UAE Inheritance Law 2026: What Expats Without a Will Need to Know

The lede

Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 on Civil Personal Status, in force since February 1, 2023, states plainly that its provisions govern non-Muslim UAE nationals and non-Muslim foreign residents "unless any of them insists on the application of their law" regarding marriage, divorce, inheritance, wills and parentage, according to the law's official text published on the UAE Legislation Portal. That single clause reverses a claim repeated across dozens of law-firm and relocation-agency websites: that a non-Muslim expat who dies in the UAE without a will automatically has their estate distributed under Sharia. The statute's actual default, absent any registered will, is a civil scheme set out in the law itself — not Sharia, and not automatically the expat's home-country law either, unless that expat proactively invoked it.

The distinction is not academic. Under Article 11 of the 2022 Decree-Law, if a non-Muslim dies without a will, half the estate passes to the surviving spouse and the other half is divided equally among the children, "with no differentiation between male and female" — a materially different outcome from Sharia's fixed-share system, under which a son typically receives double a daughter's share and a surviving spouse's portion is calculated on a fixed fraction rather than a flat half. If the deceased has no children, the law directs the estate to surviving parents.

The main report: three different systems, and who falls under each

UAE inheritance law today runs on two parallel tracks, split by religion, with a will acting as an opt-out mechanism in both.

For Muslims — UAE nationals and expatriates alike — succession is governed by Sharia-based rules now codified in Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2024 on Personal Status, which took effect April 15, 2025 and replaced the earlier Federal Law No. 28 of 2005. These rules apply automatically to all Muslim estates in the UAE regardless of the deceased's nationality, using fixed heirship shares for spouses, children, parents and, in some circumstances, more distant relatives. Historically, a Muslim testator could freely direct only one-third of their estate through a will, with the remaining two-thirds bound to Sharia's fixed allocations — the so-called "1/3 rule." More recent civil-will mechanisms, including an ADJD option specifically for Muslim expats, have expanded the ability of some Muslim residents to opt out of that limitation, though eligibility and scope vary and should be confirmed directly with the relevant registry rather than assumed.

For non-Muslims, Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 created a genuinely separate civil framework. Three things can happen to a non-Muslim's UAE estate, depending on what the person did before death: if they registered a valid UAE will, that will controls, within the limits of what each registry allows; if they formally elected to apply their home country's succession law and can substantiate it, that law applies; and if neither happened, the statutory default under the 2022 Decree-Law itself takes over — the half-to-spouse, remainder-split-among-children formula described above, not Sharia.

Why the confusion persists

Part of the reason so many guides get this wrong is that the practical experience of dying intestate in the UAE can look similar regardless of which legal track technically applies. Bank accounts — including joint accounts — are typically frozen as soon as a death is registered, whether the eventual distribution follows Sharia, the 2022 Decree-Law's civil default, or a foreign law, according to multiple practitioner guides describing UAE probate procedure. Courts must still determine heirship, verify documentation, and in the case of foreign nationals often require translated and attested paperwork, a process that commonly takes months. From a grieving family's perspective, the freeze and the delay feel identical regardless of which substantive rules eventually govern the payout — which may explain why so much consumer-facing content collapses the distinction between "no will" and "Sharia applies," even though the 2022 reform means that is no longer accurate for non-Muslims.

There is a narrower sense in which the older claim retains some truth: before Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 took effect in February 2023, non-Muslim intestate estates in the UAE generally did fall under Sharia-influenced Personal Status Law by default. Content published before that date, or written without accounting for it, describes a regime that no longer applies to deaths occurring after the law's commencement.

Legal background: registering a will, and what it can and can't cover

Non-Muslim expats have three primary official channels to register a UAE will. The DIFC Wills Service Centre, operating under a common-law framework confirmed by Dubai Law No. 15 of 2017 and with enforcement jurisdiction addressed under the more recent Dubai Law No. 2 of 2025, offers several will types — full estate, property-only, guardianship, business-owner and financial-assets wills — with registration fees starting around AED 10,000 for a single will and AED 15,000 for mirror wills between spouses, according to multiple legal-services providers tracking current fee schedules. The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department (ADJD) offers a lower-cost alternative, at roughly AED 950 for a single will and AED 1,900 for a mirror will, drafted in Arabic or with certified Arabic translation, and is notably the only one of the three routes open to non-Emirati Muslim expats seeking a civil will option. Dubai Courts offers a third route, with fees generally falling between AED 2,000 and 4,000.

Not everything can be directed by a UAE will. Real estate, corporate shareholdings and UAE bank accounts can generally be covered. Pension entitlements, end-of-service gratuity payments and named-beneficiary insurance policies typically fall outside a will's reach and are governed instead by the terms of the underlying scheme or policy. A foreign will drafted in the expat's home country is not automatically recognized for UAE-sited assets — even a valid, enforceable UK or US will does not override UAE domestic succession rules for property physically located in the UAE, meaning expats with both UAE and overseas assets generally need a UAE-specific will alongside their home-country document, with each covering its respective jurisdiction.

Guardianship of minor children is a related but distinct issue. Without a registered will naming a guardian, decisions about who cares for a deceased expat's children default to court discretion rather than parental designation — a gap that both DIFC and ADJD will mechanisms allow parents to close directly.

Timeline

• 2005: Federal Law No. 28 on Personal Status establishes Sharia-based succession rules applied broadly across the UAE, including to non-Muslim intestate estates.
• 2014–2017: The DIFC Wills Service Centre is established and later confirmed under Dubai Law No. 15 of 2017, giving non-Muslim expats a formal civil-will registration route.
• 2019: DIFC will rules expand to cover assets across all seven emirates and, subject to legal advice, worldwide assets.
• 2021: Abu Dhabi Law No. 14 establishes ADJD's non-Muslim wills mechanism as an alternative, lower-cost registration route.
• 2022: Federal Decree-Law No. 41 on Civil Personal Status is issued, creating a dedicated civil framework — including a non-Sharia statutory default — for non-Muslim residents.
• February 1, 2023: Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 enters into force across all seven emirates.
• 2025: Dubai Law No. 2 clarifies DIFC Courts' enforcement jurisdiction over DIFC-registered non-Muslim wills.
• April 15, 2025: Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2024 on Personal Status takes effect, replacing the 2005 law and updating Sharia-based succession rules for Muslim estates.

Expert analysis

Practitioners advising non-Muslim clients consistently frame the 2022 reform as a genuine expansion of choice rather than a full substitute for planning. Legal commentary reviewed for this article repeatedly stresses that the civil default under Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022, while more familiar to Western expats than Sharia's fixed shares, is still a one-size-fits-all formula that may not match an individual's actual wishes — a spouse-and-children split that says nothing about stepchildren, unmarried partners, charitable bequests, or unequal distribution among children for reasons specific to a family's circumstances. Registering a will, in this framing, is less about avoiding Sharia specifically — since intestacy no longer defaults there for non-Muslims — and more about avoiding any default formula, civil or religious, in favor of a distribution the person actually chose.

On the practical cost comparison, legal-services providers note that registering even a full DIFC will, typically well under AED 10,000 including drafting, compares favorably against the cost of estate administration without one — commonly running to tens of thousands of dirhams once court fees, translation, and legal costs during a contested or unclear intestate process are factored in, before accounting for the delay and distress such proceedings impose on a grieving family.

Practical implications

For non-Muslim expats, the core practical takeaway is that dying without a UAE will no longer means Sharia applies by default — but it does mean a fixed statutory formula applies that may or may not reflect personal wishes, and that formula only governs UAE-sited assets covered by the 2022 Decree-Law's scope. Anyone with specific wishes — particularly blended families, unmarried partners (who receive no automatic inheritance rights under any of the frameworks described here), or those wanting to direct more or less than an even split among children — still needs a registered will to achieve that outcome.

For Muslim expats, the 1/3 rule and Sharia's fixed shares remain the default, though the availability of civil-will alternatives has expanded in recent years; eligibility for those routes should be confirmed directly with ADJD or the relevant registry rather than assumed from general guidance.

For families managing an estate without any will in place, the immediate practical reality — frozen bank accounts, a heirship-verification process that can take months, and the need for translated and attested documentation for foreign nationals — applies regardless of which substantive legal track ultimately governs distribution, making early legal advice valuable even in cases where the statutory default may already align reasonably well with the family's wishes.

What's next

The gap between what Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 actually says and what much of the publicly available guidance claims about it shows little sign of closing on its own — a large share of the content indexed by search engines on this topic continues to describe a pre-2023 legal landscape, or conflates the practical experience of intestacy (frozen accounts, court delay) with the substantive rules that eventually govern distribution. For expats making decisions about whether to register a will, the more durable takeaway is procedural rather than statistical: verify current requirements directly with the DIFC Wills Service Centre, ADJD, or Dubai Courts, and confirm with a UAE-licensed lawyer which of the three frameworks — Sharia, civil default, or a chosen home-country law — actually applies to a specific estate, rather than relying on generalized claims about what happens "without a will."