Guardianship and children
Who looks after your children if you die abroad. Appointing guardians in a UK will, temporary local arrangements, and our free guardian plan and guide.
Guides on this subject
Making a will as a British expat in Japan
Japan starts from your national law when it looks at your estate, and an English will is formally valid there, so the will itself is the easy part. The hard parts are what no will can fix: a bank freeze your family meets in the first week, an estate process with no probate and no family register entry for you, and an inheritance tax that Japan charges your heirs, on worldwide assets, based on their visa status and yours. And the longer you stay, the more of your estate Japanese law can quietly claim back.
Who looks after your children if you both die abroad
If both parents die abroad, the legal question of who raises the children can take weeks to settle. The practical one takes hours, because somebody has to collect them from school that afternoon. English law lets a parent appoint a guardian in a will in a few lines. Living abroad adds a gap at the start that almost nobody plans for.
British expats in Qatar: Islamic inheritance and protecting your wishes
The thing British families in Doha fear most about dying in Qatar is mostly a myth: Qatari law applies your national law, not sharia, to a British estate. The real dangers are slower and quieter, frozen bank accounts, an Arabic-language court process, a short claims window on your end-of-service money, and children in limbo if both parents die. A current English will fixes more of this than anything else you can do.
Mirror wills for couples living abroad, explained
Mirror wills let a couple leave everything to each other, then to the children. What they don't do, why they're not binding on the survivor, and the traps for expat couples.
What happens to your estate if you die without a will while living abroad
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.