DIFC Wills

Most people arrive at this subject sideways. They buy an apartment, or set up a company, or a second child arrives, and somebody mentions that they really ought to have a will here. It then sits on the list for a year or two, because it is unpleasant to think about and never urgent — until the moment it is the only thing that matters. The DIFC Courts Wills Service exists for exactly this group, and describes its own purpose without embellishment:

One word in that sentence carries most of the weight: instructions. A registered will replaces a default outcome with your outcome — but only to the extent you have written down what your outcome is.

Two features distinguish this from writing a will at home and putting it in a drawer. First, it is registered: the Courts hold the document, so there is no later argument about which version is authentic or where the original went. Second, it is administered through the DIFC Courts, an English-language common-law court with its own probate function[DIFC Courts — Probate].

Be equally clear about what a DIFC Will is not. It is not a tax structure — it does not reduce exposure to corporate tax or to inheritance tax elsewhere. It does not move assets out of your estate during your lifetime. And it does not govern anything a DIFC Foundation already owns, because those assets are no longer personally yours to leave. A will is an instruction about the remainder — which, for most families, is the majority of what they have.

The honest objection to making a will is not that it is difficult — it is that it feels premature. So it is worth being specific about the alternative, because the abstraction is what allows the postponement.

Without a registered will covering your UAE assets, your family inherits a process rather than an instruction. Someone has to establish what you owned and who is entitled to it. Accounts can be frozen while that is resolved — including the one the household bills are paid from. Property cannot simply be transferred because the family agrees it should be. A business can sit still at the moment it most needs someone with authority. That is not a scare story; it is what happens when an estate has to be reconstructed rather than read.

For parents the guardianship question is sharper still, because it cannot be fixed afterwards with better paperwork. If both parents die without having appointed guardians, the decision about who raises the children is made by someone else, under pressure, without your view of it. The Full Will covers the appointment of interim and permanent guardians of minor children residing in Dubai or Ras Al Khaimah[DIFC Courts — Wills Service]; the Guardianship Will does that job alone.

Set against that, the arithmetic is not close. Registration is modest[DIFC Courts — Fees], drafting is a professional fee, and the exercise takes a few hours of thought. We have met people who regretted the structure they chose and the partner they went into business with. We have never met one who regretted registering a will.

The eligibility test is short, and it is worth reading precisely rather than loosely.

• You must be non-Muslim. The Wills Service exists specifically to give non-Muslims investing and living in the UAE the option to direct their estate under their own instructions[DIFC Courts — Wills Service].
• You must be at least 21 years of age. For the Property Will, the DIFC Courts state the testator must be a non-Muslim, at least 21 years of age, and have real estate property situated in the UAE[DIFC Courts — Wills Service].
• You need a UAE connection — assets here, or children here. The registered will types are directed at UAE property and at the guardianship of minor children residing in the relevant Emirates.

Note what is not on that list. You do not need to be a UAE resident, a visa holder, or connected to the financial centre at all. Many people who register a Property Will are overseas investors who own an apartment in Dubai and have never lived here — precisely the situation in which an unaddressed estate is hardest on a family, because nobody involved is on the ground. Nor do you need a large estate: a household with one property and one salary has less capacity to absorb months of uncertainty than one with a diversified balance sheet and advisers already in place.

The DIFC Courts Wills Service offers three main registered will types[DIFC Courts — Wills Service]. Choosing between them is not a matter of budget but of matching the will to what you own — and choosing a narrower type than your circumstances require is the most common planning error we see.

1. The Full Will

The most comprehensive option. It covers the distribution of your movable and immovable property in the UAE, together with the appointment of interim and permanent guardians of your minor children residing in the Emirates of Dubai or Ras Al Khaimah[DIFC Courts — Wills Service].

The phrase “movable and immovable” does a great deal of work. Immovable property is real estate — apartments, villas, land and interests in them. Movable property is everything else: bank and brokerage accounts, shares in companies including your own, vehicles, investments and personal possessions. Because a Full Will reaches both categories, it is the right choice for most people who have built any kind of life here, and it avoids the gaps narrower wills necessarily leave.

It is also the only registered type that combines asset distribution with guardianship in one document — which, for a parent with property and a bank account, is usually decisive.

2. The Property Will

Focused on real estate. The DIFC Courts Property Will enables eligible testators to cover up to five real estate properties — or a share in any such five properties — that they own within the UAE[DIFC Courts — Wills Service]. The eligibility requirement is stated alongside it: a non-Muslim, at least 21 years of age, with real estate property situated in the UAE[DIFC Courts — Wills Service].

This suits somebody whose UAE connection genuinely is the property and nothing else — the overseas investor with two apartments in Dubai whose remaining affairs are governed by a will in their home country.

Two limits deserve emphasis. The first is the number: five properties, or shares in five. The second is the scope: property, and property only. A Property Will does nothing for the UAE bank account your rent is paid into, nothing for shares in a company you own, and nothing for guardianship. Investors sometimes register one and consider the job finished. It is not finished; it is partly done.

3. The Guardianship Will

Covers the appointment of guardians of your minor children — and nothing else[DIFC Courts — Wills Service]. No assets, no distribution, no executry over property. One job, done properly.

It suits parents whose assets are modest, or already held through a structure, but who want the question of who raises their children settled and on the record. We would rather a family registered a Guardianship Will this month and a Full Will next quarter than debated the perfect document for two years.

Choosing between them

A working rule: own a mix of UAE assets, take the Full Will. If your only UAE connection is up to five properties and your affairs are otherwise governed elsewhere, the Property Will may suffice. If your concern is your children rather than your assets, the Guardianship Will does that alone. In any doubt, choose the Full Will — the failure mode of a narrow will is an asset nobody has authority over.

Couples do not share a will. Each person’s estate is their own, so each person needs their own document. What the Service provides is a way to do the two together: mirror wills apply to a married couple who wish to register their DIFC Courts Wills at the same time[DIFC Courts — Fees].

In practice each spouse has their own will, drafted on substantially matching terms. Typically each leaves their estate to the other, with the same provisions taking effect if both die — the same residuary beneficiaries, the same guardians, the same executors. Registering them together is what makes the two documents consistent with one another.

For couples with children we recommend this almost universally, and the reason is uncomfortable but simple: the scenario in which guardianship provisions actually operate is the one where both parents die in the same event. That is exactly where two independently drafted, subtly inconsistent wills cause the most damage — one naming a guardian the other does not, or two documents disposing of the same jointly held asset in different terms.

Mirror wills are not a single joint document and do not lock either spouse in permanently; each remains that person’s own and can be updated later.

Guardianship is the hardest conversation in estate planning. It asks two people to agree, in the abstract, about who would raise their children in a scenario neither wants to picture — which side of the family, which country, which set of values. It is also where a registered will makes the clearest difference, because there is no way to improvise it afterwards.

The Full Will covers the appointment of interim and permanent guardians of minor children residing in the Emirates of Dubai or Ras Al Khaimah[DIFC Courts — Wills Service]. That distinction is not a technicality, and it is the single most useful thing on this page for parents:

• Interim guardians step in immediately. In practice this should be someone already in the UAE who can be physically present with your children within hours — a close friend in the same neighbourhood, a colleague, a relative who lives here. Proximity matters more than seniority.
• Permanent guardians are the people who will raise your children long term. They are often family abroad — which means flights, visas and days, not hours.

Naming both means there is never a period in which no adult has authority to collect your children from school, speak to a doctor, or decide anything on their behalf.

Two pieces of advice we give consistently. First, speak to the people you intend to name before you name them — an appointment nobody has agreed to is a hope rather than a plan. Second, write down the practical information alongside the legal appointment: schools, medical history, allergies, passports, who the children’s friends are. That is not part of the will, but it is what a guardian needs in the first week.

Keep guardianship and money separate in your mind. The person best placed to raise your children is not necessarily the person best placed to manage a portfolio for them, and it is entirely normal for the guardian and the Foundation council to be different people.

The DIFC Courts publish their Wills Service fees, and relative to what the document does, they are modest.

• Initial registration, including 1GB of storage for 25 years[DIFC Courts — Fees]
• Additional storage subscription, 5GB for five years, renewable[DIFC Courts — Fees]

Registration fees vary by will type, and by whether a couple registers mirror wills together, so confirm the current schedule against the DIFC Courts fees page before you commit to a budget[DIFC Courts — Fees]. We do not publish a figure the Courts have not published themselves.

Separately from the Court’s fees, budget for drafting. That is where the real value and the real variation sit. A will that names the wrong executor, leaves a category of asset unaddressed, appoints a guardian who was never consulted, or contradicts a will you already hold in another country is cheap to register and extremely expensive to live with. The document is short; getting it right is not the same as getting it done. Where a will forms part of a wider structure — a Foundation, holding companies or an SPV beneath them — price the plan as a whole. See DIFC formation costs for the structural side.

1. Confirm eligibility and choose the will type — non-Muslim, aged 21 or over, and the right type for what you own[DIFC Courts — Wills Service].
2. List what you own. UAE property with correct title details, bank and brokerage accounts, shares in free-zone and DIFC entities, vehicles, end-of-service entitlements and insurance policies. This is often the first time a couple has seen their own balance sheet on one page.
3. Decide who inherits, and in what order.“Everything to my spouse” is a complete answer only until you ask what happens if you die together. Name substitute beneficiaries, and decide whether children inherit at 18, 21 or later.
4. Confirm executors and guardians, having spoken to them and named substitutes for each. The executor applies to the Courts, gathers the assets, settles what is owed and distributes the rest — a job, not an honour conferred on whoever is most senior in the family.
5. Draft the will. The provisions must be clear enough to act on without interpretation, and must not conflict with a will you hold elsewhere.
6. Register with the DIFC Courts Wills Service. The initial registration fee includes 1GB of storage for 25 years[DIFC Courts — Fees].
7. Tell your executor it exists and give them the reference. A registered will nobody knows to look for is a problem deferred, not solved.

Then review it when life changes — marriage, a new child, a new property, a divorce, a death in the family, a change of executor, a move abroad. A will drafted before your second child was born is not the will you want relied upon, and because the registered version is the operative one, an update only counts once it has been re-registered.

This is the part that registration is for. When the testator dies, the executor named in the will applies to the DIFC Courts for the probate orders needed to administer the estate in accordance with the will[DIFC Courts — Probate].

Because the will has already been registered, the Courts hold the authentic document. There is no search for an original, no argument about whether a later version exists, and no question about validity of execution — the very issues that turn an estate into a dispute. That is the practical difference between a registered DIFC Will and a will in a drawer: both express your wishes, but only one is already lodged with the court that will be asked to act on it. The DIFC Courts operate in English under common-law procedure[DIFC Courts], which for expatriate families removes a further layer of unfamiliarity at a moment when nobody has capacity for it.

One consequence worth planning around: probate takes time even when everything is in order. Where a family depends on a single account, think about how the household is funded in the interim — a jointly held account, or life cover payable directly to a named beneficiary rather than into the estate. A will decides where money goes; it does not make it available the next morning.

Shares are movable property, so they fall within the scope of a Full Will rather than a Property Will. That much is straightforward. What is less obvious is that the will is not the only document that governs what happens to them.

Where you hold shares alongside other shareholders, the articles of associationand any shareholders’ agreement sit alongside the will, and commonly contain pre-emption rights, transfer restrictions or provisions dealing specifically with the death of a shareholder. A will leaving shares to a beneficiary the constitution does not permit to hold them creates work rather than certainty, so read the two together — ideally when the company is formed rather than years later.

For a sole owner the risk is continuity. If you are the only director and the only signatory, your death stops the company — salaries unpaid, suppliers unsettled, licence still due for renewal. Adding a second signatory during your lifetime is worth more to the business than any clause in the will.

Where the shareholding is substantial, families often look past a will and hold the company beneath a Foundation or a holding structure, so the shares never form part of a personal estate at all.

The registered will types are directed at UAE assets, and — in the Full Will — at the guardianship of minor children residing in Dubai or Ras Al Khaimah[DIFC Courts — Wills Service]. Property, accounts and companies situated in other countries are generally dealt with under the law of those countries.

For internationally mobile families that usually means more than one will: a DIFC Will for the UAE, and a will in each jurisdiction where you hold meaningful assets. That is entirely normal, and it is also where the most expensive mistakes are made — because wills written independently can revoke one another.

A standard revocation clause reading “I revoke all former wills” in a will signed later abroad can, on its face, wipe out the DIFC Will you registered two years earlier. The fix is simple but must be deliberate: each will should be expressly limited to the assets of its own jurisdiction and should acknowledge the others. Whoever drafts the second needs to see the first.

Two further points. Tax and succession are separate questions — a will decides who inherits, not what is owed. And some jurisdictions apply forced-heirship rules to their nationals’ estates, which needs local advice rather than assumption.

Families often ask whether a DIFC Foundation removes the need for a will. It does not, and understanding why clarifies both tools.

A Foundation governs what it owns. A Foundation under the DIFC Foundations Law has its own legal personality[DIFC Foundations Law], so assets transferred into it belong to the Foundation, not to you. They sit outside your personal estate and pass under its charter and by-laws, without probate — which is why it is the stronger tool for substantial or multi-generational wealth[DIFC — Private & Family Wealth].

A will governs what you still own. In practice there is always a remainder: personal bank accounts, a car, end-of-service entitlements, an asset acquired after the Foundation was established, or one always intended to be transferred into it that never actually was — far more common than anyone expects, because transfers require follow-through. That remainder passes under your will, or it passes by default.

And only a will appoints guardians.A Foundation cannot decide who raises your children. That is exclusively the will’s function[DIFC Courts — Wills Service], and it is the reason even families with the most carefully built structures still need one.

So the complete plan usually reads: a Foundation holding the substantial assets, SPVs beneath it for individual properties or investments, and a registered DIFC Will covering the personal remainder and the guardianship appointments. Each covers what the other cannot. The guides on succession planning, DIFC trusts and the family office set out how the pieces fit together.

• Postponing it. By far the most common, and the only item on this list with no upside whatsoever.
• Choosing a narrower will type to save money. A Property Will covering five properties does nothing for your bank accounts, your company shares or your children. The gaps between narrow wills are where estates get stuck.
• Naming a guardian without asking them. The appointment is a request — it should be one they have already accepted.
• Naming only permanent guardians. Without an interim appointment there is a gap of days in which nobody here has authority to act for your children.
• Never telling the executor. Registration helps only if somebody knows to go looking.
• Signing a later will abroad with a general revocation clause. It can revoke the DIFC Will you registered years earlier.
• Assuming a Foundation makes a will unnecessary. It governs what it owns; the remainder and the guardianship are still yours.
• Leaving it unrevised for a decade. Families change. A will that no longer reflects yours is worse than having none, because it will be followed.