Jurisdiction Coverage and Cross-Border Wills

Almost every jurisdiction sits in one of three families, and knowing which one you are dealing with explains most of the surprises.

The same document, executed under different rules, may be unremarkable in one country and open to challenge in another. Four things vary the most.

• Witnessing rules: how many witnesses are needed, who is allowed to be one, whether they have to be physically present, and whether a notary replaces them or sits alongside them
• Holographic acceptance: whether a handwritten and signed will counts at all. Some jurisdictions accept one outright, some only in an emergency, and some not at all
• Age and capacity: the minimum age for making a will, which is commonly eighteen but lower in some places for service personnel or married minors, and how mental capacity is assessed
• Revocation: whether a later will cancels an earlier one automatically, whether destroying a will with that intention is enough, and whether marriage or divorce changes an existing will

Where a person is connected to several countries, international frameworks decide which law applies. These are descriptions of the frameworks, not a reading of any particular situation.

• EU Succession Regulation 650/2012: generally applies the law of habitual residence at death across the EU, excluding Ireland and Denmark. A resident may instead elect the law of their nationality, and that election has to be made expressly in the will
• Hague Convention of 1961 on formal validity: preserves the formal validity of a will across signatory states where it meets the formalities of the place of signing, or of the nationality, domicile or habitual residence of the person who made it
• Habitual residence and domicile are different things: habitual residence is closer to where a person actually lives day to day, while domicile takes in intent and origin. The distinction matters at death, and it is a common place for assumptions to go wrong
• A European Certificate of Succession: issued by a national authority under the same Regulation, it proves the standing of an heir, executor or administrator across member states. We do not issue one, and the evidence pack supports an application for it

Wills and other documents can be prepared now for a defined set of launch jurisdictions, and more jurisdictions are coming soon as per-jurisdiction templates and capacity tests are built out. The live list is the one shown when you pick your jurisdiction during generation rather than a figure quoted here, so it cannot fall out of date. US states are not available yet.

• You pick the jurisdiction during generation: the per-jurisdiction template, witness rules and capacity tests for that jurisdiction are the ones applied
• The choice is recorded in the evidence pack: which matters years later, when a court applies conflict-of-laws rules to work out which law governs the estate
• Your cross-border facts are captured at onboarding: citizenship, tax residency, domicile and future-residence plans are collected for exactly this reason, so the facts a later analysis needs were written down at the time
• Assets or family in several places: the multi-jurisdiction product exists for that case and handles the bridge between them

The legal guides go jurisdiction by jurisdiction on the rules that vary most: witness requirements, when a wet-ink signature is needed and when an electronic one is accepted, and the intestacy rules that decide what happens when there is no will at all.