Short version: when an inheritance crosses borders, there usually isn’t one country whose law covers all of it. Families tend to start with the deceased’s passport, or with wherever the will was signed, and expect one system and one office to sort out everything. That almost never happens. What you actually end up with is a map. You go through the estate one asset at a time and note which law decides who gets it, which office confirms who the heirs are, and what the bank or registry holding it wants on paper before it lets go.
In most modern succession systems, citizenship isn’t the main thing that decides which law applies. It just happens to be the one fact everybody in the family already knows. So it becomes the default. Each adviser gets asked a slightly different question under a different set of conflict rules, and the passport is the only detail all of them are given.
And that’s where it goes wrong. Conflict rules aren’t the same everywhere, and whichever authority is handling the case uses its own, not some neutral international standard. One estate can look completely different from two countries. One system sees a single worldwide succession. Another splits it in two: land under local law, everything movable under a separate succession. Wills work the same way. A will that’s perfectly fine where it was signed can get checked against stricter form rules where the property is. The passport shortcut shows up most when the deceased was a foreign citizen and everything they owned was in one country, and that’s exactly when the local detail it skips over ends up deciding the case. For how this plays out in Belarus, see our note on inheritance by foreign citizens in Belarus.
The second mistake is just as common: one will, so one estate, so one proceeding. In real life the will is one document, but the estate is a bunch of assets sitting in different registries, and the proceedings are whatever each office demands before it’ll move or re-register what it holds.
| Citizenship of the deceased | The conflict rules of the state whose authority hears the matter – commonly last habitual residence, sometimes nationality, and frequently a separate rule for immovables |
| The country where the will was signed | The law governing the will’s form, and only partly: compliance with the law of the place of execution may save it, but that says nothing about who inherits what |
| Where the bank account is held | The institution and jurisdiction holding the account: the bank applies the law and formalities it is required to apply, and may insist on a certificate issued locally |
| The family’s own agreement | Not the applicable law. An agreement can allocate what heirs receive, but it cannot change the rules that fix their shares, and in some systems it needs a notarial or court form to bind anyone |
Look at those four rows and you can see why “which country’s law applies?” is the wrong question. You need three smaller ones, and you ask them again for every asset.
Each asset gets its own three answers, and they won’t always match.
Say one of the assets is a flat or a bank account in Belarus. Then you go to the notary for the deceased’s last registered address, and the certificate is issued through the notarial inheritance procedure in Belarus. An account at a bank somewhere else? Same three questions, different answers.
| Which law distributes the asset | Shares, who is an heir, freedom of testation | Advisers answer only for their own country, so the family holds three partial answers | A per-asset statement of the applicable law, tied to the asset’s type and location |
| Which authority proves heir status | Which certificate you can actually obtain, and where | Families apply to the wrong authority, or to the right one in the wrong country | The authority’s own procedural rules on jurisdiction |
| What the asset holder requires | Whether the bank, registry or notary will act | Documents are treated as interchangeable between countries | The institution’s written requirements, and the issuing state’s legalisation rules |
Don’t treat this table as a checklist you tick off once. Copy it for every asset. What the family really needs at the end is the finished map, not one tidy legal answer. The map is also the only way to get a realistic cost estimate, since the bill is driven by how many times you have to repeat a proceeding, much more than by anyone’s hourly rate.
Succession law runs on what lawyers call connecting factors. These are facts that link a person or a piece of property to a particular legal system. In practice, three kinds do most of the heavy lifting.
Last habitual residence as the default. A lot of European systems look first at where the deceased really lived, where their life was centred, and don’t much care what passport they carried. Under the EU succession rules, whoever handles the estate will normally apply the law of the country the deceased last lived in. You can opt for the law of your nationality instead, but only within limits. There’s also a European Certificate of Succession, which lets heirs prove their status in other member states. For a plain-English overview, see the European Commission’s guidance on managing a cross-border inheritance.
Nationality or personal law as the primary connector. Some countries still start from citizenship. That’s the rule that catches families off guard: someone who lived and worked abroad for thirty years can find their estate governed by the law of a country they left half a lifetime ago.
Situs carve-outs for land and registered property. Land, and anything else that has to be registered, often gets pulled out and handled under the law of the place where it is. The general rule doesn’t matter much here.
Belarus is a good example because it uses all three. Under Articles 1133 to 1135 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Belarus, the starting point is the law of the country where the deceased last lived, though they can pick the law of their nationality in the will. Real estate is different: it follows the law of wherever it’s located, and anything registered in Belarus is dealt with under Belarusian law. Article 1135 then covers form. Whether someone had capacity to make or revoke a will, and whether the will is properly made, depends on the law of where they lived when they signed it. Still, the will won’t be thrown out on form alone if it meets either the law of the place it was signed or Belarusian law.
When you compare these models, don’t do it on legal fees. Ask three things instead. How predictable is the result for the heirs? How many separate proceedings and documents will it take? And will the paper you end up with actually be accepted where each asset is? Fees mostly reflect duplicated proceedings and certificates that have to be issued again, so comparing them tells you very little when the outcomes themselves are different.
| Residence-based | Law of the last habitual residence, sometimes with a nationality election | A late move changes the governing law; a valid election in the will is overlooked | One main proceeding, plus local steps for immovables |
| Nationality-based | Law of the deceased’s citizenship | Long-term residents who never naturalised remain governed by the law of their country of origin | One main proceeding, but recognition abroad is not automatic |
| Situs carve-out for immovables | Land and registered property follow the law of the place where they sit | One estate, two distribution rules, and a house that does not follow the will | One proceeding for each country where real estate sits |
| Mixed (for example Belarus) | All three: residence by default, nationality by election, situs for immovables (registered property in Belarus falls under Belarusian law as part of the situs rule) | Families assume one of the three rules governs everything | Depends on the asset mix; often two |
So no model wins across the board. The comparison also can’t tell you how your particular estate will play out. That comes down to where the deceased really lived in their last years, whether there’s a will and how it was signed, and whether the countries involved recognise each other’s certificates. Where there’s no will, once you know which law governs, the estate is shared out by that law’s own order of heirs, not by the family’s sense of who was closest. We explain how that order works in our note on the order of inheritance.
There are four places where the neat one-law answer tends to crack. Each one changes the order you do things in, not just the numbers.
On tax, what you owe turns on domicile, where the person lived over the years, what kind of asset it is and whether a treaty applies. UK inheritance tax, for instance, can reach UK assets even if the deceased lived abroad, and a double-taxation treaty may give some relief. GOV.UK explains the residence test and treaty relief in its page on inheritance tax where the deceased was based outside the UK. The US is similar: if a nonresident leaves assets located in the US, there may be a separate return to file, and that’s what Form 706-NA is for. None of this tells you what a given estate will actually pay. It just shows that the tax question gets answered on different facts than the inheritance question.
| Who ends up with the house? | Usually the law of wherever the house actually stands. A treaty or an election in the will can change that. |
| Whether the will’s form holds | The form rules of the governing law, or the law of the place of execution where compliance saves it |
| Whether a child’s share can be reduced | The forced-share rules of the distributing law, not the deceased’s intention |
| Who taxes the estate | The tax rules of each state with a claim to the asset or the deceased, and any applicable treaty |
Why keep these apart? Because the four answers come from different places. A will nobody can fault on form can still be cut back by a forced share. Heirs can agree on a split and then get hit with a tax bill nobody saw coming. And if a will that’s valid in one country is challenged where the property is, the fight is about evidence and procedure in that country. We cover that in our material on grounds and procedure for contesting a will. One thing we’re not doing here is ranking countries by cost, speed or safety. The differences are built into each system, and how it turns out depends on what the estate owns and which countries are involved.
Choosing the governing law in a will isn’t just decorative drafting. It does something. Take Regulation (EU) No 650/2012: habitual residence is the default, but you can elect the law of your nationality instead. If you want to see how that election is set up, read the consolidated text of the Regulation. Where this option exists, you can usually only pick the law of your nationality, the clause has to be properly signed, and it’s worth revisiting every time you move. A clause written ten years and two countries ago might now do the opposite of what the family thinks it does.
What it can do
What it cannot do
Before it releases or transfers anything, a bank, registry or notary may also want the family to explain in writing which law applies. It’s less about winning an argument and more about giving the institution a document it can file: usually a written legal opinion. We describe that format under written legal opinions on Belarusian law. So a choice-of-law clause helps, but it won’t get you down to a single proceeding, and you may still need local documents for assets in each country.
Go through these steps in order. Each one needs the document you got from the step before.
For all of this, you’ll need: the death certificate, the will and any codicils, ID for each heir, proof of how they’re related, property and account records, powers of attorney and tax clearances.
There are two ways to legalise a document, and they’re not the same thing. An apostille is one certificate from a designated authority, and it only works between countries that signed the 1961 Apostille Convention. The up-to-date list of member countries and their issuing authorities is kept by the Apostille Section of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. If either country isn’t a member, you need consular legalisation instead. You can’t swap one for the other.
Timing is where estates lose money, far more often than they lose arguments. Every country has its own deadlines, and accepting or refusing an inheritance in one country does nothing automatically in another. Each clock runs on its own, and a decision made in one place may simply not count in the next. Heirs who can’t travel usually act through a notarised power of attorney, but check what it covers, how long it lasts and whether it’s been legalised before anyone relies on it. What you need for this, including how to accept by post, is explained under handling an inheritance without travelling to Belarus. If an heir isn’t sure they want to accept at all, they need to understand what refusing means in each country before the deadline hits. We walk through how it works in our note on renunciation of inheritance.
It depends, because there’s no worldwide rule. Whoever hears the case uses their own conflict rules, so a country that looks at residence and one that looks at nationality can reach different answers about the same estate. On top of that, land and registered property are often handled under the law of wherever they are, which can split one estate into two separate questions. Check the position in every country where there’s an asset before you hire anyone.
It can. A single will can deal with everything, wherever it is. But each asset may still be handed out under the rules of its own country, and the will can fail there on form or run into a forced share, even if it’s fine at home. Sometimes it’s simpler to make a separate local will just for that asset, especially where registration is fussy or a forced share applies.
In some countries, yes, though usually only the law of their nationality. The choice has to be made properly, and it can still lose out to forced shares, public-policy limits or another country’s land rules. How much it does depends on where the person lives and what they own, so look at the clause again whenever they move.
No. Tax looks at other things, like domicile, where the person lived over time and where the asset is. So the country that decides who inherits an asset isn’t necessarily the one that taxes it. Whether you get relief depends on whether there’s a treaty between the two countries, and that varies. Get local tax advice before anything is distributed. Trying to restructure after the transfer is usually too late.
That’s normal when assets are in several countries. Each certificate then gets legalised and translated for use abroad, and powers of attorney let one person act for the family in each place. Don’t assume recognition, though. A certificate one country accepts might count only as evidence somewhere else, or not count at all.
Then you may end up with proceedings running in two places at once. Whether the first ruling is recognised depends on the country and the kind of decision. An early ruling in one country won’t necessarily settle things where the asset actually is. Before anything moves, get local advice on whether the decision will stand there and what your options are if it doesn’t.
So work asset by asset, not as one estate. For each one you want three answers: which law hands it out, who can confirm the heirs, and what paperwork the bank or registry holding it will ask for. Your weakest answer, the one with the thinnest paper trail, is where the estate will stall.
That’s the trouble with starting from the passport. It’s one fact, so it feels like it should give you one answer. Then you find a flat sitting in a country with a different rule, or a different land registry, and the whole thing falls apart.
And when an estate like this does go wrong, it’s almost never over legal theory. Someone misses a deadline in one country. A certificate never got its apostille. The power of attorney turns out to be too narrow for what the bank wants to see.
