Cross-border · Wills · Information, not legal advice — as at 19 June 2026
Does my UK, US or home-country will work abroad?
Usually yes — a will validly made at home is generally recognised across Portugal, Spain, Italy and France, so you don’t necessarily need a separate will for each country. But recognising the will is not the same as deciding which country’s law governs who inherits — and for some nationalities (notably US citizens) there are extra wrinkles. The safe move is to have your will checked against the country where your assets are, ideally with a choice-of-law clause.
Recognised — the will itself
A will that is formally valid where it was made (signed and witnessed correctly under, say, English law) is generally accepted in Portugal, Spain, Italy and France. So a single, properly drafted home-country will can often cover your foreign assets — you don’t always need a separate local will, and sometimes a second will can even cause conflicts with the first — which is why two wills must be drafted as a pair. Whether one will or two is better depends on your assets and country, and is worth a quick check.
The real question: which law decides who inherits?
This is where home-country wills trip people up. Under the EU Succession Regulation (Brussels IV), the law that governs who inherits is, by default, the law of the country where you were habitually resident when you died — not the country where you wrote the will. So your English will leaving everything to your spouse can still run into forced-heirship rules (reserved shares for children) if you’d made your home in Portugal, Spain, Italy or France.
The usual fix is a single clause electing the law of your nationality in the will — which, for someone whose national law has no forced heirship (such as English law), restores full freedom.
Two nationality wrinkles worth knowing
- US citizens are taxed by the United States on their worldwide estate wherever they live — so even where the foreign succession works cleanly, the US tax position needs its own advice. (US tax is not ours — but we will tell you plainly when an adviser at home is needed.)
- France — France has a claw-back rule (Code civil art. 913, added in 2021): where the person who died, or at least one child, was an EU national or lived in the EU, a child can recover from the French assets the reserved share French law would have given, if the chosen law gives children no protected share. So for estates touching France a foreign will is not always a complete answer. In October 2025 France committed to the European Commission that, where English law governs, the claw-back should not apply, because English family-provision rules already protect children; on 1 June 2026 the Commission sent a pre-closure letter on its complaint file. This is the government’s stated view, not yet tested in the courts, so French property still needs specific advice.
What to do
If your will pre-dates your move abroad, or has no choice-of-law clause, have it reviewed against the country where your property is. It’s usually quick, and it’s the difference between your estate passing as you intend and a foreign default deciding for you. (And whatever the will says, remember the second question: the will decides who takes — the country where the asset sits decides how it transfers.)