Where a will and estate plan covering assets in the UAE stands now

For a family with real property in Dubai, a holding entity registered in the BVI, and a principal residence in Hong Kong, the estate plan is not a single document. It is a sequence of instruments calibrated to three distinct legal systems – each with its own succession rules, its own forced-heirship logic, and its own enforcement machinery. The risk is not theoretical. When the sequence is wrong, or when one jurisdiction's instrument is drafted without regard to another's requirements, the plan that looked complete on the adviser's desk proves unenforceable at the moment it matters most.

A will and estate plan covering assets in the UAE must address the intersection of UAE civil and personal-status law, the family's own national law where Islamic inheritance principles may apply, and the common-law succession instruments used under Hong Kong and BVI law. The governing instruments span the UAE Personal Status Law, the Wills and Probate Registry in the Dubai International Financial Centre (a common-law wills jurisdiction within the UAE), and the Trustee Ordinance (Cap. 29) of Hong Kong. Since the Trustee Ordinance was substantially reformed with effect from 1 December 2013, Hong Kong trusts now offer strengthened protection against foreign forced-heirship claims – a feature directly relevant where UAE-based assets form part of a broader cross-border estate.

This analysis sets out what is commercially at stake, how the cross-border interface operates in practice, and where the risk is sharpest for families whose wealth map spans Hong Kong and the UAE.

What is commercially at stake when a UAE asset enters the estate plan?

Real property in Dubai is not just an investment. For many of the families our desk advises, it represents a primary residence, a regional operating base, or the largest single asset on the balance sheet. The transfer of that asset on death – or the failure to transfer it cleanly – has consequences that run through the entire holding structure. Probate delays measured in months or years. Competing claims by heirs whose entitlements under UAE personal-status law differ from those the principal intended. Frozen bank accounts and blocked share registers while courts in two jurisdictions determine which instrument governs.

The commercial stakes are highest where the family has not addressed the UAE asset in a UAE-law instrument. A Hong Kong will, however carefully drafted, does not automatically govern real property situated in the UAE. The lex situs principle – under which immovable property is governed by the law of the place where it is situated – means that Dubai land, and to a significant extent Dubai-registered property, is subject to UAE law at the moment of death. No amount of careful drafting under common-law assumptions changes that default position.

For families structured around a BVI or Cayman holding entity that sits above both Hong Kong and UAE operating or real-property assets, the analysis compounds further. The shares of the holding entity may be governed by BVI law; the underlying property may be governed by UAE law; the family's personal law – applied under UAE conflict-of-laws rules – may introduce a third system altogether. The question of which instrument controls which asset, and in what sequence the estate administration must proceed, is not answered by a single document.

How does UAE succession law actually work – and where does the cross-border interface bite?

UAE personal-status law applies Islamic inheritance rules – Sharia principles – to the estates of Muslim decedents, and extends those rules by default to the estates of non-Muslim foreign nationals unless a valid will has been registered under a recognised common-law mechanism. The distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim succession in the UAE is fundamental. For non-Muslim expatriates, the UAE introduced pathways to apply the law of their home country or to register a will through dedicated common-law wills registries, most prominently in the Dubai International Financial Centre and more recently in Abu Dhabi Global Market.

The DIFC Wills and Probate Registry – operating under the DIFC Wills Service Centre – allows non-Muslim individuals to register wills governing UAE assets, including immovable property in Dubai, and to elect common-law probate procedures. This is the primary instrument for non-Muslim expatriates and international families with UAE property. A registered DIFC will governs designated assets within its scope. But the scope is not automatic: the will must be correctly drafted, properly registered, and must correctly identify the assets it covers. An asset omitted from the registry instrument falls back to the default UAE rules.

For Muslim families – or for families where one or more members are Muslim – the position is fundamentally different. Islamic inheritance rules apply to the estate of a Muslim decedent regardless of the existence of a will. The faraid (the Quranic rules on fixed shares in an estate) allocate specific proportions of the estate to defined categories of heirs. A will that purports to override those allocations is void to the extent of the conflict. The practical consequence for a Hong Kong family that includes Muslim members, or whose principal has converted, is that the entire estate plan must be structured around the faraid rather than around common-law testamentary freedom.

The cross-border interface bites hardest at the moment of death. UAE courts apply their conflict-of-laws rules to determine which personal law governs the decedent. A UAE court may apply the decedent's national law to movable property while applying UAE law to immovable property. Where the decedent holds multiple nationalities, or where the national law of the decedent's jurisdiction of registration includes its own forced-heirship rules, the analysis can produce outcomes no party anticipated. In our cross-border practice, we have seen estates where the Hong Kong instrument, the offshore holding structure, and the UAE property were drafted and structured by three separate sets of advisers with no cross-reference between them – and the resulting gap was discovered only after the principal's death.

The Hong Kong leg: what the Trustee Ordinance and the 2013 reforms changed

Hong Kong is a common-law jurisdiction with no forced-heirship regime. A Hong Kong domiciliary can dispose of movable property by will with near-complete freedom, subject only to the family-provision rules under the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Ordinance. The Trustee Ordinance (Cap. 29), substantially reformed with effect from 1 December 2013, abolished the rule against perpetuities for Hong Kong trusts, introduced statutory protection for settlor-reserved powers, and strengthened the firewall against foreign forced-heirship claims.

The 2013 reform was deliberate and targeted. Hong Kong's legislature recognised that the jurisdiction competes for private wealth structures against other common-law centres, and that families with exposure to forced-heirship systems – whether civil-law European, Islamic, or otherwise – needed a trust law that protected settled assets from external claims. The reformed Trustee Ordinance provides that a Hong Kong trust is not invalidated because a foreign law would have applied different succession rules to the assets. That protection is meaningful for a family with UAE exposure: assets settled into a Hong Kong-law trust, properly constituted, are substantially insulated from faraid claims, provided the settlement was made with the settlor's full capacity and without fraudulent transfer intent.

But the protection is not absolute, and its limits define where the planning work sits. The firewall operates on assets that have been properly transferred into the trust structure. It does not operate on assets that remain in the settlor's personal name at death. A Dubai apartment that was never transferred into the trust structure – because the transfer required UAE registration, UAE transfer fees, and coordination with the Dubai Land Department – remains outside the Hong Kong trust and subject to UAE succession rules at the moment of death. The practical gap between the trust instrument and the actual asset register is the single most common structural failure our desk identifies in cross-border estate reviews.

Comparative read: where the two systems diverge, and what falls into the gap

The divergence between Hong Kong and UAE succession law is not merely technical. It reflects fundamentally different assumptions about the family, the individual, and the state's role in directing the flow of wealth at death.

Hong Kong proceeds from the common-law premise of testamentary freedom: the principal decides who receives what. The courts' role is to give effect to that decision, subject to the limited family-provision jurisdiction. The trust mechanism extends that freedom across time: assets settled into trust pass outside the estate and outside probate entirely, governed by the trust deed rather than by succession law.

UAE law – at least in its default application – proceeds from a different premise. For Muslim decedents, the faraid is not a choice; it is a right vested in the defined heirs by religious law. For non-Muslim decedents who have registered a valid DIFC or ADGM will, the common-law model is available, but the registration step is mandatory: without it, the default rules apply. There is no analogue in UAE law to the Hong Kong trust's automatic operation outside probate. A UAE property transferred into a trust structure may be treated by a UAE court as a disguised testamentary transfer and assessed under UAE succession rules if the transfer lacked commercial substance.

The gap between the two systems is precisely this: the Hong Kong trust works best on assets that have been formally transferred out of the settlor's estate while the settlor is alive and well. The UAE real-property transfer process requires registration with the Dubai Land Department, involves transfer fees, and requires the property to be in a transferable form. For a family that acquired Dubai property directly in the principal's personal name – which is common, particularly for residential property – the transfer into trust may require a sale-and-repurchase or a gift-and-registration step that has its own cost, tax, and commercial implications.

What falls into the gap? In practice: the residential apartment held personally; the UAE bank account in the principal's sole name; the UAE operating company whose shares were never formally assigned to the holding structure. These are the assets that bypass the Hong Kong trust, face UAE succession rules without a registered UAE will, and create the probate delay and inter-heir disputes that the estate plan was designed to prevent.

Where the risk sits now: our read on the current position

Several developments bear on the current position for families with Hong Kong and UAE exposure.

First, the DIFC and ADGM wills registries have expanded their scope and improved their procedures over recent years. A DIFC will can now cover not only Dubai-situated property but also assets in other UAE emirates, subject to conditions. The registration process has become more accessible to non-resident foreign nationals. For families that have not yet registered a UAE will, the path is clearer than it was – but it still requires specific UAE legal input, a UAE-licensed drafter, and a formal registration appointment. Coordination between the UAE drafter and the Hong Kong trust counsel is not automatic; it requires deliberate cross-border instruction.

Second, the UAE has continued to develop its personal-status law. In late 2020 and in subsequent years, the UAE introduced reforms affecting non-Muslim personal-status matters, including inheritance. The direction of those reforms has generally been towards greater flexibility for non-Muslim foreign nationals. But the reforms have also introduced complexity: the conditions for electing a foreign law, the scope of assets covered by an elected foreign-law will, and the interaction with UAE real-property registration rules require current, jurisdiction-specific legal advice. Our desk does not hold itself out as advising on UAE law; we work with allied counsel admitted in the UAE on the UAE-law components. What we analyse is the cross-border structure – and the gap between what the UAE instrument covers and what the Hong Kong instrument assumes.

Third, the Pillar Two global minimum tax – applicable to in-scope multinational enterprise groups for fiscal years beginning on or after 1 January 2025 – has prompted many families with holding structures to review their entity configurations. That review is an opportunity. If a BVI or Cayman holding entity is being reconsidered for substance or tax reasons, the estate-planning consequences of a restructuring must be addressed at the same time. A restructuring that moves assets from one holding entity to another may, depending on timing and method, affect the trust's asset register – and by extension the firewall's coverage.

Consider a concrete scenario: a Hong Kong-based principal – a CIS-origin entrepreneur, mid-career – holds a Dubai apartment directly, owns shares in a BVI holding company above UAE and Hong Kong operating entities, and has a Hong Kong will that covers Hong Kong movables. The BVI holding company has no registered DIFC will, because the adviser's view was that the BVI shares are movables governed by BVI law. The Dubai apartment is omitted from the Hong Kong trust because the transfer was never completed. At the principal's death, the Dubai apartment follows UAE succession rules – likely the faraid, depending on the principal's faith and nationality. The BVI shares follow a contested analysis: a UAE court may look through the BVI structure to the underlying Dubai property and assert UAE jurisdiction. The Hong Kong will operates on the Hong Kong movables only. The result is three-way litigation across three jurisdictions. That outcome is not hypothetical; it is a pattern our desk encounters in estate reviews.

The risk, in our read, sits in three places. First: the asset not covered by the UAE instrument – typically the personally held property and the UAE bank accounts. Second: the holding structure whose shares are covered in theory but whose underlying assets face UAE scrutiny in practice. Third: the timing of the trust settlement – a trust settled close to the principal's death, in a jurisdiction with no fraudulent-transfer protection equivalent to Hong Kong's, may be challenged by forced heirs under UAE law.

What a properly structured cross-border estate plan for UAE assets looks like

A well-structured estate plan for a family with UAE and Hong Kong exposure has four components, in sequence.

The first is an asset map. Before any instrument is drafted, the advisers need to know what is held, where, in whose name, and in what form. Real property, bank accounts, operating-company interests, listed and unlisted securities, and life-insurance policies each face different rules under UAE and Hong Kong succession law. The map is the diagnosis; the instruments are the treatment.

The second is the UAE instrument. For non-Muslim foreign nationals, this typically means a registered will under the DIFC Wills Service Centre, covering UAE-situated immovables and, where applicable, UAE-based financial assets. The UAE will must be drafted by UAE-licensed counsel and registered before death. It does not need to match the Hong Kong instrument exactly; it needs to cover the UAE assets coherently and to be consistent with the distribution the principal intends.

The third is the Hong Kong trust or will – or both. For families where the principal is domiciled in Hong Kong and where the bulk of movable assets are held through Hong Kong or offshore structures, the Hong Kong trust remains the primary vehicle for assets that have been formally transferred. For assets that cannot be transferred – or that the principal chooses not to transfer – a Hong Kong will governs the residual estate. The two instruments must be coordinated: a residuary clause in the Hong Kong will that inadvertently purports to cover UAE immovables creates conflict, not clarity.

The fourth is the holding structure review. Where the principal holds UAE assets through a BVI or Cayman entity, the estate plan must address whether those shares are covered by the Hong Kong trust, whether the BVI entity's own constitutional documents contain provisions affecting transmission on death, and whether the entity itself should be restructured in light of the Pillar Two review or the Hong Kong inward company re-domiciliation regime that commenced in 2025 (the current commencement date and eligibility conditions should be verified before reliance).

The sequence matters. Instrument before structure is the wrong order; structure before instrument produces the map that the instruments then follow. In our cross-border practice, we initiate the engagement with the asset map and the jurisdiction analysis before any drafting begins.

The objection our desk hears most often – and why it understates the position

The most common objection to a cross-border estate-planning exercise of this kind is that the principal already has a will. The will may be well drafted under Hong Kong or English law. It may name the correct beneficiaries and appoint competent executors. For Hong Kong assets, it may work exactly as intended.

But a common-law will does not govern UAE immovable property unless it has been registered under a UAE-recognised procedure. It does not insulate settled assets from forced-heirship claims unless those assets have actually been transferred into the trust. And it does not address the holding-structure gaps – the BVI shares held outside the trust, the UAE bank account opened for convenience and never included in the planning perimeter.

The objection also understates the procedural risk. Even where the instruments are technically correct, the estate administration process across two jurisdictions requires coordination between executors, trustees, and local counsel in both the UAE and Hong Kong – and, in many cases, in the BVI or Cayman Islands as well. The cost and delay of that administration, where it is not anticipated, frequently exceeds the cost of the planning exercise that would have simplified it.

A second objection we encounter is that the principal intends to sell the Dubai property before death, or to transfer it into a company structure, resolving the issue without a dedicated UAE will. Intentions do not constitute instruments. In our experience, UAE property acquired for personal use tends to remain in personal ownership longer than planned – because transfer costs are non-trivial, because the property appreciates and the principal is reluctant to trigger a taxable event, and because the holding-structure review that would accomplish the transfer keeps being deferred. By the time the review happens, the principal's health or mental capacity may have changed. The time to plan is when the plan is easiest to execute.

For a deeper read on the succession position across other common-law and civil-law corridors, our analysis of succession planning across Hong Kong and CIS jurisdictions covers the forced-heirship and trust interaction in comparable terms.

The practical sequence for a review engagement: what to expect

A cross-border estate-planning review for a family with UAE and Hong Kong exposure typically proceeds in four stages.

Stage one is the asset-map and jurisdiction analysis: identification of all assets, their location, their legal form, and the succession rules that apply to each. This stage surfaces the gaps – the assets not covered by any instrument, the instruments that conflict with UAE default rules, and the holding-structure elements that create probate exposure.

Stage two is the instrument-coordination plan: a written analysis, addressed to the principal and the family's other advisers, that sets out which instruments are needed, in which jurisdiction, and in what sequence they must be executed. For a family with UAE and Hong Kong exposure, this will ordinarily involve a Hong Kong trust review, a DIFC will registration, and a BVI or Cayman structure review – all coordinated through a single cross-border counsel instruction.

Stage three is execution: the drafting of the instruments, their registration or settlement, and the transfer of assets into the trust where that is the agreed approach. This stage involves UAE-licensed counsel for the DIFC will, Hong Kong-licensed trust counsel for the trust and Hong Kong will, and offshore counsel for the holding-structure elements. Coordination is the product we provide; the Hong Kong and UAE instruments are executed by the relevant locally licensed advisers.

Stage four is the ongoing review: the estate plan is not a one-time exercise. Changes in the principal's family situation, changes in UAE succession law, changes in Hong Kong trust law or tax treatment, and changes in the holding structure all require a review of the plan. A well-structured plan includes a schedule for periodic review – typically on a biennial cycle or on the occurrence of a defined event (marriage, divorce, birth of a child, acquisition of a new material asset, change of residence).

For further detail on the private wealth structures underpinning this kind of planning, our Private Wealth practice page sets out the full scope of the services our desk provides. For the specific succession and trust planning approach we use for families with Hong Kong and Cyprus exposure – a comparable cross-border structure – see our analysis at succession planning across Hong Kong and Cyprus.

The sequence above describes the standard position. Your matter turns on the specific assets, the jurisdictions actually engaged, and the order of steps – which is where the route is won or lost.

For a structured assessment of your cross-border estate position across Hong Kong and the UAE, write to us at info@lockhartyip.com.

Related practices

• Private Wealth – succession, trust structures, asset protection and family-office planning across jurisdictions
• Holding Structures – BVI, Cayman and Hong Kong holding entities and their estate-planning interaction

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Related

• Private Wealth
• Succession Planning Across Hong Kong Cis Cis Analysis
• Succession Planning Across Hong Kong Cyprus Cyprus

This publication is general information and does not constitute legal advice. For advice on your situation, contact info@lockhartyip.com.