Estate Planning for Americans Abroad: Wills, Beneficiaries and Two Legal Systems

Estate planning is easy to postpone at home and even easier abroad — two legal systems, unfamiliar words like “forced heirship,” and the general sense that it’s a problem for later. Here’s the plain-English map of what actually changes when an American’s estate crosses a border — and the handful of fixes that cover most of it.

The headline: your US will doesn’t automatically rule abroad

A valid US will is usually recognised in Europe, but recognition isn’t the whole game. Your new country’s law may govern parts of your estate regardless of what the will says — especially real estate located there, and especially in forced heirship countries (France, Spain, Portugal and others), where the law reserves fixed shares of an estate for children and sometimes spouses. An American “leave everything to my spouse” will can collide head-on with that.

The EU created a powerful tool: the EU Succession Regulation (“Brussels IV”) generally lets foreign residents elect the law of their nationality to govern their estate (everywhere in the EU except Ireland and Denmark, which opted out) — but the election needs to be made explicitly, in a will. It’s one sentence that changes a great deal, though not everything: since 2021 France lets an EU-resident child claw back a reserved share from French assets even where US law was validly chosen — the European Commission examined the rule and in 2026 signalled it would close its file after France confirmed a narrow reading of it — so French property needs its own plan. And most US wills written before the move don’t contain the clause at all.

The French rule deserves precision because it’s so often overstated. It dates from a 2021 law (Civil Code Article 913). It doesn’t unpick your choice of law; it carves a claim out of the French part of the estate. If you own nothing in France, it doesn’t touch you. If you own a house in the Dordogne, plan that house separately.

Beneficiary designations quietly outrank wills

Your IRA, 401(k), life insurance and TOD accounts pass by designation, not by will — in any country. Which makes the humble beneficiary form the most powerful estate document most expats own, and the most commonly outdated one. Review every designation as part of the move (it’s a standing item on our 90-day checklist), and think about whether a beneficiary who also lives abroad can practically claim — a US institution paying out to a non-resident involves paperwork worth anticipating.

Taxes: two systems, different logic

The US estate tax exemption is famously high (most households never touch it). European systems often work the other way: inheritance tax charged to the recipient, at rates and allowances that depend on their relationship to you and where they or the assets are. A spouse may be fine; a US-based sibling inheriting your Spanish flat may not be. This asymmetry — not the US side — is usually what needs planning. Treaties exist but are patchy for inheritance. Genuine professional territory: cross-border advisors and local counsel.

The US numbers, since you asked

“Famously high” now has a figure attached. For 2026 the federal estate and gift lifetime exemption is $15,000,000 per person, $30,000,000 for a married couple, set by the July 2025 tax law and indexed for inflation from 2027. The annual gift exclusion is $19,000 per recipient, which is how a lot of quiet transfers to children abroad happen without touching the lifetime figure at all. Gifts above it aren’t taxed on the spot; they eat into the exemption and need a gift-tax return.

The consequence for most expat households is liberating: the US federal estate tax is not the thing to plan around. The exemption follows you as a citizen wherever you live, and the reporting still applies wherever your assets are — but the tax itself will, for the overwhelming majority, be zero.

“US law” means the law of a state

The Brussels IV election has a wrinkle American drafters miss. The Regulation lets you choose the law of your nationality, and it has to be done expressly, in a will. But there is no single American law of succession — wills, intestacy and forced-share rules are state law. So “I elect US law” is only half a sentence. In practice the clause should name the state whose law you mean: the state where you were last domiciled, or the state whose law your will already follows, and the two should agree.

The election also governs succession — who gets what — and not the formalities of getting it: probate-style processes, local certificates and notarial work still run where the assets are.

Choosing a law doesn’t choose a tax

The most common misunderstanding in this whole field: the nationality election sorts out who inherits; it does nothing to the inheritance tax the local system charges on the way through. Those are separate regimes.

Your children can inherit your Spanish flat under a Florida will and still owe Spanish inheritance tax as recipients, on Spanish terms. Plan the law and the tax as two problems, because they are.

The treaty list, and who’s missing

“Treaties exist but are patchy” means, concretely, fifteen countries. The US has estate or gift tax treaties with Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Not on the list: Spain and Portugal, two of the most popular destinations for exactly the readers of this site.

A treaty settles which country gets first bite at which assets and how the other gives credit, which is what stops the same house being taxed twice. Without one, you rely on each country’s unilateral relief — more discretionary, more paperwork, and sometimes simply absent for a given asset. If your destination isn’t on the list, the treaty question doesn’t go away; it gets answered by two domestic rulebooks that were never designed to talk to each other. That’s the moment for a cross-border adviser who has done this exact pairing before, not a generalist on either side.

The practical fix list

• Update (or write) a will after the move — often one for each jurisdiction, drafted to work together, with the nationality-election clause where applicable.
• Audit every beneficiary designation against your current family map and geography.
• Check ownership forms on foreign property before buying — how title is held drives forced heirship and tax outcomes.
• Powers of attorney and healthcare directives: your US documents may carry no weight locally; get local equivalents.
• Make it findable. The finest estate plan fails if nobody knows where anything is — wills, policies, account lists, contacts, instructions in one organised place. Building exactly that is our Financial Organization System and its Emergency Information Pack.

This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Succession and inheritance law is jurisdiction-specific — use qualified local and cross-border professionals.