What happens to your estate if you die without a will while living abroad

By Jamie Lee · Published 12 January 2026

Around half of UK adults have no will, and expats who put it off tend to assume the familiar English safety net will catch their family anyway. It won't, because it doesn't travel. Die intestate abroad and your estate lands in whichever country's default rules reach it first: in Spain your spouse may get a life interest in a third while your children take the rest, in much of Europe the local code decides everything, and an unmarried partner can be left with nothing and no court to ask. Here's what "no will" actually means once you live outside the UK.

Nobody plans to die intestate. It is the plan you get by not making one, and around half of UK adults are on it: a 2024 survey for Canada Life found 51 per cent of UK adults had not written a will and weren't in the process of doing so, and the Money and Pensions Service puts the no-will share at over half too. Expats are unlikely to be doing better, and for them the stakes are different in kind, not just degree. A Briton who dies without a will in the UK gets a familiar, spouse-first safety net. A Briton who dies without a will abroad gets whichever country's default rules reach each part of their estate first, and those rules can be nothing like the ones their family is expecting.

The safety net you're probably imagining

The English intestacy rules are the version most British families half-know. If you die married with children, your spouse takes your personal belongings, the first £322,000, and half of everything above that; your children share the rest. No spouse: your children take everything, then parents, siblings, and outward through the family tree. Two groups get nothing at all, no matter how long or how devoted the relationship: unmarried partners and stepchildren you never adopted. If no qualifying relative exists, the estate passes to the Crown; the government's unclaimed estates list runs to roughly 6,000 names at any time, and a whole heir-hunting industry works it.

That system has a clear logic: spouse first, blood second, formalities absolute. Whether it is a good system matters less for expats than this: once you live abroad, it is very often not the system you get.

Abroad, the defaults change underneath you

If you are habitually resident in an EU country, the EU Succession Regulation applies the law of your habitual residence to your whole estate. You can escape that default by electing the law of your nationality, but here is the catch that decides everything: the election can only be made in a will. Die intestate and there is no election, no English law, and no safety net you'd recognise. Your estate follows the local code.

And the local codes answer the spouse-or-children question the opposite way to England. In Spain, your children inherit the estate and your spouse's entitlement is a life interest, a usufruct, over one third; the survivor owns almost nothing outright. In France, where every child is a child of the marriage, the spouse chooses between a usufruct of the whole estate and outright ownership of a quarter, and if any child is from a previous relationship the choice disappears and a quarter is all there is. In Germany the spouse typically ends up with around half, sharing with the children. In Thailand and the Philippines the surviving spouse takes a share equal to one child's, so a spouse with three children gets a quarter. The UAE, since its 2023 reforms for non-Muslims, splits an intestate estate half to the spouse and half equally among the children, and parts of the common-law world, such as New South Wales, still look spouse-first the way England does. Seven jurisdictions, and not one of them asked what you wanted.

Outside the EU, the machinery is messier still. England's own rules send succession to your movable assets to the law of your domicile and your land to the law of wherever it sits, while the country you live in applies its own conflict rules, which may point at your nationality, your residence, or its own code. A Briton settled abroad with assets in two countries can die into two different legal systems at once, with different relatives entitled to different assets under each, and courts in two languages working out which rule wins. Every one of those questions exists because no will answered it first.

The people the defaults miss

Intestacy is hardest on the people modern families actually contain. An unmarried partner inherits nothing under English intestacy and, in most of the systems above, nothing locally either. In England, a cohabitant's fallback is a claim under the family provision legislation, and one case shows what that fallback costs: a woman who had shared a home with her partner for eighteen years watched his half of their house pass on intestacy to his estranged wife, and spent five years in litigation before a court awarded her the share she had lived in all along; the legal costs ran to six figures.

For expats, even that fallback can vanish. The family provision legislation only applies where the deceased died domiciled in England and Wales. A Briton who has settled abroad for good may well have acquired a domicile of choice there, and with it, taken away the English court's power to help the partner left behind, whatever the hardship. What local law offers an unmarried survivor instead varies from something to nothing.

Children are the other gap. A will is where parents appoint guardians; under English law a guardianship appointment must be made in a signed written document, and a will is the classic vehicle. No will usually means no appointment, which means a court, possibly a foreign court, deciding who raises your children, informed by local defaults rather than your wishes.

The process, which is where families actually suffer

Whatever the substantive rules, the administration of an intestate cross-border estate is slower and harder than the same estate with a will, for one structural reason: nobody is in charge. A will names an executor who can act from day one. Intestacy requires each country to first work out who is even entitled to administer. In England that means letters of administration, applied for in strict order of kinship, and an unmarried partner cannot apply at all. Abroad it means local equivalents, declarations of heirs, succession certificates, each demanding legalised, translated proof of family relationships.

Meanwhile the banks do what banks do everywhere: freeze. Spanish practitioners describe families waiting a year or more for account releases even with full documentation; in the UAE, accounts freeze the moment the bank learns of the death, joint accounts included, with months for simple estates and longer for the rest. Assets in several countries need separate grants in each, because an English grant has no authority abroad; only a list of mostly Commonwealth jurisdictions allows the shortcut of resealing, and for everywhere else the family starts again locally. Each stage stacks translations, apostilles or consular legalisation, and fees on the last. Practitioners don't quote a single timeline for cross-border intestacy because there isn't one; the realistic range runs from many months to years.

There is a tax sting too. English intestacy can be tax-inefficient in exactly the situation it's commonest: everything that passes to children above the spouse's share is chargeable to inheritance tax rather than covered by the spouse exemption, so tax can fall due on the first death that a simple will would have deferred entirely. And for expats, UK inheritance tax scope now follows your residence history, with UK assets in scope regardless, so "I moved abroad" is not the tax answer intestate families sometimes assume.

What to do now

Make the will. Every mechanism in this article, the English election in Europe, the named executor, the named guardians, the protected partner, exists only inside one. This is the single document that switches all the defaults off.
If you have a partner you're not married to, treat this as urgent. Intestacy gives them nothing in England, usually nothing abroad, and possibly no court to ask.
Name guardians for minor children, including someone local who can act the same day.
List where your assets actually are, country by country. That list decides whether you need one will or a coordinated pair, and it is the map your administrator will otherwise spend months drawing blind.
Tell people. A will nobody can find fails almost as completely as no will; over half of UK adults have told no one what should happen to their estate.

An Expat Legacy will is drafted under the law of England and Wales around expat circumstances, with executors, guardianship nominations and, where the plan calls for it, an express choice of English law, and it is reviewed by a person before your documents are released: £149 for a single will, £249 for mirror wills for a couple. Intestacy is a set of decisions made for you by whichever parliament gets to your estate first. Make them yourself instead.

Sources

Expat Legacy provides England and Wales wills and general information about cross-border estate planning. This is general information, not legal or tax advice for your circumstances; intestacy and succession rules vary by country and change over time, tax treatment depends on individual circumstances, and for assets, family or tax questions in your country of residence you should take local and, where appropriate, regulated tax advice. Position stated as at August 2026.

Common questions

What happens if a British expat dies without a will in the EU?

If you are a resident in an EU country and die without a will, the succession law of that country typically applies to your entire estate. You can only choose to have English law apply to your estate by making a formal election within a will. Without this, your assets will be distributed according to local defaults, which often prioritises children over a surviving spouse.

Can my unmarried partner inherit my estate if I do not have a will?

Unmarried partners have no automatic right to inherit under English intestacy rules, and most foreign legal systems also offer them nothing. In England, a partner might try to claim under family provision laws, but this is only possible if the deceased was still domiciled in England and Wales. This process can be extremely expensive and take years to resolve in court.

How does dying intestate affect the speed of settling an estate abroad?

Dying without a will makes the administration of a cross border estate much slower because no executor has been named to take charge. Families must apply for legal documents like letters of administration or succession certificates in every country where assets are held, which requires translated and legalised proof of kinship. Banks often freeze accounts, including joint ones in some countries, for many months or even years while these formalities are completed.