For expatriates living in the UAE and wider GCC, estate planning involves a set of considerations that simply do not exist in a single-jurisdiction context. Local succession law — which in the UAE defaults to Sharia principles for Muslims and can apply to non-Muslims in certain circumstances — interacts with home-country inheritance tax, globally scattered assets, and beneficiaries who may live in three or four different countries. Life insurance and trust structures are two of the most practical tools available, but only when they are understood and implemented correctly within this cross-border framework.
Under Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 (the Civil Personal Status Law), non-Muslim expatriates in the UAE can now register wills and have their estates administered under their home-country law rather than Sharia, provided they have taken the necessary steps. In practice, this means registering a will with the DIFC Wills Service (covering Dubai and the Northern Emirates), or using the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department's non-Muslim will registration service. Without a registered will, non-Muslims who die intestate in the UAE may still find Sharia principles applied to UAE assets, particularly real estate and bank accounts, and local courts will administer the estate under default rules. The process can be slow, expensive and uncertain. Registering a UAE will is the essential first step for any non-Muslim expatriate with assets or family in the UAE.
For Muslim residents of the UAE, the Islamic rules of inheritance (faraid) prescribe fixed shares for specified heirs. Under faraid, sons receive twice the share of daughters; the husband receives one-quarter of the estate if there are children and one-half if there are none; the wife receives one-eighth if there are children and one-quarter if there are none. Non-family members receive nothing unless designated under a permissible mechanism. A bequest (wasiyya) to a non-heir is permitted up to one-third of the estate, but the remaining two-thirds must be distributed according to prescribed shares and cannot benefit heirs who already have their prescribed entitlement. For expatriates with blended families, unmarried partners, stepchildren, or charitable intentions, these rules can produce outcomes very different from their intentions. Understanding whether and how faraid applies to your specific situation — based on your religion, your assets' location, your beneficiaries' location and your registered will status — is the starting point for any UAE estate plan.
Life insurance written in trust is one of the most effective tools for providing immediate liquidity to beneficiaries on death, outside the estate and independently of the probate or succession process. For GCC-based expats, the most effective structure typically involves an offshore life policy arranged through an international insurer, with the benefit written in trust under the law of the trust jurisdiction — Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, or the DIFC. UAE domestic life insurance policies generally rely on beneficiary nominations rather than trusts, and may not provide the same level of protection from estate administration. For UK IHT purposes, the policy must be written in an irrevocable trust where the settlor (policyholder) is not a beneficiary and retains no beneficial interest in the policy. This structure is particularly valuable in the UAE context, where locally held assets may be frozen pending court administration, and beneficiaries in other countries may otherwise have to wait months or longer to access funds.
An offshore discretionary trust — typically established in a jurisdiction such as Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man or the DIFC — allows an individual to transfer assets to trustees who hold them for the benefit of a defined class of beneficiaries. The settlor can express their wishes through a letter of wishes, which the trustees consider but are not legally bound to follow. Assets held in trust do not form part of the settlor's estate on death, which can avoid both local succession law and, depending on circumstances, UK IHT. However, the UK's April 2025 changes to the treatment of offshore trusts for IHT purposes mean that excluded property status now depends on whether the settlor meets the long-term residence test — not their domicile. Trusts can fall in and out of the relevant property regime as the settlor's residence status changes. Trusts remain useful structures, but they need to be assessed against the new rules rather than the assumptions under which many were originally established. For non-British expatriates in the GCC without UK IHT exposure, offshore trusts continue to offer significant succession, confidentiality and asset protection benefits.
A common concern for GCC-based expats is what happens to a surviving spouse and young children if the main earner dies. In the UAE, a deceased's bank accounts are typically frozen on notification of death, which can leave a surviving spouse without access to funds for day-to-day expenses while the estate is being administered — a process that can take months even with a registered will, and considerably longer without one. The practical solutions involve a combination of: joint accounts held outside the UAE (the freezing of accounts on death is a UAE-specific issue that does not apply to, for example, UK or offshore accounts held jointly); life insurance with immediate access for the surviving spouse; and clear, registered succession documents. For families where the surviving spouse may return to their home country, the estate plan needs to work across the jurisdictions relevant to each beneficiary — not just the UAE.
British nationals living in the UAE and GCC remain exposed to UK IHT on their worldwide assets if they meet the long-term residence test introduced in April 2025 — that is, if they have been UK tax resident for 10 or more of the previous 20 tax years. The UAE has no estate or inheritance tax of its own, which means assets accumulated in the UAE are not subject to local estate tax. But UK IHT can still apply, and the absence of a UK-UAE double taxation treaty covering IHT means there is no formal mechanism to prevent UK IHT applying to UAE assets. Planning for British expats in the GCC therefore needs to address UK IHT alongside the UAE succession position — the two are not separate questions but parts of the same estate plan.
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This is the most common and most consequential gap. An English will alone does not protect UAE assets in the way most expats assume. Without a registered DIFC or Abu Dhabi will, a non-Muslim who dies in the UAE may find their estate administered by local courts under default rules that do not reflect their intentions, with assets frozen until the process concludes.
A life policy only falls outside the estate if it is correctly structured — written in trust, or with an appropriate assignment or nomination that is valid under the law of the jurisdiction that governs the policy. A policy simply naming a beneficiary on an insurer's form may not be sufficient if it has not been legally written in trust. The effectiveness of the structure needs to be confirmed, not assumed.
An estate plan that addresses UAE assets without considering UK IHT, or vice versa, is incomplete. The two interact — particularly for British nationals whose worldwide estate is above the IHT threshold. A plan that reduces UAE succession complexity but leaves a large unexpected UK IHT bill has not solved the problem.
Marriage, the birth of a child, a change in religion, a move to a different emirate or GCC country, or an increase in assets can all affect the validity or effectiveness of an estate plan. UAE succession law, DIFC will registration requirements and UK IHT rules have all changed materially in recent years. A plan put in place five years ago may be significantly out of date.
Many GCC-based couples are unaware that UAE bank accounts are frozen on notification of the account holder's death. In the short term, this can leave a surviving spouse unable to meet basic expenses. Holding some accessible funds in jointly owned accounts outside the UAE is a straightforward mitigation that is easy to overlook until it is too late.
Clarity Global Wealth works with GCC-based expatriates to build estate plans that address both the local succession environment and any home-country tax exposure — for most of our clients, that means coordinating the UAE legal position with UK IHT planning. We start by mapping the assets and beneficiaries: where each asset is held, who the intended beneficiaries are, where they live, and what the exposure is under both UAE succession rules and UK IHT. From there, we work through the practical steps — advising on life insurance structures, coordinating with DIFC or Abu Dhabi will registration specialists, reviewing any existing offshore trusts in light of the UK's April 2025 rule changes, and modelling the pension IHT position ahead of the April 2027 change. For clients with complex structures or multiple jurisdictions involved, we bring in specialist legal and tax advisers in each relevant country and coordinate the process so that the different elements fit together into a single coherent plan rather than a set of disconnected documents.
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