EU Succession Regulation - How It Affects You Outside Of The EU

INTRODUCTION

The EU Succession Regulation¹ is not just an EU thing as it ambitiously attempts to resolve the conflict of laws in succession matters. It will apply to deaths after 17 August 2015.

BACKGROUND

Due to the mobility of today's people, who can accumulate assets in multiple countries, upon death the usual questions faced when dealing with cross-border succession issues are:

(i) does a governing law clause only mean that place's domestic laws or does it include its private international laws which will, in all likelihood, pass the question to another country; and

(ii) can the laws of different jurisdictions apply to different assets?

Therefore, the aim of the Succession Regulation is to resolve the conflict of succession laws between the participating member states (which in this case do not include the UK, Ireland and Denmark) so that the courts of a single jurisdiction will apply a single set of laws to a person's estate regardless of