For most UAE expats, a will sits permanently on the list of things to sort out properly at some point. It is rarely urgent, it involves lawyers, and the subject is unpleasant enough that "later" is an easy answer.
The reason it comes up so often in expat conversation is that the default position is unfamiliar. People arrive with an intuition about inheritance formed in their home country, and that intuition does not describe what happens here.
This article is an educational walkthrough of how UAE succession works for non-Muslim residents, what the registration options actually are, and what they cost. It is not legal, estate-planning, tax, or financial advice. Clarvia does not draft wills, does not recommend a structure, and cannot assess an individual situation. Those decisions belong with licensed legal counsel working with the actual facts.
Clarvia is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. The information below is general education only and may not apply to individual circumstances. UAE succession law has been undergoing significant change; verify the current position with licensed legal counsel and with DIFC Courts, ADJD, or Dubai Courts directly.
The default position when there is no registered will
For non-Muslim residents, the governing instrument is Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 on Civil Personal Status, which took effect on 1 February 2023.
Its inheritance provision sets out what happens absent a registered will: half of the estate passes to the surviving spouse, and the other half is divided equally among the children, with no differentiation between sons and daughters.
That is a clear, predictable rule, and for some families it is close to what they would have chosen anyway. For others it is not. A spouse who expected to inherit the whole estate does not. A childless couple, a blended family, a parent one wants to provide for, an unmarried partner, a specific bequest: none of these are addressed by a fixed statutory split. That provision addresses the spouse-and-children case; other family compositions are dealt with elsewhere in the decree-law, and licensed counsel is the source for how a specific family sits under it.
There is one further mechanism worth understanding. The law allows heirs to request that the law of the deceased's home country be applied instead of the UAE civil default. That election is generally described as available where no will has been registered, with a registered will understood to settle the question. It cuts in both directions: it removes flexibility from the heirs, and it removes uncertainty about what they might otherwise argue for.
It is commonly described that before the 2022 law, Sharia principles applied by default to non-Muslim expats in the absence of a will. That framing is standard among practitioners, and the 2022 law is what created the civil alternative now in place.
Registration is what actually changes the outcome
The relevant machinery in Dubai comes from Dubai Law No. 15 of 2017, concerning administration of estates and implementation of wills of non-Muslims in the Emirate of Dubai.
It does two things that matter here. It establishes a Register of Wills of non-Muslims, held at both Dubai Courts and DIFC Courts, and it provides that a will entered on that Register prevails over other, unregistered instruments. It also confirms that where an estate involves real property in the emirate, emirate law governs.
That provision is what makes the Register significant in this system: an instrument entered on it is given precedence over unregistered ones. Whether and how that affects a particular family's existing arrangements is a question for licensed counsel with the actual documents in front of them.
The DIFC route, and what it costs
The DIFC Wills Service Centre operates under DIFC Courts and is the route most commonly discussed among Dubai expats.
Eligibility is specific. A testator must not be Muslim and must never have been Muslim, must be at least 21 years old, and must either own assets in the UAE or have minor children residing with them in the UAE. UAE residency itself is not required.
The registry offers several instrument types rather than one. Registration fees published by DIFC Courts are as follows, with a separate booking fee alongside each, and with legal drafting costs additional on top:
- Full Will, covering all movable and immovable UAE assets: AED 10,000 single, AED 15,000 as a mirror will for a couple
- Property Will, covering up to five UAE properties: AED 7,500 single, AED 10,000 mirror
- Financial Assets Will, covering up to ten UAE bank or brokerage accounts: AED 5,000 single, AED 7,500 mirror
- Business Owners Will, covering up to five UAE company shareholdings: AED 5,000 single, AED 7,500 mirror
- Guardianship Will, covering guardianship of minors: AED 5,000 single, AED 7,500 mirror
- Digital Assets Will: AED 5,000 single, AED 7,500 mirror
Figures circulating on wealth-management and will-writing vendor sites frequently differ from these, sometimes substantially. The DIFC Courts fee schedule is the authoritative source and is published directly.
One scope limitation is worth flagging, because it is often misunderstood. A DIFC will is a UAE-facing instrument. A Full Will can extend to assets outside the UAE, but its execution abroad remains subject to the laws of the jurisdiction where those assets sit. It is not a substitute for arrangements covering a home-country property or pension.
Abu Dhabi works differently from how people assume
ADGM is frequently described as Abu Dhabi's equivalent of the DIFC wills registry. That description is not accurate, and the difference matters for anyone choosing a route.
ADGM does not operate an independent parallel registry. The ADGM Courts Notary Public, working with the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, provides an authorised notarisation channel for non-Muslim wills, available to ADGM employees and employees of ADGM-registered entities aged 21 and over. Any later probate application is filed with ADJD's own Wills and Probate Office rather than with ADGM.
Published fees for that channel are AED 950 payable to ADJD, plus USD 155 payable to ADGM Courts. Documents must be bilingual in Arabic and English.
The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department also maintains its own non-Muslim wills registry directly, and Dubai Courts maintains the register established under the 2017 law. Fee schedules for those routes are best confirmed with the relevant court, as published third-party figures vary and mandatory Arabic legal translation is generally a separate cost in any case.
Guardianship covers a narrower geography than expected
For parents, guardianship is usually the provision that matters most, and it carries a geographic limit that is easy to miss.
Without an instrument naming a guardian, the courts determine who cares for minor children if both parents die. For an expat family whose relatives are all abroad, that process involves identifying and vetting potential guardians who are not present in the country.
A DIFC guardianship provision, whether standalone or inside a Full Will, can name interim guardians, who must be UAE residents over 21 able to act immediately, alongside permanent guardians who may live anywhere. DIFC Courts' published scope for guardianship provisions covers minors habitually resident in Dubai or Ras Al Khaimah, with ADJD and Dubai Courts as the relevant channels elsewhere.
That scope is worth knowing about for families who have moved between emirates since registering. Whether a given provision reaches a given child is a question of jurisdiction and of facts, and one for counsel rather than for an article.
What happens to accounts and property in the meantime
Two practical mechanics come up repeatedly, and both are often described inaccurately.
Bank accounts. UAE banks are widely reported to freeze accounts, including joint accounts, on being notified of an account holder's death, with funds released on court authorisation, though individual bank practice varies. A point made by practising UAE lawyers in the press is worth stating precisely: a valid, locally recognised will does not prevent the freeze. What it does is make the court process for releasing funds more predictable and often faster, because who is entitled to what is already settled.
That distinction matters for household planning. Whatever instrument is in place, a period during which UAE accounts are inaccessible is the realistic expectation, and it is a reason some families discuss liquidity arrangements with their advisors.
Property. Dubai real estate is not frozen in the same sense, but it cannot be sold or transferred out of the deceased's name until Dubai Land Department completes an inheritance title transfer. DLD's published requirements include a legal notification of inheritance, Emirates ID copies for all heirs, passport copies for non-resident heirs, a no-objection letter from the mortgage holder or developer where applicable, and an official letter from Dubai Courts, another UAE court, or the Awqaf requesting the transfer.
Published fees are AED 1,000 as a base fee per property from the heirs, plus AED 250 for title deed issuance and AED 100 to AED 250 in map fees depending on property type, alongside smaller knowledge, innovation and service-partner charges.
What a UAE will does not reach
Several assets pass outside a will entirely, through their own nomination mechanisms, which is a distinction that is easy to miss.
DEWS, the DIFC Employee Workplace Savings scheme that replaced end-of-service gratuity for DIFC employers, has its own beneficiary nomination made through the scheme portal. Where a beneficiary has been nominated, the fund is paid to them on death. Where no beneficiary has been nominated, the scheme administrator's published position is that funds are distributed in accordance with Sharia law by default. A nomination made in the portal, or not made, therefore governs that balance regardless of what any will says.
Life insurance similarly operates through the beneficiary designation held with the insurer.
End-of-service entitlements outside DIFC, and employer savings arrangements generally, vary by employer and by emirate; HR and licensed counsel are the right places to establish how a specific scheme pays out.
Assets outside the UAE remain subject to the rules of the jurisdiction they sit in.
The common thread is that estate planning is not a single document. It is a set of instruments that need to agree with each other, which is precisely the kind of review a licensed advisor performs and an article cannot.
The law here is currently changing
One further point belongs in any 2026 discussion of this topic. The UAE issued a new Civil Transactions Law, Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025, replacing the 1985 Civil Transactions Law, which came into force on 1 June 2026. Legal commentators have noted that it addresses, among a great many other things, the treatment of UAE assets belonging to foreigners who die without heirs.
Considerable expat-facing content circulating online cites a different law number and a different effective date for this change, and those citations do not trace to any instrument that can be located. That is a good reason to treat online summaries of UAE succession law with caution generally, and to confirm the current position with licensed counsel rather than with search results.
Where Clarvia helps
Clarvia does not draft wills, and nothing it produces is a substitute for legal advice.
What it does address is the problem sitting underneath every estate conversation: knowing what there actually is. Most expat households hold accounts across more than one bank, often in more than one country, alongside savings products, employer schemes and recurring commitments accumulated over years. Very few have that written down anywhere in one place.
Upload bank statements and Clarvia organises accounts and spending automatically, so what is visible across the uploaded accounts sits in one view rather than across a dozen logins. For anyone preparing to speak to a lawyer about a will, that inventory is usually the first thing they are asked for, and the thing that takes longest to assemble from scratch.
Start your free trial to organise your UAE financial records, so a conversation with a licensed advisor starts from an inventory rather than from memory.
