At the moment, when someone dies, several inheritance laws can come into play, particularly when the deceased is not a national of their country of residence or when they own property in several countries.

Currently, there are two rules in force to determine which inheritance law is applicable: either a single law is applied to the entire estate, or it can be subject to several different laws.

Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain apply the law of the deceased’s nationality, whereas Denmark and Sweden apply the law of the deceased’s last domicile. Luxembourg, Belgium and France, however, apply several laws to the inheritance: for movable property, the law of the deceased’s last domicile applies; and for real estate, the law of the country where it is located is applied. So there is a distinction between the different parts of an inheritance, depending on the law that applies to those parts.

On 17 August 2015, European Regulation 650/2012 of 4 July 2012 on the law applicable to international succession will come into force with a view to harmonising the way in which the applicable law is determined. This only applies to civil law, however, i.e. the law which determines the precedence of heirs and the proportion of an inheritance to which they are entitled and does not change tax rules. Note that some countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark will not be implementing this Regulation, which means that just one law will be applied to all the assets involved in an inheritance. Sandrine Pompidou, wealth engineer at ING Private Banking and a speaker at the round-table, specified that “this will avoid any ‘conflict of laws’ that heirs sometimes encounter in cases of complex international inheritance”.

The applicable law will subsequently be that of the country of the deceased’s habitual residence, even if the country in question is not a member state of the European Union (EU). It should also be noted that a person will be able to choose the law of the country (or one of the countries) of which they are a national as the law to be applied to their future estate. This must be specified in a will.

Lastly, this Regulation will introduce a European Certificate of Succession which will allow heirs to assert their rights in all EU member states, and will also allow procedures to be standardised. This is a welcome initiative, even though it is regrettable that the adoption procedures took so long – they started in 2009.

ING is pleased to have been able to clarify the situation for its clients at the round-table, and would like to remind its clients that specialists are available to answer any questions and provide further information.