How to Obtain a Succession Certificate in the UAE

UAE banks typically freeze a deceased customer’s accounts on being notified of the death, and this happens as standard practice rather than as a dispute or an error — it is the mechanism by which the bank avoids releasing funds to the wrong person before the succession process has determined who is actually entitled to them. Joint accounts, standing instructions and pending payments are generally affected in the same way.

This is often the most urgent practical problem a family faces, because ordinary household expenses, rent, or business payroll can depend on an account that is now inaccessible. It is also the reason the succession certificate matters immediately, not just eventually — it is usually the document that unlocks the freeze, once obtained through the correct forum.

The UAE runs several distinct routes into succession, not one. They include the DIFC Courts, for a will registered with the DIFC Wills Service Centre; the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, which registers wills at its Civil Wills Office (the ADJD Office of Non-Muslims Wills) and deals with the estates its civil family law covers; and the Dubai Courts, where a will is registered through their notary public and the Non-Muslim Inheritance Department handles non-Muslim inheritance cases and the execution of wills. Which one is relevant to a given estate depends on where a will was registered, if any, where the deceased’s assets are located, and the deceased’s religion and nationality.

Applying to the wrong forum does not just cause delay — it can mean starting again in the correct one, at a point when the family is already dealing with frozen accounts and, often, urgent expenses. Establishing the right forum before filing anything is the single most consequential early decision in this process.

A will registered with the DIFC Wills Service Centre is generally administered through the DIFC Courts, which issue a grant confirming the executor’s authority to deal with the estate in line with the will. This route exists specifically to give non-Muslims a registered mechanism for their estate to be distributed according to the will’s own terms, rather than by default succession rules.

DIFC-registered wills can, in practice, cover assets located outside the DIFC itself — including mainland Dubai bank accounts and property — but confirming the scope of what a specific registered will actually reaches, and how a resulting DIFC Courts grant is then used to deal with an asset sitting outside the DIFC, is worth checking with a lawyer rather than assuming.

• DIFC Courts ↗

Abu Dhabi runs its own registered-will mechanism through the ADJD Office of Non-Muslims Wills, which ADJD calls its Civil Wills Office, operating under Abu Dhabi Law No. 14 of 2021 as amended. As with the DIFC route, this exists to let the people it covers register a will that is then given effect on death rather than defaulting to the standard distribution rules.

It is worth being precise about who can use it. Asked whether Muslims can register a will, ADJD’s own published answer is that anyone who is not a UAE national can register a will at the Civil Wills Office in Abu Dhabi, regardless of religion. Check the current requirements directly with ADJD before relying on them for a particular will.

• Abu Dhabi Judicial Department ↗

Where a non-Muslim has not registered a will through the DIFC, ADJD or the Dubai Courts, the federal Personal Status Law for non-Muslims — Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 — allows a non-Muslim to elect to have their home country’s law applied to their estate, rather than the UAE’s default distribution rules. This election mechanism is a meaningful option worth understanding before assuming a will is the only way to control how an estate is distributed.

Without a registered will and without a valid election of home-country law, an estate’s default distribution follows the applicable UAE succession framework rather than a plan the deceased may have intended — which is precisely why registering a will or making the election, while someone is alive, matters more than it might seem in the moment.

Dubai Courts operates its own dedicated forum for non-Muslim succession matters that do not proceed through a DIFC-registered will — the Non-Muslim Inheritance Department, which handles non-Muslim inheritance cases, opens inheritance files and executes wills. The Dubai Courts Notary does a different job: it is where a non-Muslim’s will is registered with the Dubai Courts.

The Dubai Courts route sits alongside, rather than replacing, the DIFC and ADJD options — whether an estate goes to the Dubai Courts depends on the facts, including whether any will exists and where it was registered, which is again a forum question worth resolving early rather than guessing.

• Dubai Courts ↗

Every forum will require, at minimum, a certified and attested death certificate, proof of the applicant’s relationship to or authority over the deceased, identification documents, and evidence of the assets in the estate — bank statements, title deeds, share certificates, and vehicle registration, as applicable. Where the death occurred outside the UAE, the death certificate itself will typically need to go through the attestation chain before a UAE forum will accept it.

Because gathering attested foreign documents can itself take real time, this is often the step that determines how quickly the rest of the process moves — starting it as early as possible, even while other arrangements are being made, is generally worthwhile.

Once the correct forum is identified and the supporting documents assembled, the application is filed there directly — through the DIFC Courts, ADJD, or the Dubai Courts’ Non-Muslim Inheritance Department, as the case requires. The resulting succession certificate or grant confirms who is legally entitled to deal with the estate, and on what basis.

This document is what banks, the land department, and company registries will actually ask for before releasing funds, transferring title, or recognising a change in company ownership — it is the practical key to everything that follows, not just a formality marking the end of the court process.

With the certificate in hand, releasing a bank account generally means presenting it to the bank directly, which will have its own internal process for verifying it and lifting the freeze. Property held with the Dubai Land Department or its Abu Dhabi equivalent, and company shares, follow a broadly similar pattern — the certificate is presented to the relevant registry or company, which then updates its own records accordingly.

Each institution can have its own additional internal requirements on top of presenting the certificate itself, so it is worth confirming what a specific bank or registry needs before assuming the certificate alone completes the release.

Where a deceased person held both UAE and foreign assets, or where probate has already been granted abroad, the interaction between the foreign grant and the UAE process is a genuine complication rather than a formality — a foreign grant of probate is not automatically recognised by a UAE bank or registry, and it will generally need to go through UAE recognition or a fresh UAE application, alongside its own attestation chain into the UAE, before it has effect here.

The reverse is equally true for a family dealing with a UAE succession certificate that needs to be relied on abroad — confirm with a lawyer in the relevant foreign jurisdiction what recognition process, if any, is needed there.

Not every succession is straightforward. Disputes arise over the validity of a will, over competing claims between relatives following different succession rules, and — for wealthier or more complex estates — over whether assets held in a trust or foundation structure are protected from a forced-heirship claim through provisions like the DIFC’s firewall rules.

A contested succession moves the matter from an administrative filing into genuine litigation, generally before whichever court has jurisdiction over the relevant forum, and is usually a point at which specific legal representation becomes essential rather than optional.

LEXNOVA is a lawyer-matching service, not a law firm, and does not file succession applications or advise on which forum applies to a specific estate. What it does is help you describe the situation — where the deceased’s assets are, whether a will exists and where it was registered, and what the family needs to resolve — so you can be matched with lawyers experienced in UAE succession across the relevant forum. Every match is reviewed by a person before it reaches you, and the working relationship from there is directly between you and the lawyer.