear little resemblance to English testamentary freedom, dividing an estate among family members in fixed proportions regardless of the deceased’s own wishes. A will written and executed in the UK is not automatically applied to UAE-situated assets, and relying on it alone can leave a surviving spouse or children with a very different outcome to the one intended.

Registering Through the DIFC or ADJD

The practical answer for many UK expatriates in Dubai and Abu Dhabi has been to register a common-law-style will through the DIFC Wills Service or the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, which allows testamentary freedom to be recognised locally for assets falling within their remit. This does not replace a UK will. It sits alongside it, and the two need to be drafted so that they work together rather than accidentally cancelling one another out.

Hong Kong and Singapore: A Different Backdrop

Hong Kong and Singapore present a gentler picture, since both retain common-law succession principles broadly similar to England’s, with testamentary freedom generally respected and no forced heirship regime to navigate. That does not make cross-border planning unnecessary. Assets still need to pass through local probate, local tax and reporting obligations still apply, and a will that fails to reference assets held in these jurisdictions can still cause delay, even where the underlying legal principles are compatible with the UK’s.

Why a Single Will Rarely Works Across Borders

The Case for Jurisdiction-Specific Wills

Given how differently probate operates from one jurisdiction to the next, many advisers recommend separate wills for each jurisdiction in which an expatriate holds significant assets, each drafted to deal only with the assets located there. This allows probate to proceed locally without waiting on a foreign grant to be resealed, and lets each will be drafted in a form the local courts and institutions recognise without translation or interpretation disputes.

The Risk of Accidental Revocation

The danger with multiple wills is that a poorly drafted later will can unintentionally revoke an earlier one in its entirety, rather than simply adding to it. Every additional will needs to state clearly which assets it covers and confirm that it does not revoke wills dealing with assets elsewhere. This is a technical drafting point, but getting it wrong can undo years of otherwise careful planning.

Structuring Assets for Cross-Border Succession

Trusts and Excluded Property

Trusts can still play a valuable role in cross-border succession planning, particularly for assets that sit outside the UK’s IHT net, though the interaction between trust structures and the new residence-based rules is layered and highly fact-specific. A trust established at the wrong time, or under the wrong assumptions about a settlor’s residence history, can create liabilities rather than reduce them. This is not an area for generic templates.

Titling and Beneficiary Nominations

Beyond wills and trusts, the simple mechanics of how an asset is titled or who is named as beneficiary can override what a will says entirely. Jointly held property, pension death benefits and life policies with named beneficiaries often pass outside the will altogether, by contract or by survivorship. Reviewing these designations across every jurisdiction an expatriate holds assets in is one of the more overlooked steps in cross-border planning, and one of the easiest to get right once identified.

Building a Coordinated Plan

Advisers Working Across Borders, Not in Isolation

The common failure mode is not a lack of planning. It is planning done in isolation: a UK solicitor drafting a UK will with no visibility of the DIFC will drafted separately in Dubai, or a Singapore wealth manager unaware of a UK pension’s death benefit nomination. Coordinated cross-border estate planning means the advisers involved in each jurisdiction are working from the same picture of the whole estate, not just the piece in front of them.

Reviewing the Plan as Circumstances Change

A cross-border estate plan is not a document to file away. Residence history, asset location, family circumstances and the underlying tax rules themselves all move over time, as the shift from domicile to residence in 2025 demonstrated. A plan that was sound three years ago may no longer reflect an expatriate’s actual exposure today, and a periodic review is the only way to catch that before it matters.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

The expatriates who delay this work are rarely doing so out of indifference. Cross-border estate planning sits low on the list of things that feel urgent, until a death forces the issue and a family is left managing parallel probate processes across three time zones, an unexpected UK tax bill from a residence test they had not accounted for, and a UAE succession outcome that bears no resemblance to what was intended. None of that is inevitable. It is the direct, foreseeable cost of treating multi-jurisdiction wealth as though it sits under a single set of rules.

If your estate spans more than one jurisdiction, the time to review how it fits together is before it needs to. Book a call with Carey Suen to discuss your position.

This article is for general information only and does not constitute financial, tax or legal advice. It should not be relied upon as a substitute for advice tailored to your individual circumstances. Eligibility for Carey Suen’s advisory services is subject to high-net-worth client criteria. Please seek independent, regulated advice before making any decisions regarding your estate.