DIFC Wills Registrations Hit a Record 2,220 in 2025 — Why an Unregistered Estate Is Now a Materially Worse Bet

DIFC Courts registered 2,220 wills through its Wills Service in 2025, a 22% increase on 2024, and issued 41 probate applications, up 37% year-on-year — both record highs since the service launched in 2015, taking the cumulative total processed past 13,400. The growth is not incidental. It lands directly alongside two structural changes to how non-Muslim estates are administered in Dubai: Law No. 2 of 2025, which handed DIFC Courts exclusive jurisdiction over enforcing registered wills regardless of where the underlying assets sit, and a reformed default-succession regime that took effect on 1 January 2026 and is materially harsher on estates left without a registered will. For HNW families holding UAE property, bank accounts, or company shares, the combination changes the calculus from 'a will is good practice' to 'the absence of one now carries a specific, quantifiable downside.'

The 2025 Numbers

DIFC Courts' own year-end service statistics, released in February 2026, show sustained acceleration rather than a one-off spike — H1 2025 alone had already recorded 922 registrations and 27 probate orders, meaning the second half of the year added materially to both totals.

• 2,220 wills registered in full-year 2025 — up 22% on 2024, the fastest annual growth since the service's 2015 launch.
• 41 probate applications processed in 2025 — up 37% year-on-year, evidence that registrations are converting into actual estate administration, not sitting unused.
• 922 wills and 27 probate orders recorded in H1 2025 alone, the baseline against which the full-year figures represent continued acceleration.
• 13,400+ wills processed cumulatively since the Wills Service opened in 2015.
• AED 10,000 fixed government fee for a DIFC Full Will, with total cost — including legal drafting — typically AED 13,000–15,000 regardless of estate size.

One Court, Enforceable Everywhere

Law No. 2 of 2025, enacted in March 2025, consolidated and repealed the prior statutes governing DIFC Courts. Article 31(5) is the provision that matters most to estate planning: it grants DIFC Courts exclusive jurisdiction over the enforcement of registered non-Muslim wills, regardless of whether the deceased's assets sit inside or outside the DIFC's physical boundary. Practically, that means a DIFC probate order can now be presented directly to UAE banks, the Dubai Land Department, and the Roads and Transport Authority to transfer accounts, property, and vehicles — without a separate validation step through Dubai's onshore courts. Before this consolidation, executors could face two parallel court systems reaching different conclusions on the same estate. The exclusion of Dubai Courts from that enforcement role removes the jurisdictional overlap entirely, which is the structural reason probate applications are converting faster: the process an executor now follows has one endpoint, not two.

What Happens Without One, From 1 January 2026

The reform that raises the stakes on the other side of the ledger is the default-succession regime that took effect on 1 January 2026. Absent a registered will, Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 already applies a civil default distribution to non-Muslim estates — broadly, half to a surviving spouse with the remainder split equally among children — which itself surprises many European families used to different default rules in their home jurisdiction. The January 2026 change goes further for the harder case: where a person dies in the UAE without a registered will and no identifiable heirs can be established, UAE-based assets may now be frozen and ultimately transferred into a state-managed charitable endowment, or Waqf. In the interim — identifiable heirs or not — UAE bank accounts are typically frozen on notification of death until a court order is issued, a process that can run for months and leave dependants without access to funds precisely when they need them.

What This Creates for Prepared Families

For a family with UAE property, a DIFC or ADGM holding structure, and school-age children, the practical opportunity is narrow but concrete: a properly drafted and registered DIFC will now resolves in a single enforceable jurisdiction, at a fixed and modest cost relative to the assets typically involved, against a default regime that has just become less forgiving. It is also a natural companion to — not a substitute for — the foundation and holding-company structuring increasingly common among relocating HNW families, since a will governs personal assets a foundation charter does not reach (bank accounts held in an individual's name, personal property outside a corporate wrapper, guardianship of minor children). Families who treat foundation formation and will registration as one workstream, rather than sequencing one after the other, close the gap faster.

Advisory Perspective

We read the 2025 registration data less as a sign that expats have suddenly become more diligent, and more as evidence that the DIFC framework has become genuinely easier to recommend without caveats — a single enforceable jurisdiction is a materially different proposition to clients than the two-court ambiguity that preceded Law No. 2 of 2025. That said, the will itself remains the least expensive and most consequential document in a UAE relocation file, and it is routinely the one left until last, behind the visa, the bank account, and the company formation. Our standard practice with new HNW clients is to register the DIFC will alongside — not after — the foundation charter and the corporate structuring, precisely because it is the only one of the three that also addresses guardianship of minor children and personal-name assets outside any structure. Given a fixed government fee in the low five figures against estates typically worth many multiples of that, and a default regime that now points toward a state endowment in the worst case rather than simply an unwelcome distribution, this is one of the few areas of UAE estate planning where the cost of inaction has become easier to quantify than the cost of acting.