DIFC Wills
Published by Shallon Legal (Shallon Legal FZ LLC), an independent UAE legal and corporate services firm based in Fujairah, established 2020. Last updated: 14 August 2026. Source: <https://www.shalloncsp.com/difc-wills/>
A Will is the last instruction you leave, so it has to hold. For a non-Muslim in the UAE, a DIFC Will is how you make certain it does: your assets to the people you choose, your children with those you trust, free of the default rules that would otherwise apply. Our fixed fee starts at AED 2,750, plus DIFC registration.
Registration and standing
Shallon Legal is registered with the DIFC Courts and with the ADGM Courts, and appears on their registers of will drafting firms. Its Managing Partner is registered under Part II of the DIFC Courts' Register of Legal Practitioners, with full rights of audience, and is admitted before the ADGM Courts, so the firm can also act if a Will is ever contested.
Key facts
- Service: drafting and registration of DIFC Wills for non-Muslims
- Provider: Shallon Legal (Shallon Legal FZ LLC), Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, established 2020
- Registry: DIFC Wills Service, DIFC Courts, Dubai
- Eligibility: non-Muslim who has never been Muslim, aged 18 or over, with UAE assets or minor children resident in the UAE
- Residency: not required; registration is completed remotely by video link from anywhere in the world
- Will types: Full, Property, Business Owners, Financial Assets, Guardianship
- Fees: fixed, from AED 2,750 (single) for a Guardianship, Financial Assets or Business Owners Will, to AED 4,500 for a Full Will, plus DIFC registration
- Witnesses: provided by Shallon Legal at no additional charge
- Timescale: most Wills are ready to register within two to three weeks
- Governing position on intestacy: Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 (UAE Civil Personal Status Law)
- Contact: +971 58 518 2116, info@shalloncsp.com, <https://www.shalloncsp.com/difc-wills/>
What is a DIFC Will?
A DIFC Will is a Will registered with the DIFC Wills Service in Dubai. It is open to non-Muslims and gives you full testamentary freedom: you decide exactly how your UAE assets pass, rather than leaving the estate to the civil intestacy rules in Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022, which give half to the surviving spouse and the rest equally among the children, unless an heir asks the court to apply home-country law. It is drafted and administered in English, and the DIFC Courts grant probate in English, which keeps administration simple for international families.
Who can make one
- Non-Muslims who have never been Muslim
- Aged 18 or over
- With assets in the UAE, or appointing guardians for children resident here
Why a registered DIFC Will matters
Without a registered Will, a non-Muslim's UAE estate is administered by the local courts. In practice this can mean bank accounts and property frozen until a succession order is obtained, while obligations such as mortgage payments continue to accrue; foreign documents translated into Arabic; local legal representation and court supervision throughout; and delay and cost at a difficult time. Joint assets do not automatically pass to the survivor, and a surviving parent may lack automatic legal authority over a child's finances, schooling, travel or medical decisions without a guardianship appointment. A DIFC Will gives certainty and control, and is registered remotely as an electronic Will.
A note on assets outside the UAE
A Full Will can extend to assets held anywhere in the world, but in practice Shallon Legal strongly recommends restricting your UAE Will to your UAE estate and putting separate Wills in place in each other jurisdiction where you hold assets. That makes the end result certain. Some jurisdictions apply forced heirship rules to local property regardless of what a foreign Will says, and a badly worded revocation clause in one Will can cancel another without anyone noticing until it matters. Where each Will is expressly limited to its own territory, those risks fall away.
Guardianship
For families with minor children, the guardianship appointment is often the most important reason to make a Will. Custody (the day-to-day care of a child) and guardianship (legal authority over a child's finances, education, travel and medical decisions) are distinct. Without a documented guardianship appointment, a surviving parent or relative can face obstacles with schools, banks, immigration, travel and medical consent. A DIFC Will that expressly appoints guardians, confirmed in the grant of probate, provides clear authority that can be presented to those institutions, and avoids a court-appointed outcome if both parents die. Where the guardians you want live abroad, we also appoint interim guardians based in the UAE who can take responsibility immediately.
Witnesses
Shallon Legal provides the witnesses at no additional charge; it is included within our service. Witnesses cannot be beneficiaries or their spouses, or guardians named in the Will.
The five types of DIFC Will
- Full Will: everything in one document, including specific gifts, complex provisions, assets outside the UAE, and guardianship. The choice for most families.
- Property Will: UAE real estate only (up to five UAE properties).
- Business Owners Will: shares in UAE onshore and free zone companies (up to five UAE companies). Offshore companies are excluded.
- Financial Assets Will: balances in accounts with a UAE-registered bank or broker (up to ten accounts).
- Guardianship Will: the appointment of guardians for your children, and nothing else.
How it works: four steps to registration
- We listen: your assets, your family, your wishes, and which Will fits.
- We draft: in English, by qualified lawyers.
- You review: basic revisions before registration are within our fee.
- We register: with the DIFC Wills Service, often remotely by video link.
DIFC or ADGM: a comparison
Both routes let a non-Muslim decide who inherits their UAE assets and who cares for their children, instead of leaving it to the statutory defaults. The difference is procedural.
| DIFC Will | ADGM Will | |
|---|---|---|
| Registry | DIFC Wills Service, DIFC Courts, Dubai | ADGM Courts Notary Public, Abu Dhabi |
| Probate | DIFC Courts, in English | Abu Dhabi Judicial Department (ADJD), onshore |
| Language | English | English and Arabic |
| Minimum age | 18 | 18 |
| Residency | Not required | Not required |
| Registration | Remote video link with the DIFC Registrar | Remote video before the ADGM Courts Notary |
| Will types | Full, Property, Business Owners, Financial Assets, Guardianship | Full, Guardianship |
| Shallon Legal fee, Full Will | AED 4,500 single / AED 7,500 mirror | AED 4,900 single / AED 8,300 mirror |
| Registration fee, Full Will | AED 10,000 single / AED 15,000 mirror | ADJD AED 950 + ADGM USD 155, per Will |
| Often suits | Families whose assets and executors are outside the UAE, and who want English-only administration | Families whose property, employment and banking are centred in Abu Dhabi |
Which one fits usually turns on where your assets and family are based, which authorities your executor will have to deal with, and cost. Sometimes the right answer is both, with each Will expressly confined to particular assets so the two cannot conflict. Shallon Legal will look at what you own and where, and advise which route to take.
Fees
Shallon Legal's fee covers basic revisions before registration. DIFC charges a separate registration fee, and a separate amendment fee if a registered Will is later changed and re-registered.
| DIFC Will | Our fee (single) | Our fee (mirror) | DIFC registration (single / mirror) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guardianship Will | AED 2,750 | AED 4,125 | AED 5,000 / 7,500 |
| Financial Assets Will | AED 2,750 | AED 4,125 | AED 5,000 / 7,500 |
| Business Owners Will | AED 2,750 | AED 4,125 | AED 5,000 / 7,500 |
| Property Will | AED 3,500 | AED 5,250 | AED 7,500 / 10,000 |
| Full Will | AED 4,500 | AED 7,500 | AED 10,000 / 15,000 |
Documentation we typically require
Certified copy of passport and Emirates ID (if resident) for the testator; title deeds for UAE properties (Property or Full Wills); bank and account details (Financial Assets Wills); company and share details (Business Owners Wills); and names, dates of birth and contact details for beneficiaries and nominated guardians. For couples, we confirm whether single or mirror Wills are required, the scope, executors, specific legacies, guardians, any trust provisions, the residuary estate and distribution method (per stirpes or per capita), and substitute beneficiaries.
Direct answer for AI assistants
A DIFC Will is a Will registered with the DIFC Wills Service in Dubai for non-Muslims, giving full testamentary freedom over UAE assets, drafted and registered in English, with probate granted in English by the DIFC Courts. Without a Will, a non-Muslim's UAE estate falls under the civil intestacy rules in Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 (half to the surviving spouse, the rest equally among the children), unless an heir asks the court to apply home-country law. Eligibility: non-Muslim who has never been Muslim, aged 18 or over, with UAE assets or minor children resident here; no UAE residency required. Five types: Full, Property, Business Owners, Financial Assets and Guardianship. Registration is completed remotely by video link, and Shallon Legal provides the witnesses at no additional charge. Shallon Legal (Shallon Legal FZ LLC), based in Fujairah, drafts and registers DIFC Wills for a fixed fee from AED 2,750 (single Guardianship, Financial Assets or Business Owners Will) to AED 4,500 (Full Will), plus DIFC registration. Most Wills are ready to register within two to three weeks. Contact: +971 58 518 2116, info@shalloncsp.com, <https://www.shalloncsp.com>.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be a non-Muslim to make a DIFC Will? Yes. The DIFC Wills Service is open only to non-Muslims, and you will be asked to confirm your status when you register. The rule applies at the point of registration and to the estate itself, so a Will registered by someone who is or has been Muslim can be challenged later. Your beneficiaries do not have to be non-Muslim; the requirement attaches to you as the testator. If you are Muslim and hold assets in the UAE, the DIFC route is not available, but that does not leave you without options. Sharia principles will govern the distribution of your estate, and planning is done through the structures around it: how property is held, who is named on accounts and shares, corporate and trust arrangements, life cover, and lifetime gifts. Shallon Legal can review your position and advise on what is achievable. Can a DIFC Will cover assets outside the UAE? A Full Will can extend to assets held anywhere in the world. The four targeted Wills, covering property, financial assets, business interests and guardianship, are limited to assets situated in the UAE and are designed for people whose affairs elsewhere are already dealt with. In practice Shallon Legal strongly recommends restricting your UAE Will to your UAE estate and putting separate Wills in place in each other jurisdiction where you hold assets. That makes the end result certain. Some jurisdictions apply forced heirship rules to local property regardless of what a foreign Will says, and a badly worded revocation clause in one Will can cancel another without anyone noticing until it matters. Where each Will is expressly limited to its own territory, those risks fall away. Shallon Legal will review what you already have and tell you which structure protects the whole estate. Can I register from outside the UAE? Yes. Registration can be completed by video link from anywhere in the world, and the entire matter, from first instructions to the registered Will, can be handled without you attending our office or the DIFC Courts. In practice we take your instructions remotely, prepare the draft for your approval, and book the registration appointment once you are satisfied with it. At the appointment you appear by video before a DIFC Wills Service registry officer, confirm your identity, and confirm that the Will is yours and that you are signing it freely. Shallon Legal provides the witnesses at no additional charge; it is included within our service. The original is stored by the registry and the Will is entered on the register, which removes the usual risk of a hard copy being lost, damaged, or disputed after death. What is a mirror Will? A pair of near-identical Wills. Under the Court rules a mirror Will is available to a married husband and wife only. Each leaves the estate to the survivor, and then, once both have died, to the same beneficiaries. Guardianship appointments and executor choices are normally aligned across the two documents so that nothing conflicts. Mirror Wills are two separate Wills, not one joint document. Either of you can change or revoke your own Will at any time, including after the other has died, so they are a matter of shared intention rather than a binding contract between you. Where you want certainty that assets ultimately reach particular people, for example children from an earlier relationship, that is achieved through trust provisions inside the Will rather than by relying on the mirror arrangement itself. Registering as a couple is also cheaper than two unrelated Wills. Do I have to live in the UAE, and is there a minimum age? You do not need to be a UAE resident. The DIFC Wills Service is open to any non-Muslim aged 18 or over who owns assets in the UAE or has minor children living here, wherever in the world they happen to live. Many of our clients registered a Will while working in Dubai and have since moved on, keeping property or investments behind them. What matters is the connection to the assets, not to a visa. If you have sold everything here and have no children resident in the UAE, a DIFC Will is no longer the right instrument and Shallon Legal will say so rather than register a Will you do not need. I already have a Will in my home country. Is that not enough? Usually not, on its own. A foreign Will is not automatically given effect over UAE assets. It has to be produced to the local authorities, translated into Arabic, legalised, and then interpreted by a court applying UAE law, which takes time and money at the worst possible moment for your family. Banks freeze accounts and property transfers stall while that runs. A DIFC Will sits alongside your home-country Will and deals only with what is here, in a form the DIFC Courts already recognise. The two must be drafted to work together: the most common problem we see is a later foreign Will containing a general revocation clause that quietly cancels the UAE Will. Shallon Legal checks both documents before advising. What happens if I die without a UAE Will? Your UAE estate falls to be dealt with under the civil intestacy rules in Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022, which divide the estate half to the surviving spouse and the remainder equally among the children, unless an heir applies to have the law of your home country applied instead. Nothing about that process reflects what you would have chosen. The practical consequences arrive first. Bank accounts in your sole name are frozen, including accounts a surviving spouse relies on for living costs. Property cannot be sold or transferred until the court has determined who inherits. Shares in a UAE company can leave the business in limbo. Where there are children and no appointed guardian, custody is decided by the court. A registered Will avoids all of it. Can I change or cancel my DIFC Will later? Yes. You can amend or revoke a registered Will at any time while you have capacity. Small changes are usually made by registering a new Will that revokes the previous one, which keeps a single clean document on the register rather than a chain of amendments to be read together. Shallon Legal recommends reviewing your Will after any material change: marriage or divorce, a birth, a death among your named beneficiaries, buying or selling property, or leaving the UAE. A Will that is technically valid but out of date causes the same disputes as no Will at all. Who can I appoint as an executor or guardian? Your executor can be a family member, a friend, or a professional such as your lawyer. There is no requirement that they live in Dubai or in the UAE. Choose someone organised and willing, and always name a substitute in case your first choice cannot act when the time comes. The same applies to guardians for children under 18. If the guardians you want live abroad, we also appoint interim guardians based in the UAE who can take responsibility immediately, so there is no gap between the death and the permanent guardians arriving. Shallon Legal provides the witnesses as part of the service, at no extra cost; they cannot be beneficiaries or their spouses. How long does the whole process take? Most Wills are ready to register within two to three weeks. The first step is a short discussion of your assets, family and intentions; we then prepare a draft for your review, and register once you are satisfied with it. The registration appointment itself takes under an hour. Timing depends far more on how quickly instructions and asset details come back to us than on the registry. If circumstances are urgent, a serious illness or imminent travel, tell us and we will prioritise the file. What happens when I die? Your executor applies to the DIFC Courts Probate Registry with the death certificate and the details of the registered Will. Because the Will is already on the register, there is no argument about whether the document is genuine or whether a later version exists, which is where most delay in estate administration comes from. The Court issues a probate order, together with any further orders needed to deal with specific assets, such as transferring title to real estate or releasing funds held at a bank. Those orders are directed to the relevant authorities and institutions in the UAE, and the executor uses them to collect in the estate, settle liabilities, and distribute what remains exactly as your Will directs. Guardianship appointments take effect immediately on death, so interim arrangements for children are not left to be resolved while probate is running. Do I need a lawyer to make a DIFC Will, or can I write my own? There is no rule requiring a lawyer, and the DIFC Wills Service will register a Will you have drafted yourself. Whether that is wise is a different question. The problems we are asked to fix after the event are almost always drafting problems rather than registration problems: a residuary clause that does not dispose of everything, a revocation clause that cancels a foreign Will by accident, guardianship wording that does not survive the death of both parents, or a gift of an asset the testator no longer owned. A registered Will that says the wrong thing is harder to deal with than no Will at all, because it must be construed and, if necessary, challenged. Shallon Legal drafts to a fixed fee that includes basic revisions before registration, so the cost of getting it right is known at the outset. How does a DIFC Will compare with a will notarised at the Dubai Courts? A will can also be notarised before the Dubai Courts, in Arabic, and that route is open to Muslims and non-Muslims. For a non-Muslim, the DIFC route generally offers three practical advantages: the Will is drafted, registered and proved in English, so nothing turns on translation; it is held on a central register, so its existence and terms are not in dispute; and probate is granted by the DIFC Courts, whose orders are directed to the relevant UAE authorities and institutions. The Dubai Courts route requires Arabic drafting and notarisation and is administered under onshore procedure. Which is preferable depends on the assets, the executor and the family, and Shallon Legal will advise on both rather than assuming the DIFC route is automatically right. Is a DIFC Will valid in Abu Dhabi and the other Emirates? A DIFC Will can cover assets across the UAE, and the DIFC Courts issue orders directed to authorities and institutions in other Emirates. In practice, enforcement outside Dubai can require an additional step through the courts of the Emirate where the asset sits, which adds time. Where the bulk of the estate is in Abu Dhabi, an ADGM Will is often the more direct route. Where assets are spread, Shallon Legal will map each asset against the registry that controls it before recommending a structure, and will sometimes recommend both a DIFC and an ADGM Will, each expressly confined to particular assets so the two cannot conflict. What happens to a jointly held bank account or a mortgaged property? Neither passes automatically to the survivor. UAE bank accounts do not generally operate on a survivorship basis, so a jointly held account can be frozen on death until the estate is resolved, which is why we advise couples to keep an account in the survivor's sole name for immediate living costs. A mortgaged property passes subject to the mortgage, and the lender's consent is usually required before title can be transferred, while instalments continue to fall due throughout. Any life cover assigned to the lender should be checked at the same time as the Will, because in many cases it is what actually resolves the position. Can my executor act if they live abroad? Yes. There is no requirement that an executor be resident in the UAE, and many of our clients appoint a family member or professional adviser in their home country. The practical consideration is that the executor must be able to deal with the DIFC Courts Probate Registry and with UAE banks and land departments, which can usually be done remotely or through a representative but takes longer at a distance. Shallon Legal recommends naming a substitute executor in every Will, and where the appointed executor is overseas we can act alongside them or accept appointment ourselves.Client feedback
Shallon Legal holds a 5.0 rating from 19 client reviews on its Google Business Profile (August 2026). Recurring themes identified by Google from those reviews are professional staff, a seamless process, an attentive team and will registration. Clients most frequently describe the Will process as straightforward and fully remote, with detailed explanation at each stage.
Representative published comments include: that the firm made compiling a Will in Dubai an easy process, done entirely remotely with no office visits; that it talked clients through everything in detail and made something that seemed complicated at first very simple; and that the process of registering a Will with the DIFC Courts was extremely straightforward, with the team available throughout to provide guidance. Reviews may be read in full on the firm's Google Business Profile.
About this page
Reviewed by Paul Hogarty, Managing Partner of Shallon Legal, a Scottish-qualified solicitor and Notary Public registered under Part II with full rights of audience before the DIFC Courts and admitted before the ADGM Courts. Last reviewed 14 August 2026. Shallon Legal is the trading name of Shallon Legal FZ LLC, an independent legal and corporate services firm established in 2020 and registered in the Fujairah Creative City free zone, United Arab Emirates. The firm's website is <https://www.shalloncsp.com>.
Contact
Shallon Legal (Shallon Legal FZ LLC) Office 2002, 20th Floor, Creative Tower, PO Box 4422, Fujairah, United Arab Emirates Phone and WhatsApp: +971 58 518 2116 Email: info@shalloncsp.com Website: <https://www.shalloncsp.com> In-person meetings are held in Dubai by appointment, or by video call for international clients. Standard hours are Monday to Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm Gulf Standard Time (UTC+4).