Wills and Power of Attorney for Expats: A Cross-Border Planning Guide

You left the UK years ago, but the UK never quite left you. There is still a pension sitting with a former employer, an ISA you can no longer feed but cannot bring yourself to close, perhaps a flat let out back home. And now you have built a life somewhere else entirely, in Spain, South Africa, the Gulf, Australia, wherever the work and the weather took you.

That split life creates a quiet problem most people put off. What happens to all of it if you die, or if you lose the ability to make your own decisions while abroad? The honest answer is that a single UK will and a single UK power of attorney rarely stretch cleanly across two legal systems. This guide explains why, and what a sensible cross-border setup actually looks like.

One thing to say plainly up front. Drafting wills and powers of attorney across jurisdictions is legal work, and it should involve a qualified solicitor in the UK and a qualified lawyer in your country of residence. Opes Financial Planning International coordinates the financial side, aligning your pensions, investments and beneficiary nominations with the legal documents so the whole picture holds together.

What is the difference between a will and a power of attorney?

These two documents do completely different jobs, and people sometimes assume one covers the other. It does not.

A will is a legal document that says who gets your assets after you die. It appoints executors, the people who gather in your estate and distribute it according to your wishes. Without a valid will, your UK assets pass under the intestacy rules, the default framework that decides who inherits when there is no will, and those rules may bear no resemblance to what you actually wanted.

A power of attorney works while you are still alive. It is a legal document that lets you appoint someone you trust to make decisions on your behalf if you cannot make them yourself, whether through illness, injury or loss of mental capacity. In England and Wales the main form is the Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA), which replaced the older Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA) for new documents made from October 2007.

Both matter when your life straddles two countries. A will protects your legacy; a power of attorney protects you while you are living. Many people get round to the will and never get round to the POA, which is usually the riskier gap.

Why do expats often need both a UK will and a local will?

Here is the short version. Your UK assets are governed largely by UK law, and your assets in your country of residence are governed by local law. Trying to make one will do everything often creates more friction than it solves.

When someone dies owning property in two countries, each jurisdiction tends to want its own probate process, in its own language, with its own certified documents and formalities. A foreign court asked to recognise a UK will may demand translations, legalisation and a great deal of patience. Two properly coordinated wills, one per jurisdiction, usually move through probate faster and with less cost than a single will dragged through two systems.

There is a second, larger reason: forced heirship.

What is forced heirship and why does it matter?

Many civil-law countries, across much of continental Europe and beyond, apply “forced heirship”. Under these rules a fixed share of your estate must go to certain relatives, usually your children and spouse, regardless of what your will says. You cannot simply leave everything to your partner or to a charity if forced heirship reserves a portion for your children.

For UK nationals living in the EU, the picture shifted with the EU Succession Regulation, often called Brussels IV. By default it applies the inheritance law of the country where you were habitually resident when you died. Crucially, it also lets many people make an express “choice of law” in their will, electing the law of their nationality to govern their estate instead. For a British national living in, say, France or Spain, choosing English law in the will can be a way to sidestep local forced-heirship shares, as explained in this overview from Stevens & Bolton on Brussels IV.

That said, a choice of law is not a magic wand. A German court has held that an English testator’s choice of English law did not displace Germany’s compulsory-portion claim, so the outcome can still depend on the local court and the specific country. The UK itself never opted into Brussels IV, which is exactly why this needs local legal advice rather than assumptions. The practical takeaway is simple: forced heirship is real, and the law that applies to your estate is not always the law you would expect.

Which UK assets usually still need a UK will?

Even after years abroad, most people who left the UK still hold assets that sit squarely under UK law and are best dealt with in a UK will:

• UK property, whether owned outright or jointly
• UK bank and building society accounts and savings
• UK pensions and their death benefits
• UK ISAs, GIAs and other investments
• UK business interests and shares
• Personal items still stored in the UK

A quick aside on pensions. UK pension death benefits usually pass through a separate “expression of wish” or nomination form held by the scheme, not through your will. If your will and your pension nomination point at different people, the nomination generally wins for the pension. Keeping those beneficiary nominations aligned with your wider estate plan is one of the easiest things to get wrong and one of the easiest to fix.

How can expats avoid accidentally revoking their other wills?

This is the single most expensive mistake in cross-border estate planning, and it is entirely avoidable.

Most UK wills open with a standard line: “I revoke all former wills and testamentary dispositions.” Harmless at home. Abroad, it can be a disaster. If you make a new will in your country of residence containing that sweeping wording, it can wipe out your earlier UK will. The reverse is just as true. The result is assets falling into intestacy in one country while the other will tries to deal with everything, exactly the outcome you were trying to prevent.

The safe approach, set out clearly by MP Estate Planning on international wills, is for each will to use a limited revocation clause. Each document should state plainly that it deals only with assets in a particular jurisdiction and revokes only previous wills relating to that jurisdiction. Your UK will covers UK assets; your local will covers local assets; neither cancels the other.

Making that work in practice means a few sensible habits:

• Get your UK solicitor and your overseas lawyer talking to each other, not drafting in isolation
• Keep a simple inventory of every will you hold and exactly what each one covers
• Use consistent executors and beneficiaries across documents where it makes sense
• Make sure your executors actually know where the latest valid wills are stored

Does a UK Lasting Power of Attorney stay valid if you live abroad?

Yes, a properly made and registered UK Lasting Power of Attorney remains a valid legal instrument even when you move overseas. Whether it is any practical use abroad is a different question.

An LPA is a creature of the law of England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own systems). Foreign banks, hospitals and authorities are under no obligation to recognise it, and recognition genuinely varies country to country. Some institutions accept a UK LPA without fuss; others want a local equivalent and will not budge. Where a country is a signatory to the Hague Convention, attaching an apostille can help the document be recognised, and a certified translation is often needed too.

So why bother with a UK LPA at all once you live abroad? Because it is precisely the tool for your UK side of life. If you lose capacity overseas, your attorney can still deal with your UK bank, manage or sell UK property, handle HMRC matters and keep UK affairs running. A local power of attorney in your country of residence handles the local side. Most people with assets in two places need both, working together rather than competing.

What types of UK LPA should expats consider?

In England and Wales there are two types of LPA, and you can make one or both. They cover very different decisions, and they switch on at different moments.

Type of LPA	What it covers	When it can be used
Property and Financial Affairs	Managing bank accounts, paying bills, dealing with UK property, handling investments and pensions, acting on your behalf with UK institutions	As soon as it is registered, with your permission, even while you still have mental capacity
Health and Welfare	Decisions about medical treatment, care arrangements and daily routine, including life-sustaining treatment if you choose to include it	Only once you have lost the mental capacity to make those decisions yourself

The distinction matters when you live overseas. A Property and Financial Affairs LPA is what keeps your UK money moving if you are incapacitated abroad, letting your attorney make financial decisions on your behalf, and it can be used while you still have capacity, which is handy when you are thousands of miles from your UK bank. Picking the right type of power of attorney depends on whether you are most worried about your money, your medical care, or both. The official position on both types is set out on the GOV.UK power of attorney guidance.

Choosing your attorneys takes more thought when you live overseas. Pick people who are available across time zones, who can realistically deal with UK institutions, and ideally who are based in or familiar with the UK. You can appoint attorneys to act “jointly” (all must agree) or “jointly and severally” (any can act alone); the latter is usually more practical when one attorney might be hard to reach.

Can you make and register a UK LPA while living overseas?

In many cases, yes. You do not have to be physically in the UK to create and register an LPA, though doing it from abroad adds a few logistical hurdles worth planning around.

The broad process looks like this. You complete the LPA forms, naming your attorneys. A “certificate provider”, an independent person who confirms you understand the document and are not under pressure, signs to that effect. The forms are signed and witnessed in the correct order, then sent to the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) for registration. An LPA cannot be used until it is registered.

Two figures are worth knowing. The OPG registration fee is £92 per LPA, so registering both types costs £184, with reductions or exemptions available on low income or certain benefits. Registration typically takes 8 to 10 weeks if there are no mistakes in the application, per the GOV.UK guidance from the Office of the Public Guardian. Mistakes made from abroad, where you cannot easily pop back to fix a signature, can push that timeline out considerably.

The common friction points when applying from overseas are predictable: finding a suitable certificate provider and witnesses abroad, postage and courier delays sending originals back and forth, and small form errors that bounce the whole application. None of these are dealbreakers. They are simply reasons to start early, while you have time and capacity, rather than scrambling when a crisis has already hit.

Why might you need a local power of attorney too?

A UK LPA does not reach into your country of residence the way you might hope. If you need someone to sell your apartment in Lisbon, access your local bank, or make medical decisions at a local hospital, a UK document may simply not be accepted.

A local power of attorney, drawn up under the laws of where you live, fills that gap. Many countries require these documents to be notarised, and some require an apostille or legalisation on top. The forms, the language and the formalities differ everywhere, which is why a local lawyer is non-negotiable here.

The goal is coordination, not duplication. Your UK LPA handles UK assets and decisions; your local POA handles local ones. Where it makes sense, appoint consistent people, and make sure the scopes do not overlap or contradict, so no institution can wave the document away because it conflicts with another.

How do tax residency and domicile affect expat estate planning?

Wills decide who inherits. Tax decides how much is left for them to inherit. The two need to be planned together, and for anyone with a UK financial history the key concepts are residence and domicile, which are not the same thing.

Residence is broadly about where you live and spend your time now. Domicile is a stickier, deeper concept that can keep pulling your worldwide estate into the UK inheritance tax (IHT) net long after you have physically left. The UK rules in this area changed significantly from April 2025, moving towards a long-term residence test for IHT, so the old “domicile” shorthand no longer tells the whole story. Any figure or rule here should be checked at the source, and the current position is published on GOV.UK’s inheritance tax guidance.

Your country of residence will have its own inheritance, estate or gift tax, and the interaction between the two systems is where people get caught out. Some corridors are covered by a double tax treaty; many rely on unilateral relief instead. It is genuinely possible to face tax in both countries on the same asset without careful planning. This is exactly the territory where an international financial planner working alongside your solicitors earns their keep, particularly if you own property in more than one country or have a mixed-nationality family.

Should expats appoint local executors?

An executor based in the wrong country can turn a straightforward estate into months of administrative gridlock. A foreign executor trying to deal with local banks and courts may face in-person requirements, certified document demands and time-zone delays that an executor on the ground simply does not.

For assets in your country of residence, appointing a trusted local individual or a professional executor there often speeds things up dramatically. For UK assets, a UK-based or UK-familiar executor does the same job on that side. Where you have estates in multiple countries, a coordinated set of executors, each handling their own jurisdiction but talking to one another, usually beats one person trying to do everything from one place.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make a will in the UK if I live abroad?

Yes. You can make a UK will dealing with your UK assets even while living overseas. The usual advice when you live abroad is to keep that UK will limited to UK assets and to have a separate will in your country of residence for local assets, with each will drafted so it does not revoke the other.

Can I give power of attorney to someone who lives in another country?

Yes, your attorney does not have to live in the UK. The practical question is whether they can effectively act for you, dealing with UK banks, property and institutions across time zones. Many expats appoint a UK-based attorney for the Property and Financial Affairs LPA precisely because so much of the work happens with UK organisations.

How much does a will and power of attorney cost in the UK?

The Office of the Public Guardian charges £92 to register each LPA, so registering both the Property and Financial Affairs and the Health and Welfare types costs £184, with reductions or exemptions for those on low income or certain benefits. Will-drafting fees are separate and depend on the solicitor and the complexity of your cross-border estate.

What happens to my UK assets if I become incapacitated abroad without an LPA?

Without a registered LPA, nobody automatically has legal authority to manage your UK affairs. Your family may have to apply to the Court of Protection for a deputyship, which is slower, more expensive and more stressful than putting an LPA in place beforehand. In the meantime, accessing your UK bank accounts or dealing with UK property can become very difficult.

Do I really need two wills, or can one cover everything?

Sometimes a single will can work, but for anyone with assets in two countries, separate coordinated wills usually reduce probate friction and protect against forced-heirship surprises. The essential point is coordination: each will must be drafted so it does not accidentally revoke the other, which is why both should be prepared with legal advice in their respective jurisdictions.

Your next steps

Cross-border estate planning rewards people who act while they have time and capacity, not those who wait for a crisis. The pieces, your UK will, your local will, a UK LPA, a local power of attorney, your pension nominations and your tax position, all need to fit together rather than sit in separate drawers contradicting each other.

A sensible starting point is to take stock: list your assets by country, gather any existing wills and powers of attorney, note who you would want as executors and attorneys, and flag where the two jurisdictions might clash. From there, the legal drafting can be done by qualified solicitors while the financial planning ties it all together.

This is where Opes Financial Planning International comes in. The international arm, headed by Nick Reid, has supported expatriate clients around the world for over 30 years, coordinating the financial side of cross-border estates so your pensions, investments and nominations line up with your legal documents. If you would like to review where your UK and overseas affairs stand, you can contact Nick for an initial conversation, or read more about the firm and its approach. No pressure, just a clear look at what you have and what might be missing.