DIFC Wills for non-Muslims in Dubai and the UAE

Yes. The DIFC Wills Service is open only to non-Muslims, and you will be asked to confirm your status when you register. The rule applies at the point of registration and to the estate itself, so a Will registered by someone who is or has been Muslim can be challenged later. Your beneficiaries do not have to be non-Muslim; the requirement attaches to you as the testator.

If you are Muslim and hold assets in the UAE, the DIFC route is not available, but that does not leave you without options. Sharia principles will govern the distribution of your estate, and planning is done through the structures around it: how property is held, who is named on accounts and shares, corporate and trust arrangements, life cover, and lifetime gifts. We can review your position and advise on what is achievable.

A Full Will can extend to assets held anywhere in the world. The four targeted Wills, covering property, financial assets, business interests and guardianship, are limited to assets situated in the UAE and are designed for people whose affairs elsewhere are already dealt with.

In practice we strongly recommend restricting your UAE Will to your UAE estate and putting separate Wills in place in each other jurisdiction where you hold assets. That makes the end result certain. Some jurisdictions apply forced heirship rules to local property regardless of what a foreign Will says, and a badly worded revocation clause in one Will can cancel another without anyone noticing until it matters. Where each Will is expressly limited to its own territory, those risks fall away. We will review what you already have and tell you which structure protects the whole estate.

Yes. Registration can be completed by video link from anywhere in the world, and the entire matter, from first instructions to the registered Will, can be handled without you attending our office or the DIFC Courts. In practice we take your instructions remotely, prepare the draft for your approval, and book the registration appointment once you are satisfied with it.

At the appointment you appear by video before a DIFC Wills Service registry officer, confirm your identity, and confirm that the Will is yours and that you are signing it freely. We provide the witnesses at no additional charge; it is included within our service. The original is stored by the registry and the Will is entered on the register, which removes the usual risk of a hard copy being lost, damaged, or disputed after death.

A pair of near-identical Wills. Under the Court rules a mirror Will is available to a married husband and wife only. Each leaves the estate to the survivor, and then, once both have died, to the same beneficiaries. Guardianship appointments and executor choices are normally aligned across the two documents so that nothing conflicts.

Mirror Wills are two separate Wills, not one joint document. Either of you can change or revoke your own Will at any time, including after the other has died, so they are a matter of shared intention rather than a binding contract between you. Where you want certainty that assets ultimately reach particular people, for example children from an earlier relationship, that is achieved through trust provisions inside the Will rather than by relying on the mirror arrangement itself. Registering as a couple is also cheaper than two unrelated Wills.

You do not need to be a UAE resident. The DIFC Wills Service is open to any non-Muslim aged 18 or over who owns assets in the UAE or has minor children living here, wherever in the world they happen to live. Many of our clients registered a Will while working in Dubai and have since moved on, keeping property or investments behind them.

What matters is the connection to the assets, not to a visa. If you have sold everything here and have no children resident in the UAE, a DIFC Will is no longer the right instrument and we will say so rather than register one you do not need.

Usually not, on its own. A foreign Will is not automatically given effect over UAE assets. It has to be produced to the local authorities, translated into Arabic, legalised, and then interpreted by a court applying UAE law, which takes time and money at the worst possible moment for your family. Banks freeze accounts and property transfers stall while that runs.

A DIFC Will sits alongside your home-country Will and deals only with what is here, in a form the DIFC Courts already recognise. The two must be drafted to work together: the most common problem we see is a later foreign Will containing a general revocation clause that quietly cancels the UAE Will. We check both documents before advising.

Your UAE estate falls to be dealt with under the civil intestacy rules in Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022, which divide the estate half to the surviving spouse and the remainder equally among the children, unless an heir applies to have the law of your home country applied instead. Nothing about that process reflects what you would have chosen.

The practical consequences arrive first. Bank accounts in your sole name are frozen, including accounts a surviving spouse relies on for living costs. Property cannot be sold or transferred until the court has determined who inherits. Shares in a UAE company can leave the business in limbo. Where there are children and no appointed guardian, custody is decided by the court. A registered Will avoids all of it.

Yes. You can amend or revoke a registered Will at any time while you have capacity. Small changes are usually made by registering a new Will that revokes the previous one, which keeps a single clean document on the register rather than a chain of amendments to be read together.

We recommend reviewing your Will after any material change: marriage or divorce, a birth, a death among your named beneficiaries, buying or selling property, or leaving the UAE. A Will that is technically valid but out of date causes the same disputes as no Will at all.

Your executor can be a family member, a friend, or a professional such as your lawyer. There is no requirement that they live in Dubai or in the UAE. Choose someone organised and willing, and always name a substitute in case your first choice cannot act when the time comes.

The same applies to guardians for children under 18. If the guardians you want live abroad, we also appoint interim guardians based in the UAE who can take responsibility immediately, so there is no gap between the death and the permanent guardians arriving. We provide the witnesses as part of our service, at no extra cost; they cannot be beneficiaries or their spouses.

Most Wills are ready to register within two to three weeks. The first step is a short discussion of your assets, family and intentions; we then prepare a draft for your review, and register once you are satisfied with it. The registration appointment itself takes under an hour.

Timing depends far more on how quickly instructions and asset details come back to us than on the registry. If circumstances are urgent, a serious illness or imminent travel, tell us and we will prioritise the file.

Your executor applies to the DIFC Courts Probate Registry with the death certificate and the details of the registered Will. Because the Will is already on the register, there is no argument about whether the document is genuine or whether a later version exists, which is where most delay in estate administration comes from.

The Court issues a probate order, together with any further orders needed to deal with specific assets, such as transferring title to real estate or releasing funds held at a bank. Those orders are directed to the relevant authorities and institutions in the UAE, and the executor uses them to collect in the estate, settle liabilities, and distribute what remains exactly as your Will directs. Guardianship appointments take effect immediately on death, so interim arrangements for children are not left to be resolved while probate is running.