German Estate Planning and Wills

If you own assets in the UK and Germany, or are English or Welsh with assets in Germany we can help you to put Wills in place.

Owning assets in more than one jurisdiction inevitably leads to conflicts of laws which are not always immediately obvious. For this reason, and to ensure the accuracy and dependability of our advice, we carefully analyse our client’s circumstances and provide them with a comprehensive, bespoke written report before we draft their Wills, which deals with the following matters including:

• Analysing your domicile, including common-law and civil law definitions
• Advising on the German forced heirship, such as the right to compulsory shares (‘Pflichtteile’) and Anglo-Welsh testamentary freedom.
• Advising on EU Regulation 650/2012 (Brussels IV) (‘Europäische Erbrechtsverordnung’) (‘EU-ErbVO‘), where appropriate.
• Advising on the tax and succession treatment of German estate planning structures in the UK.
• Advising you on German matrimonial property regimes (‘Güterstand’).
• Assessing your assets and liabilities, including the ownership structure of your German property, i.e. whether the property is held as joint tenants or tenants in common, the closest German equivalents being ‘Gesamthandseigentum’ and ‘Bruchteilseigentum’ respectively.
• Generic overview of the German Inheritance and Gift Tax Regime (‘Erbschafts- und Schenkungsteuer’).
• UK Inheritance Tax Allowances & Exemptions (estate planning opportunities).
• Advising on double taxation relief.

Only after we have completed the report can we draft the wills – depending on your circumstances we will either draft two separate Wills: one to cover your English and another to cover your German assets, or a single Will to cover multiple jurisdictions. We will seek to ensure your assets pass as you wish (insofar as that is possible).

Most of our clients do not live within close proximity to our offices, but we can assist whether our clients prefer to come into our offices to meet us, or to speak to us over the telephone or use video conferencing such as Zoom, Skype, or Teams.

The International and Cross-Border team is specialised in dealing with UK-German as well as multi-jurisdictional wealth planning matters, and we have a German-speaking member in the team.