Thread: Information about Spanish wills in Tenerife and Spain

Wills ... you can't have a free will in Spain because it has to be notarized and registered, but if your wishes are pretty straightforward ... here's what to do:

Sorry, can't remember the name of the place - that's a good start - but there is a Notary in Los Cristianos in the Church Square directly opposite the church. It is on the 2nd floor and the access is between the jewellers and the estate agents.

With me so far?

Go to the office and get a will form. It needs to be fully completed with all your personal details and the details of what you want done with your assets. You can do this in English. Make an appointment to process the will - it normally takes 2 weeks for them to translate the form and prepare the documents.

You go for the appointment and then collect your documentation the following day. The last time that I did this for clients was around September-ish last year, when the charge was 84€

Hi just thought Id give a couple of points to look at when making wills in the uk and spain

Most people if married leave everything to the survivor and then to their children in equal shares and if one child is dead them his or her share will go to their children .

Point to note I would think is ages of children.

EG If you have say girl and two boys age say 13 19 24 guardians for the underage and a good pointer is dont have guardians as executors or if you do have one and the other say a solicitor If guaridans are executors you may find no money left when child comes of age. Also if deceased have nots of assets think whether you would want children to have all of it at 18 or whether it should be staggered. If known a few circumstances where children have married at 18 to get their hands on money and then blown it

Also if you have children married with places of their own and say children living in the family home think about whether you want to give the children at home a time limit before moving out. Iv known situations where sisters and brothers have made children living at home get out quick as under the terms of the will everything as to be sold asap and shared. Dont rely on children doing the right thing with sisters and brothers on death some dont and its usually not the children its the husbands and wives of the children who crack the whip

Lynne

here is the text I recently wrote up for inclusion in the company magazine ...

WHERE THERE¨S A WILL THERE¨S A WAY

Dying might be the last thing on your mind as you walk out of the notary as the proud owner of a new apartment, but if the very worst came to the worst, your property could end up being disposed of under Spanish law. Thankfully, this nightmare scenario is no more than just a bad dream providing you have a Will in place that Spanish law deems valid, because foreigners are then allowed to dispose of their Spanish assets according to their home country´s laws.

Of course, this Will needs to be valid in your home country too, which means that nothing can be initiated unless and until you have drawn up a valid UK Will in the first place. In essence, therefore, you need two Wills: a UK one which disposes of your assets according to your wishes, and a “Spanish will” as well, acting s a secondary legal instrument which legalizes the terms of its UK counterpart. As such, of course, the terms of the two wills must match!

A Spanish Will thus acts as a mechanism to ensure that your UK Will is executed within weeks rather than months, because there will be no requirement to wait for probate to be granted. You will also save a considerable amount in legal costs because the speedier legal framework will already be in place.

And remember, even if you don´t mind that things will just take many times as long and cost many times as much to sort out if you don´t have a Spanish Will, there could be other reasons to get it sorted out sooner rather than later. As we said above, if the very worst came to the worst, your property could end up being disposed of under Spanish law. And under Spanish law, surviving spouses can only retain half of assets acquired during a marriage! The rest must go to obligatory heirs – and a proportion must be divided equally between them; in other words, Spanish law does not allow children to be disinherited. Moreover, part of the children´s share cannot be freely disposed of until the spouse of the testator has also died.

This is, of course, nothing to worry about if you have drawn up a Spanish Will, which in turn means that you also have to have a UK Will drawn up as well. But don´t have nightmares if you haven´t “got around to it yet” – Spanish law is not automatically applied to foreigners´ estates. Under European law, UK law will apply even to your Spanish assets – except in the unlikely event that there is a dispute between those who are named as beneficiaries, in which case Spanish law will apply. In view of human nature, therefore, there is every good reason to get around to “settling your affairs” as quickly as humanly possible!