Well, what can I tell ya....just telling ya what I was told.

This really just supports my mistrust in Solicitors and the advice they give...

OK, my tuppence worth. A UK will is valid in Australia and vice versa. For the sake of simplicity, if you have migrated to Australia and your assets are essentially now here - the best and simplest solution is to have an Australian will.

If your life is not simple and you have (substantial) assets in both countries then legal advice will (usually) be that you should have a will in each country covering assets in each country. The reason being that you can then make sure that they are treated in the best possible fashion from a country tax position - it's hard to do that within just one will.

You just need to make sure there is no element of overlap between the wills - that usually means i) the latter prevails and, most annoyingly, ii) large legal bills.

Cheers

We have wills in the UK but our solicitor strongly advised we have new wills made when we got to Australia.

Today, I was discussing life insurance with a Financial Advisor who whilst saying they didn't know if they were valid or not from another country, she definitely advised making news ones here because even if they are interstate they can cause problems.

This was information based on a) her knowledge and b) her personal experience with her father recently dying having made a will in Queensland but having lived the last of his life, and died in New South Wales.

Whatever the real facts - and let's face it, a solicitor wants to make money whatever, you should/must have a will and to be honest, even if I were only going to be in the UK for another couple of months, I would do a UK one if only to lessen any aggro should you die whilst travelling over here. Once you are here, I would again, definitely make another one.

I know it's more money, but does anyone really want their children's lives complicated - as to where to live and who with etc if its down on paper, it will be far more straightforward during an extremely awful time for them.

hi

when making our Australian wills we were given the same information as you by our solicitor, Australian wills are not valid outside the country. We were told we would need a UK will for our UK asssets.

So ultimatly it seems to be a grey area as JAJ has been given the opposite advice. Seems the best idea is to have two - just to be safe.

Abby

Make sure they don't conflict or you will have a worse mess to deal with.

Be careful.

When a solicitor says an Australian will is not valid outside Australia, or vice versa, it is worth politely asking for some references to the law and see what he or she then says.