Services  ·  04 · The legacy

Succession & Estate.

The work that decides how everything else passes to the next generation — the operating business, the shareholding, the property, the cash, and the family itself. Most clients establishing in Dubai do not think about it for the first two years, by which point an avoidable mistake has often been made. We attend to it from the start.

Why this matters more in Dubai than elsewhere.

Three facts shape succession planning in the United Arab Emirates, and most clients learn them too late.

The first: by default, Sharia inheritance law applies to UAE assets — including company shareholdings, bank accounts, real estate, and personal effects — regardless of the deceased's religion or nationality. For a non-Muslim founder or family this default is almost never what was intended. Sharia inheritance distributes fixed shares to specific relatives, does not respect a foreign will, and freezes assets until the courts complete administration. Without a UAE-registered will, your London solicitor's carefully drafted estate plan has no force here — and the operating business sits paused while the courts work through it.

The second: UK trust structures no longer offer the protections they did pre-April 2025. The end of the non-dom regime has materially changed how UK-resident settlors and beneficiaries are taxed on offshore trust holdings. Many families and founders who established UK-based trust arrangements in the previous decade are now finding those structures actively tax-inefficient. Migrating them to a more suitable vehicle has become one of the dominant succession questions we are asked.

The third: a privately-held UAE company is exposed at every shareholder death event unless a structure protects it. A single-shareholder founder dies; the shares enter UAE probate; the company cannot pass resolutions, draw on its banking facility, pay suppliers, or honour customer contracts until the courts conclude. We have seen operating businesses paused for two years for want of a shareholders' agreement and a UAE will that together would have cost a fraction of a single month's lost trading.

The succession questions in Dubai are not the succession questions in London or New York or Mumbai. The defaults are different. The vehicles are different. The opportunities are different. The mistakes are different — and they are usually only discovered when it is too late to fix them.

What we do.

Shareholder succession and family-business handover

For founders whose Dubai company holds material value, the most pressing succession question is rarely about personal estate — it is about who controls the operating business if the principal is unavailable, incapacitated, or deceased. The work spans drafting a proper shareholders' agreement (the absence of one is the single most common cause of multi-year UAE business paralyses), articulating buy-sell mechanics between founders, structuring the share class so dividends and control can be distributed differently, and where applicable transferring shareholding into a Foundation so the corporate entity is held by a vehicle that does not die.

For multi-generational family businesses preparing to hand over to the next generation, we design the transition as a managed sequence: when shareholding moves, on what conditions, with what reserved rights for the founder, with what governance overlay (council, board, advisory committee), and how the operating-business succession aligns with the personal-estate succession.

DIFC & ADGM Foundations

Foundations are the structural vehicle that has displaced the offshore trust for most internationally-mobile clients in the last five years. A Foundation is a hybrid entity — it owns assets in its own right (like a company) but operates for the benefit of named beneficiaries (like a trust), governed by a Council and a Charter rather than a trustee deed. The UAE's two principal Foundation regimes are DIFC Foundations (introduced 2018) and ADGM Foundations (introduced 2017); both operate under English common law and are well-served by international banks.

Foundations are particularly suitable for:

• Founders consolidating their UAE operating-company shareholding into a vehicle that survives them.
• Families migrating wealth out of UK-based trust structures that no longer perform under the post-non-dom tax framework.
• Multi-generational succession planning where the settlor wishes to retain control during their lifetime.
• Asset protection where the family or the business is concerned about creditor or litigation exposure in any single jurisdiction.
• Family-business succession where shareholding needs to pass to the next generation in a controlled manner.
• Charitable structures alongside private family or business benefit.

We act as Registered Agent for client Foundations (a legal requirement) and provide the ongoing administrative apparatus — registered office, council meeting administration, annual filings, beneficiary register maintenance, and asset reporting. The legal drafting of the Foundation Charter sits with specialist counsel; we coordinate that work but do not undertake it ourselves.

Indicative investment: set-up from AED 65,000 for DIFC, AED 50,000 for ADGM. Annual administration from AED 35,000.

DIFC Wills

The DIFC Wills Service is the gold standard for non-Muslim families and founders with UAE assets. Established in 2015 by the Dubai International Financial Centre, the registry sits under DIFC's English common law framework — meaning your will is governed by familiar legal principles, your wishes are respected, and your executors operate under a court system designed for the purpose. Coverage extends to any asset located in the UAE: company shareholdings, real estate, bank accounts, vehicles, and personal effects.

We coordinate the full process: drafting (with a panel of registered DIFC will-drafting firms), translation where required, registration at the DIFC Wills Service, secure storage, and ongoing review as your circumstances change. We also coordinate with your home-country estate counsel so the UAE will sits cleanly alongside your principal will rather than creating conflicts of interpretation.

Indicative investment: from AED 12,500 for a single will; from AED 17,500 for mirror wills (married couples). Annual review is included for the first three years.

Family-office architecture

For founders and families with material assets across multiple jurisdictions, a structured family-office function — whether single-family, multi-family, or virtual — provides the governance discipline that keeps decisions consistent across generations. We help design the architecture (where in Dubai or Abu Dhabi the function sits, what services are insourced versus contracted, how reporting and decision-making cascade) and coordinate the build, drawing on a network of legal, tax, and investment professionals.

Most clients who think they need a single-family office should start with a virtual or multi-family structure. The fully-staffed single-family office is rarely the right answer below ~£100 million of investable assets — and increasingly, even above that.

Succession planning across the architecture

The slow, careful work of mapping who inherits what, when, and under what conditions; coordinating between UAE and home-country counsel so wills and trusts do not conflict; ensuring your business succession is not inadvertently triggered by a routine event (such as a director's death triggering a forced share transfer under a free-zone constitution); and reviewing the architecture every three to five years against changes in family, business, asset position, and law.

Costly mistakes we see, and how we prevent them.

• UAE business shareholding held personally rather than through a structure. On the shareholder's death, shares are subject to UAE probate and (without a will) Sharia distribution. We have seen operating businesses paused for two years because of this.
• No UAE will registered. Default Sharia inheritance applies. UK or US will has no force in UAE. Resolution requires expensive UAE court proceedings that may not respect the foreign will. Frequency: roughly half of the clients we first meet have not yet addressed this.
• UAE will registered with the Dubai Courts rather than DIFC. Dubai Courts wills sit under Sharia interpretation principles, not common law. Materially weaker protection for non-Muslims. Almost always the result of cost-cutting at registration.
• Single-shareholder company with no shareholders' agreement and no UAE will. Founder dies, the company has no mechanism to appoint a new signatory, the bank account cannot be operated, payroll and suppliers cannot be paid. Avoidable on day one with a properly drafted SHA and a DIFC will naming a corporate fiduciary.
• UK trust structure carried forward into UAE residency without re-examination. Settlor and beneficiaries can become tax-inefficient under the post-non-dom regime; the trust's tax position may now be worse than a UAE Foundation would have been. Often discovered at the next year's UK tax return.
• Foundation set up at the wrong jurisdiction. RAK ICC Foundations are cheap but face increasing scrutiny around economic substance. DIFC or ADGM Foundations cost more upfront but are accepted by international banks and recognised by the major tax authorities. The cheap option becomes the expensive option when the bank refuses the account.
• Foundation Council composition that does not survive the settlor. Too many Foundations are set up with only the settlor on the Council, with no succession provision. When the settlor dies, the Foundation becomes administratively paralysed for months while courts intervene.

How we work, in this phase.

A succession engagement begins with a mapping exercise — typically a structured two-hour conversation where we document the complete asset position across jurisdictions (including all operating-business shareholdings, intellectual property, and contractual rights), the current legal vehicles holding those assets, the family composition and likely succession, the management succession at any operating business, and the home-country estate framework already in place.

From that map we propose the architecture: which UAE assets are protected by which vehicle, where Foundations sit, where Wills cover what they need to cover, what shareholders' agreements need drafting, how the UAE structure aligns with the home-country position, and what review cadence keeps it fit. Implementation typically takes three to six months from the mapping conversation; ongoing maintenance is annual thereafter.

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