Holiday home owners advised to review their Wills

Families with holiday homes in Europe have been advised to update their Wills following a change to EU succession laws, which now make it easier for British families to bypass prescriptive inheritance laws in countries such as France and Spain.

Whereas British succession laws mean a person can leave their estate to anyone they want to have it, in Europe there are forced ‘heirship’ rules which set out who can inherit your estate and how much of it they are entitled to. The new law means English people can set out in their will that they want their property in Europe to be treated under UK Inheritance laws – rather than those of the country the property is based in.

As an example of how the rule will work practically, the Society of Trust and Estate said previously a woman in the UK with a property in France would have been obliged to leave it to her husband and children under French forced heirship rules. Now under the new succession rule she could instead choose to apply UK law to the property, which would allow her to leave the house to someone else instead. 

Likewise, those who do not want English law to apply to assets which are held in a country that  has opted into the new regulations will need to alter their will to make that clear.

If you’d like information on making or updating a Will, please contact Christian Jenkins at Lawson-West on 01858 445 480.

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