Do You Need a Will If You Own Property in Dubai?

They will have to cancel the Golden Visa. If a person is buying outside his or her country, there are a lot of questions that they have. The land department doesn't allow a foreign entity to own an asset here. It has to be held by a domestic company, a UAE-based company. They can 100% be the owners of the corporation. The 9% corporate tax, it's on your companies. It's not on individual. Individual tax, personal tax is still zero. There is no VAT between free zone to free zone. You have a property now in Dubai. Do you need to have a will? Well, we're going to discuss that today on The Dubai Connect podcast with expert Ziba Mitha. Welcome back to Season 7 of The Dubai Connect podcast. I'm your host, GG Benitez, a certified international property specialist and a licensed realtor here in Dubai as well as in California, connecting global real estate investors with prime property opportunities here in Dubai and the UAE. I would like to welcome Ziba Mitha, financial advisor. Thank you. Hi Ziba. Thank you GG. Hi GG. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you as well. You have done such a fine job guiding so many of our global investors into topics that you're an expert on, whether it be the Golden Visa, opening a bank account, setting up their business structure, etc. One of the questions that's starting to come up now is should my global investors be creating a will here in the UAE? Yes, absolutely, 100%, because they have nothing to lose where the will is concerned. It's a will which is going to be for your entire life. You make it once and it's valid for your entire life. It has no expiry. Having said that, it's super easy to do it. You can either be in the country or you can be not in the country. You can do it remotely as well. That's a key point. Does someone have to be here to be able to create a will? Absolutely not. It can all be done remotely. Okay, that is absolutely convenient. Now the question for you. For my American clients who already have a will set up in the United States, why would they need to create a will here in the UAE? Okay, great question. It's not essential, okay? First of all, it's not essential. However, what we suggest and recommend clients is always create a domestic will wherever you bought properties. Simply because when we look at the UAE, they're super fast with the executions. They're super fast with the probates. They're super fast with whatever judgments have to be taken. So whatever asset is held here would just be much faster than other country assets by the time they are disposed and given to the heirs or whoever is a legal guardian or whoever is the beneficiary of that particular will. But what would happen if somebody, God forbid something happens to them, and they don't have a will in the UAE? What exactly is the downside of not having it here? There is no downside, but the only thing is that you'd waste more time. When a death happens, the family is any which way very vulnerable. They're shaken. It's an extremely emotional moment for the family. Any income at that point of time, and especially if it's a breadwinner, any income is beneficial. If a country is going to take two, three years for a probate to come in and a judgment to come in, it stops financial help for the other members of the family. If you have a will in place, it's just faster for execution, especially if you have it once in the UAE. Whether we speak about a will or we speak about a foundation, these things are imperative that a person should do that for protection of their asset and for legal succession. Now for the succession part, in order to actually execute it, does that member have to be here for the execution? Yes. Although you can appoint executors, but you have to make a presence because that person needs to be there in person to receive whatever they need to receive. Okay, so they do have to come to receive it. So Ziba, may you actually share why someone should do a will over creating a foundation? A will is very easy to be created. You just have to put whatever your assets are. So for example, you have X amount of properties, you have so and so bank balance or any sort of other deposits, you mention all of that if you want to keep a very basic will. What happens with a foundation is when we create a foundation, it's something which goes on. It keeps going on because you put as many members, council members that you want to put. You don't want absolute succession planning. Which means that tomorrow, God forbid if something happens to me and if I pass away, I don't probably want to give an individual person, but if I want to give my cat my payment that has to go, or my dog, I can have that mentioned that it goes to my dog or goes to my cat. Which means that the help is covered, the vet is covered. So it could be like for full life. Like every month or every three months, whatever they set up, they will get money. Now in the will, what happens is the execution is done immediately. It's a one-time thing. So for example, if I die, then I want to give everything, my say my son. So everything would go to him immediately, right? If he is above age and things like that. But in a foundation, instead of giving in one go, I can have that going every month. So I know that the family or the vet, the pet is taken care of. For property investors, let's say that own maybe one property, one to three properties from global cities, is there a preference typically or do you see a trend towards one over the other? A will again is, you can have it a very simple will. For example, you just have a client who's bought one property. Doesn't make sense for the client to create an entire foundation, right? So in that case, just make a very basic simple will. Does the work. Any clients ideally who have assets over 20 million, we 100% suggest them that make a foundation. Even 10 million above. Thank you for sharing that. Now, what is the process for a will? Basically what happens is we sit with the client, okay? Either it could be in person or remotely, and we understand along with our lawyers, what exactly the client is looking for, what exactly is held here in the UAE, what they want to incorporate, who should be the legal guardians or who should be the beneficiary of that. We sit and we streamline everything. We share a draft with the client. Once the client approves it, we have that registered. Depending on now, because there are three jurisdictions to register it. One is your DIFC. One is your ADGM, which is Abu Dhabi. And the third one is your Dubai courts. So depends where the client wants to do it, wants to register the will. We would register it over there. So for my clients that have even one off-plan project, you're suggesting that they immediately create a will for even that off-plan project immediately. 100%, because life, we all know we're going to die. Nobody's going to live forever, right? So 100%, create it. Don't look at it as a roadblock or anything like that. Just look at it that you have to do it because 100%, you're going to die. So you might as well, whoever is going to get it, you at least just have that formulated. Okay. I'm definitely going to be letting obviously my American clients especially know this. I think it adds another layer of that security and stability. 100%. And it's good to know that it's a simple process that can be done virtually. How long does the process take? Could be if the client is very clear on whatever is mentioned, could be anywhere between three days to about like a week. Okay. Fantastic. Well, thank you Ziba for sharing that. I think it's a topic. Has it been coming up a lot on social media? Yes, because I think there is more emphasis now, right? I didn't see it as a topic that maybe, you know, as more and more global investors are coming here. Like GG, is it because you're growing old as well? So you feel that okay, I'm only seeing wills now. I don't know what it is. It's like that's all I see right now. So I said it was time to get on here and share with all of my investors. Let's get those wills created, add that layer of protection. But most importantly, what I gathered from what you just said, it's so that time. So we're not working for probate. We're not working for things in the court. It's much faster in the UAE. We do everything fast. And it's not expensive. It's not expensive. And we have Ziba Mitha to be able to do it all for you. So Ziba, thank you for all this information and expertise and strategy. And with that, I will say please make sure to like, subscribe, follow. And if you have more questions about how to protect your assets here in Dubai and the greater UAE, make sure to just write a question in the description or in the comment section. As you know, we will always address those for you or you can reach out. Thank you.