Cyprus Wills for Expats and Foreign Residents

A will for the assets here, built around one questionnaire

A British expat with a house in Cyprus, a UK national with property here who lives elsewhere, a foreign resident with accounts and a company: each holds assets that a will made at home may not deal with well, or at all. We draft the Cyprus will as part of our Private Client practice: confined to the assets here, coordinated with the will abroad, and saying expressly which law governs.

Since 2015, silence chooses for you

The exemption foreign nationals once relied on, section 42 of the Wills and Succession Law, Cap. 195, was deleted in 2015. What governs the estate now is Regulation (EU) No 650/2012: by default, the law of the State where you were habitually resident at death, which for an expat living in Cyprus means Cyprus law, reserved portion included. Article 22 lets you choose the law of your nationality instead, and that choice exists only if it is written into a will.

A foreign will can be admitted for Cyprus purposes, but administering Cyprus assets under it is slower, and a will drafted at home without the Cyprus assets in mind may say nothing about the choice at all. The background is set out in do British expats need a Cyprus will, and the reserved portion fractions for a given family are on the forced heirship calculator.

The most common damage is self-inflicted: a later will with a general revocation clause cancelling an earlier will made in another country, without anyone intending it. Coordination between the two documents is most of the value of doing this properly.

What the fixed fee includes

A review of your existing will, wherever it was made, for what it does and does not do in Cyprus. A Cyprus will confined to the assets here, drafted so that it and the will abroad do not revoke one another, with an express statement of the governing law, and the Article 22 choice of your national law where the analysis supports it.

Execution in the form the Wills and Succession Law requires, arranged at our offices in Nicosia or coordinated where you are, and lodging of the will for safe custody at the probate registry if you wish. You receive the signed original or the deposit receipt, and a plain summary of what the will does.

Three steps, the first is ten minutes

1. The questionnaire. Nationality, residence, what you hold in Cyprus, what wills already exist, and who survives you. Ten minutes, no documents needed at this stage.

2. The figure. Fixed fee quoted within one business day of receiving your questionnaire. If the position needs anything beyond a will, a trust or a restructuring of ownership, we say so at this stage and quote separately, so the will fee is never a door into open-ended work.

3. The will. Draft for your review, execution arranged, custody if you want it. Most wills are ready for signature within days of the fee being approved, not weeks.

Tell us the shape of things

Short answers are fine. Fixed fee quoted within one business day of receiving your questionnaire.

Please do not send documents at this stage; the questionnaire is enough for the fee.