Domicile
Whether inheritance tax is due on your death, or on certain lifetime gifts you make, depends partly on what is known as your ‘domicile status’.
If you are domiciled in the UK, your worldwide estate is subject to inheritance tax.
If you are not domiciled in the UK, only your UK estate is subject to inheritance tax.
The concept of domicile is quite complicated and it is not simply based on where you live or the country of which you are a national or citizen. Instead, it is the jurisdiction with which you are most closely connected and where you intend to reside indefinitely. For many people this is not clear cut and there can be confusion over their domicile status.
Overseas assets or property
Making a Will can be more complicated if you own foreign property. There may be specific rules in the country concerned that affect how the property will be dealt with following your death. The result is that you may need either:
a multi-jurisdictional will to deal with assets located in more than one country; or
different Wills dealing with the property in each jurisdiction to avoid local problems. With this option, all Wills need to be drafted very carefully to ensure that they can co-exist alongside each other and do not inadvertently revoke the validity of each other.
If you have overseas assets or property, you should obtain specialist professional advice so that a co-ordinated strategy can be put in place for you.
When the Testator (person making the Will) is based overseas
If you are not based in the UK, a UK Will that applies to your worldwide assets may not be appropriate, and specialist professional advice should be obtained.
However, where you are still wishing to make a Will which will only deal with your UK assets and property it may still be possible to use our service at Bequeathed and make a Will to deal with your UK assets only.
When beneficiaries are based overseas
Leaving money or property in your Will to people who live abroad is not a problem in itself. An issue may arise, however, if your Executors cannot easily locate the beneficiary after your death. To avoid this happening, it is advisable to include an up to date address for the beneficiary in your Will together with a description (e.g. ‘my niece’, ‘my friend’ etc). You will also need to consider the practicalities of transferring an asset or amount of money over to a beneficiary based abroad. there may be cost implications in doing so; and you need to consider whether you would want your beneficiary to bare any associated cost or for any cost that may be incurred to instead be borne by your estate.
When Executors or witnesses are based overseas
The fact that Executors or witnesses are based overseas does not prevent your Will from being valid, but it can cause administrative difficulties.
If Executors are based overseas, they may not be the best placed people to deal with your estate when you die as they will need to liaise with your financial institutions as they are in the UK, which will often require their identity being verified in person/ needing to sign and complete original paperwork and also visiting/ securing/ dealing with the sale of any property or other assets. This is not an issue for many Executors however, the conversation needs to take place in terms of whether this may cause any foreseeable difficulties and if so, whether it may be more appropriate to appoint someone in the UK either in their stead or alongside them.
Clearly, wherever a witness is based, they must be present to see you sign your Will. Sometimes, though this is unusual, witnesses to a Will need to be contacted if there is ever an issue over the validity of a Will. If the witnesses are based abroad, it can be harder to track them down.
So, in summary, it is certainly possible to create a Will in the UK and also using our service that may have some foreign element to it, but there are a number of factors that need to be considered carefully. Specialist legal advice is often always required.