Why one will is rarely enough when you own assets abroad

Suppose you left the UK a decade ago, built a life in Portugal, and now hold a flat in Lisbon, a portfolio with a London wealth manager, and a share in a family property in Scotland. You have a will — drafted by a solicitor in Surrey before you boarded the flight. It covers everything, you assume. It almost certainly does not.

The question of which country's law governs which asset is not settled by your intentions. It is settled by private international law, and the answer depends on what kind of asset is involved, where it sits, and — for moveable assets — where you were domiciled when you died. For a British expat who has lived abroad long enough to acquire a domicile of choice in another country, the English will may have no standing over the Lisbon flat at all.

The risk of one will quietly revoking another

Many families respond sensibly: they instruct a local notary in France, Spain or Portugal to draft a second will covering the property there. The problem is that wills revoke each other unless they are drafted with precision. A Spanish will that opens with a standard clause revoking all prior testamentary dispositions will, in principle, cancel the English will you spent an afternoon on with your family solicitor. The reverse happens too. An English will executed after the Spanish one, with a broad revocation clause, may wipe out the foreign document entirely.

The remedy is specific drafting. Each will should state clearly that it applies only to assets in a named jurisdiction — or, conversely, that it does not revoke any prior will dealing with assets elsewhere. This sounds straightforward. In practice, it requires solicitors in both countries to speak to one another, or at least to be aware of what the other instrument says. That coordination rarely happens without a client who is actively managing it.

EU Succession Regulation 650/2012 — which the UK did not retain after Brexit — allows EU-resident individuals to elect for the law of their nationality to govern their entire estate. A British national living in France can make that election and simplify matters considerably, provided the will explicitly records it. But the UK itself sits outside the regulation's scope, so the English assets still fall to be dealt with under English rules. A single instrument cannot do the work of two.

Forced heirship and the limits of testamentary freedom

English law gives a testator broad freedom to leave assets to whomever they choose, subject to claims under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975. Many civil-law jurisdictions do not. France, Spain, Italy, and most of continental Europe reserve a portion of the estate — the réserve héréditaire or its equivalent — for children and sometimes a surviving spouse. You cannot disinherit a child in France simply because your will says so. The reserved share is a matter of statute, and the French court will apply it to French-situated assets regardless of what your English will provides.

This matters in ways that families do not always anticipate. A second marriage, stepchildren, or a deliberate decision to concentrate wealth in one beneficiary can all run headlong into forced-heirship rules the moment there is a French résidence secondaire or an Italian bank account in the picture. The only practical approach is to understand the rules of each jurisdiction before the estate is structured, not after death makes it immovable.

There is also the question of Scottish law, which is not English law. Scotland has its own reserved rights — legitim — entitling children to a share of the moveable estate. A Scottish property held in your sole name and a Scottish brokerage account may be subject to quite different rules from the Surrey house.

The administrative burden compounds these legal risks. Executors dealing with assets in multiple countries must often obtain a grant of probate in England, then seek recognition of that grant — or a parallel grant — in each foreign jurisdiction. Some countries accept a European Certificate of Succession; others require their own process from the beginning. Each takes time, incurs professional fees, and proceeds at a pace the local courts set, not the family's.

What cuts through most of this complexity is not a single document but a clear picture: which assets sit where, which will or instrument governs each, who the nominated executors are in each country, and where the originals are stored. Keeping that picture up to date — and accessible to the right people at the right moment — is the part that most estate planning still leaves to chance.

Glenvault is built for exactly this kind of cross-border estate: a private vault where documents, asset records, and succession instructions sit together, visible to those who need them when it counts. You can begin organising at glenvault.com/signup.