Why British expats with overseas assets may need two wills

A partner at a London law firm described the situation to me once in plain terms. Her client had died owning a farmhouse in Tuscany, a brokerage account in Singapore, and a house in Surrey. He had one will, drafted by a high-street solicitor in Guildford, written entirely under English law. It took four years and considerable legal fees across three jurisdictions before his family received everything he had intended to leave them. The English will was valid. It simply was not sufficient.

This is not an unusual story among British families with cross-border lives. The assumption that a single, well-drafted English will can reach across borders and govern every asset you own is understandable, but it is frequently wrong.

How foreign jurisdictions treat your assets

English law takes a particular approach to succession: broadly, movable assets (investments, cash, personal property) are governed by the law of your domicile at death, while immovable assets (real estate) are governed by the law of the country in which they sit. That second rule matters enormously. If you own an apartment in France, a villa in Spain, or a property in Portugal, the courts there will apply their own succession rules to it, regardless of what your English will says.

Many civil-law countries have forced-heirship provisions. These rules reserve a fixed portion of an estate for children, and sometimes for a surviving spouse, and they cannot be overridden by a will. France's réserve héréditaire is the most cited example, but similar rules exist across much of continental Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. If your English will leaves everything to your spouse and nothing directly to your children, a French court may nonetheless require that your French property passes in part to your children. Your intentions are noted; local law takes precedence.

The European Succession Regulation (EU No 650/2012), commonly called Brussels IV, does give citizens of non-EU countries a useful tool: you can elect in your will for the law of your nationality to apply to your estate across EU member states. For a British national with assets in France, Italy, or Germany, this election can reduce the impact of forced-heirship rules. But the election must be made explicitly, it must appear in a will that is valid under the relevant law, and it does not extend to assets outside the EU or to the United Kingdom itself, which is not bound by the regulation.

Singapore, Hong Kong, and many other common-law jurisdictions are more straightforward: they generally recognise an English will in relation to movable assets. But they have their own probate processes, and obtaining a grant of probate (or resealing an English grant) takes time and cost. A locally drawn will, executed to local requirements, often accelerates matters considerably.

The revocation trap and keeping a coherent picture

Here is the risk that catches families most by surprise. When you make a new will, standard English drafting revokes all previous wills. If you hold a Singaporean will and subsequently sign a new English will without carefully excluding the Singaporean document from the revocation clause, you may unintentionally destroy the very instrument that was meant to govern your Singaporean assets. The same risk runs in the other direction: a locally drafted will that uses broad revocation language can accidentally void your English will.

Solicitors who specialise in cross-border estates know to draft revocation clauses narrowly. They confine each will to the assets and jurisdiction it is intended to cover. But this only works when the solicitors involved are aware of one another's documents and can coordinate the language. That coordination rarely happens by accident.

The practical consequence is that you may need a small collection of wills, each drafted by lawyers qualified in their respective jurisdiction, each carefully scoped to avoid revoking the others, and each consistent with your overall intentions. A French notaire, a Singaporean advocate, and an English solicitor all need to be working, in effect, from the same brief.

This is where visibility becomes the underlying discipline. Knowing what you own, where it sits, and which document governs it is not merely an administrative nicety. It is the foundation on which lawyers in different countries can do their jobs without inadvertently undoing each other's work. It is also what your executors will need, at what will already be a difficult time, to begin the process at all. Without a clear map of assets, jurisdictions, and governing documents, professional fees grow and delays compound.

Keeping that map current is its own ongoing task. Property is acquired and sold. Accounts are opened in new countries. Family circumstances change. A will valid for your life at fifty may be incomplete by the time you are sixty-five.

Glenvault is designed to hold exactly this kind of picture: the documents, the assets, and the instructions that connect them, accessible when your family needs them most. You can start building that record at glenvault.com/signup.