Cross-border estate planning: US-Israel families, Australians with UK assets, Europeans abroad, and the family office in Singapore

Land follows the law of where it sits, everywhere. Movable property follows the deceased's domicile in common-law countries and, in the EU, their habitual residence unless they chose the law of their nationality. Tax follows residence (the United Kingdom since 2025, Australia, Canada), domicile (some US states), citizenship (the United States taxes its citizens' worldwide estates wherever they live) and the situs of each asset. A family that spans two systems has, in practice, two estates, and often two sets of heirs under two intestacy rules.

Estate and inheritance tax treaties are rare: the United States has fifteen (Australia, Austria, Canada by protocol to the income tax treaty, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom); the United Kingdom has ten; Australia's only one is the 1953 treaty with the United States, kept alive though Australia charges no tax; Israel has none. Where there is no treaty, unilateral credits sometimes apply (the UK gives credit for foreign tax on foreign assets; Germany credits foreign inheritance tax on foreign assets; France credits tax paid abroad on assets abroad) and sometimes do not. The US-Israel income tax treaty does not cover estate tax. The planning answer is usually to move the asset, the person, or the timing, not to rely on relief.

A US citizen who has lived in Israel for thirty years, with an apartment in Tel Aviv worth US$1.5 million, an Israeli pension of US$800,000, and US brokerage accounts of US$2 million. Israel charges nothing at death. The United States charges estate tax on everything worldwide above the US$15 million exemption, requires a return (Form 706) within nine months, and treats the apartment and the pension as part of the estate. At US$4.3 million the estate is under the exemption and no tax is due, but the return is still required to elect portability for the spouse, and the children in Israel who inherit the US accounts face Form 3520 reporting on foreign gifts and bequests above US$100,000 if they are US persons. Double the numbers and add a second apartment, and the estate is over the exemption with tax at 40% on the excess. If the spouse is not a US citizen, the marital deduction needs a qualified domestic trust or the tax is due at the first death. The plan: know which family members are US persons, use the exemption and the US$19,000 annual gifts while alive, hold the Israeli assets in a form the US return can value, consider expatriation carefully (the exit tax and the section 2801 tax on gifts from covered expatriates make it a one-way door), and put the Israeli lawyer and the US attorney in the same room once.

An Australian resident of Sydney, formerly ten years in London, with a flat in Clapham worth £900,000, a UK defined-contribution pension of £400,000, and A$3 million of Australian assets including super. Australia has no inheritance tax. The flat is UK situs and inside UK inheritance tax whoever owns it; because she left the UK more than ten years ago she is not a long-term resident and her Australian assets are outside UK tax, but the flat is taxed at 40% above whatever nil-rate band is available: £325,000, so about £230,000 of tax. The UK pension comes inside from April 2027, adding £160,000. The flat passes under English law and needs an English will or an Australian grant resealed in England; the Australian will covers the rest, and Australian super passes by nomination. The plan: separate wills that do not revoke each other, an English executor, life cover in trust for the UK tax, a decision about the pension before 2027 (draw it down, or nominate a spouse), and a check of whether the flat should be sold while she is alive, since Australia would tax the capital gain and the UK would not, but the UK inheritance tax would vanish with it.

A family's assets sit in a Singapore 13O structure with no tax at death; the founders are Singapore residents; the daughter lives in Munich and the son in Lyon. Singapore charges nothing. Germany taxes the daughter as a recipient on everything she inherits, wherever it is, because she is German-resident: €400,000 tax-free from each parent, then 7% to 30%. France taxes the son the same way: €100,000 then 5% to 45%, with the further twist that France taxes a resident heir on worldwide assets only if the heir has been resident for six of the last ten years. And because the parents are habitually resident outside the EU, the regulation applies the law of Singapore to the estate, so the reserved shares do not apply unless a court in Germany or France finds a public-policy reason to intervene, which they rarely do. The plan: a choice of law in the parents' wills anyway, for certainty; distributions timed and structured for the children's countries (a German-resident daughter who receives her share as a distribution from a trust faces the least favourable class unless the structure is drafted for it); the 13O incentive's continuity provisions on the founders' deaths; and a family constitution that survives the founders' residence changing.

Several, usually, one per country with immovable property, drafted so that none revokes the others, each expressly limited to the assets in its country, with the asset record saying which will covers which asset. In the EU, one will with a choice of law can cover the member states. The executor in each country needs to be able to act there: an Australian executor cannot sign for a Florida condominium without ancillary probate, and a French notary will not deal with an English executor who has no grant.

Before any of this, list every citizenship and residence in the family, including the green card in the drawer and the child who has been in Paris for seven years. Citizenship decides US tax; residence decides UK, German and French tax; domicile still decides some US state taxes and the old UK cases; habitual residence decides EU succession law. The family that does this list once usually finds a member whose status changes the whole plan.