If you live in an EU country which is not your country of origin, if you own assets in more than one country or if a family member of yours lived in a different EU country when he or she died, you may wonder:
- in which EU country the inheritance (known in legal terms as succession) will be handled and
- which country's national law will govern the inheritance
EU rules on international inheritance or successions help you sort out these issues.
Read more on:
- Planning your cross-border inheritance: determining which country's law will apply to your own inheritance
- Managing a cross-border inheritance: how to deal with the succession of a family member or somebody close to you who lived in a different EU country
EU rules on inheritance or succession apply in all EU countries except Ireland and Denmark: these EU countries decided to opt out. This means that EU rules on inheritance will apply whenever your inheritance is handled by an authority of an EU country other than Ireland and Denmark.