Wills in the UAE
A will used in the UAE is registered somewhere, and the choice of where is the first real decision. Three routes are available: the DIFC Courts Wills Service, the Dubai Courts, and the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department. They are not three names for one process — they differ in who may use them, what a will may cover, how it is signed, and what it costs. This page sets out what each authority publishes about its own service, and is explicit about the one route whose published detail we have not been able to read.
Registering through the DIFC Courts
The route with the most published detail, and the one whose conditions are easiest to check against your own situation. DIFC Courts states that you may register if you are "at least 18 years of age" and "are not Muslim and have never been a Muslim", that "you do not need to be a resident of the UAE", and that you must own assets in the UAE and/or have minor children residing with you here. It offers six will types rather than one: a Full Will, and narrower wills for property (up to five properties situated in the UAE), business shareholdings (up to five), financial accounts (up to ten), digital assets, and guardianship of minor children alone. DIFC Courts publishes its own registration fees — AED 10,000 for a single Full Will and AED 7,500 for a single Property Will — which are the court’s fees, charged by the court, and separate from our professional fee.
- DIFC Will — register a UAE Will in English · AED 2,499
Registering a DIFC will: what the appointment involves · DIFC, Dubai Courts and ADJD wills compared
Registering through the Dubai Courts
The Dubai Courts register wills as well, and this is the route people most often mean when they say "a Dubai will" rather than a DIFC one. We are not going to quote its eligibility, documents, procedure or fee here: the Dubai Courts service pages disallow automated retrieval in their robots.txt and we respect that, so we have not read the authority’s own wording. It is recorded as an open question in our source registry rather than filled in from a summary elsewhere. If this is the route you are considering, that gap is worth knowing about before you choose — ask us and we will tell you what we have confirmed and what we have not.
Registering in Abu Dhabi
The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department publishes a five-step registration for non-Muslim wills, and the distinctive step is the last one: the application goes in through the website, is checked by the department, an SMS confirms approval or asks for changes, the fees are paid, and then you "book an appointment to notarise the will via video call". ADJD also states plainly that "money and property outside the country can be bequeathed", and that a will form is available at its Office of Non-Muslims Wills. It does not publish fee amounts, language requirements or witness rules on that page, so we do not state them.
Registering a will in Abu Dhabi through ADJD · DIFC, Dubai Courts and ADJD wills compared
A will each, for a couple
Two people who want the same structure register two wills, not one joint document. DIFC Courts treats this as a named case and prices it as one: "Mirror Wills" are two Full Wills registered simultaneously by a married couple, published at AED 15,000 for the pair against AED 10,000 for a single Full Will, and at AED 10,000 for a pair of Property Wills against AED 7,500 for one. Again, those are DIFC Courts’ fees rather than ours.
- Mirror Wills — matching Wills for couples · from AED 2,999
Registering a DIFC will: what the appointment involves · DIFC, Dubai Courts and ADJD wills compared
Where the published record runs out
Worth being straight about, because it is where most of the confusion lives. The federal government portal describes the framework and states that the Federal Personal Status Law governs inheritance, but it does not name a registry, publish a registration procedure, or arbitrate between the three routes — so nobody can honestly tell you one of them is the officially preferred option. Which registry suits a particular estate, whether a will reaches assets in another country, and how any of this interacts with UAE inheritance law are questions about legal effect, and belong with a qualified lawyer rather than with any comparison page.
Guardianship-only arrangements
We do not currently prepare a guardianship-only will. DIFC Courts does publish one — a Guardianship Will covering the "appointment of guardians of your minor children only" — so the instrument exists; we simply do not produce it yet, and we would rather say that than take an instruction we cannot fulfil. If guardianship is your reason for making a will at all, say so when you contact us.
The Deedbox prepares wills documentation for registration in the UAE, alongside our power of attorney and translation services, from our office in Al Barsha, Dubai. Every authority figure on this page is quoted from that authority’s own published page and dated in our source registry; registry fees change without notice, and the authority’s page is the version that counts. Our professional fee is separate from every registry fee above and is shown on each service page.