Dubai inheritance for non-Muslims: the civil default, wills and property transfer

The old warning is out of date for most non-Muslims

Property blogs still repeat a single line: if you die in the UAE without a will, Sharia law takes your estate. For a non-Muslim who dies in Dubai today, that is no longer the general rule. Since Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 on Civil Personal Status took effect on 1 February 2023, a non-Muslim who dies without a will defaults to a civil split, not Sharia succession, and the law only reaches deaths after that date. Real estate specifically is a separate and genuinely unsettled question, covered below, and the "Sharia applies to everyone" framing is also wrong in a different direction: a parallel law for Muslims, Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2024, is its own regime with its own start date, and Abu Dhabi runs a third system again. Treating all three as one law is the easiest way to get this wrong.

Who the civil law covers, and how to opt out

Under Article 1 of Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022, the law applies to non-Muslim UAE nationals and to non-Muslim foreigners residing in the UAE, for marriage, divorce, inheritance, wills and parentage. A person can instead choose to be governed by the law of their home country. Article 1(2) gives a further option: a non-Muslim can agree to apply other personal status legislation already in force in the UAE, rather than either the civil law or their home country's law. Article 1(3) limits all of this to events occurring after the law took effect, and under Article 18 that date is 1 February 2023.

Two things follow for a Dubai property owner. First, the law is opt-out, not compulsory: a will, or an election to use home-country law, can displace the civil default. Second, it is not retroactive. An estate from a death before 1 February 2023 falls under whatever regime applied at the time, not this one.

If there is no will: the civil default split

Article 11 of Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 sets the intestate default for a non-Muslim who leaves no will. Half of the estate passes to the surviving spouse, and the other half is divided equally among the children, with no distinction between sons and daughters. If the deceased has no children, the estate goes to the surviving parents equally, or half to the surviving parent and half to the siblings if one parent has already died; where there are no parents, the siblings share it equally regardless of sex.

Article 11 also gives a non-Muslim testator the right to leave a will disposing of their entire property in the UAE to anyone they choose, subject to the law's executive regulations, which is the mechanism behind the DIFC and Dubai Courts services described below.

A separate provision matters for foreign nationals specifically: under Article 11(3), despite the default split above, any heir of a foreigner may ask for the law applicable to the estate under the Civil Code's conflict-of-laws rules to be applied instead of the civil default, unless there is a registered will saying otherwise. In practice this means an heir unhappy with the 50/50 civil split can try to have a different national law applied, and a registered will is what forecloses that route.

One complication sits underneath both Article 1 and Article 11(3): both cross-refer to the conflict-of-laws provisions of the 1985 Civil Code (Federal Law No. 5 of 1985). That Civil Code was replaced by Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025, which took effect on 1 June 2026. Which provisions of the new law now perform the role the 1985 Civil Code played in Articles 1 and 11(3) was not established in this review. Anyone relying on the conflict-of-laws election in Article 11(3) after that date should check the current position rather than assume the old cross-reference still points where it used to.

Where Sharia succession still applies

The civil default above covers a non-Muslim's general estate. Real estate is a separate and contested question. Professional commentary, including estate-planning guidance from Withers Worldwide, holds that jointly-owned assets held with a Muslim individual can remain subject to Sharia succession rules even where the other owner is not Muslim, and that UAE real estate carries continuing ambiguity over whether Sharia succession still applies to it in the absence of a will. This is not settled either way by a primary source reviewed here, and it should be treated as an open question rather than resolved in either direction: a non-Muslim property owner with a Muslim co-owner, or any doubt about which rules reach their real estate, is the clearest case for registering a will rather than relying on the intestate default.

Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2024, the Personal Status Law, is a different instrument entirely: it governs UAE citizens and foreign Muslims, replaced the Sharia-based Federal Law No. 28 of 2005, and entered into force on 15 April 2025. It operates alongside the 2022 civil law, not instead of it; the two laws address different populations under the same federal structure. Abu Dhabi Law No. 14 of 2021 on Personal Status for Non-Muslim Foreigners is a third, separate system again, administered by the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department and not part of the federal civil law that applies in Dubai. A will or succession rule that applies under the Abu Dhabi regime does not automatically apply to a Dubai property, and the reverse is also true.

Registering a will: DIFC Wills Service and Dubai Courts

A non-Muslim in Dubai has two realistic routes to register a will that covers UAE assets.

The DIFC Wills Service accepts registration from any non-Muslim aged 18 or over, with no UAE residency requirement. Since the DIFC Wills and Probate Registry Rules took effect on 30 June 2019, a DIFC Full Will can cover a non-Muslim's assets across all seven emirates plus worldwide assets, not only Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah as the original rules allowed. A narrower Property Will covers UAE real estate only.

Dubai Courts offers a separate, notarial route: its Notary Public registers wills for non-Muslims, and the courts have a dedicated division that handles non-Muslim inheritance cases and the execution of non-Muslim wills.

Fees differ by will type and are where secondary sources disagree, sometimes sharply. The table below sets out the DIFC fee schedule as published by Insight Advisory, a DIFC-registered will-drafting firm.

A figure worth flagging because it circulates incorrectly: some property-advice sites describe a DIFC property will as costing "from AED 10,000." AED 10,000 is the Full Will fee, and also the mirror Property Will fee for a couple; the single Property Will fee is AED 7,500. The two figures get swapped often enough that it is worth checking which will type a quoted price actually refers to before budgeting for one.

Dubai Courts' notarial will fee is murkier, and this article will not pretend otherwise. Secondary comparison sites give different government fee figures for a single will, roughly AED 2,020 to AED 2,167, with mirror wills priced at roughly double. The underlying service and the rough price band appear real, but the exact current figure could not be confirmed against a live Dubai Courts fee schedule in this review, and the sources disagree with each other. Anyone budgeting for a Dubai Courts notarial will should get the current number directly from Dubai Courts rather than trusting any single blog figure, including this one.

A will does not have to be a document signed at a desk months before a wedding: Article 13 of Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 lets a non-Muslim couple complete a will registration form at the same time as signing their civil marriage contract.

Joint ownership: a co-owner's share does not pass automatically

A common claim worth correcting directly: several property blogs state that if one owner in a jointly-owned Dubai property dies, their share automatically passes to the surviving co-owner, the way it might under a right-of-survivorship arrangement in some other countries. That is not how Dubai property co-ownership works. Under Article 1051 of the new Civil Transactions Law, Dubai co-ownership is ownership in common rather than joint tenancy: a deceased co-owner's share passes to their heirs through succession, and does not automatically transfer to the surviving co-owner. Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025, which contains that provision, repealed the 1985 Civil Code and took effect on 1 June 2026.

Practically, this means a surviving co-owner of a jointly-held Dubai property, married or not, needs the same succession process described below to deal with the deceased's share as any other heir would. The other owner's name on the title does not by itself settle anything.

Transferring inherited property at the Dubai Land Department

Once succession is established, whether through a will or the intestate default, the property itself has to be transferred at the Dubai Land Department. DLD's Inheritance Title Transfer service requires the Legal Notification of Inheritance or a court decree of distribution, an official letter from the issuing court addressed to DLD requesting the transfer, Emirates ID copies for resident heirs, passport copies for non-resident heirs, and a No-Objection Letter from the mortgaging bank if the property is mortgaged.

DLD charges AED 1,000 per property for the Inheritance Title Transfer service, plus AED 250 for a new Title Deed, along with additional small map and knowledge/innovation fees. The service has a stated processing time of 8 working hours once the documents and fees are submitted at a service centre. That is fast once the legal notification or court decree is in hand, though obtaining that underlying document through the courts is the step that actually takes time and is not covered by DLD's own 8-hour figure.

A frequently missed requirement is the bank No-Objection Letter. Guidance that lists only a court order plus the heirs' Emirates ID or passport, without mentioning the mortgage No-Objection Letter, is describing an unmortgaged property; a mortgaged one needs the bank's sign-off before DLD will process the transfer.

Mortgaged property and life insurance on death

UAE banks require life insurance as a condition of granting a mortgage, and if the borrower dies, the insurer pays the outstanding loan balance directly to the bank to settle the debt, rather than the payout passing through the estate. That is the ordinary mechanism by which a mortgaged property can reach heirs without the debt attached, and it is why the DLD transfer process above calls for a mortgage No-Objection Letter: the bank confirms the loan position, including whether insurance has already cleared it, before releasing its interest in the title.

Borrowers are not locked into whichever insurer the bank first offers. Under the Central Bank of the UAE's Consumer Protection Standards, a mortgage borrower has the right to buy the mandatory life insurance from any CBUAE-licensed insurer of their choice, rather than being required to use the bank's default partner. Shopping this cover separately can be worth doing while the borrower is alive, since the premium and payout terms affect how cleanly the mortgage gets settled on death.

The mortgage itself sits under CBUAE Circular No. 31/2013 on mortgage lending, as amended by Resolution No. 31/2/2020, which sets loan-to-value caps, debt-burden-ratio limits, a maximum 25-year tenor and a mandatory interest-rate stress test, and remains in force. Separately, if an heir wants to settle a mortgage early rather than keep paying it after inheriting the property, Regulation No. 29 of 2011 caps the early-settlement fee on a personal or mortgage loan at 1% of the outstanding balance or AED 10,000, whichever is less.