Moving to Italy quietly “rewrites” your Will  

That change is written into European law, and it is worth understanding before it matters rather than after. Since 17 August 2015, Regulation (EU) 650/2012 has decided which country’s law governs a cross-border succession, and it does so in almost every country in the Union (Denmark and Ireland are the exceptions).  

The connecting factor is not your nationality, nor where you die. Under Article 21, it is where you had your habitual residence at death, a factual test that looks at where your life was actually centered. If you settle in Italy, Italian law will, in principle, govern the whole of your estate. If you settle in Spain, Portugal or France, the same logic points to Spanish, Portuguese or French law instead. This is a European rule, not an Italian peculiarity. Italy is simply the country our clients ask about most.  

What makes Italy worth pausing on is what its law then contains. Like much of continental Europe, and unlike the common-law world most of our clients come from, Italy applies forced heirship, known as the legittima. A set share of your estate is reserved by law for your closest family: your spouse or civil partner, your children and, where there are no children, your parents. Reserved heirs can claim that share whatever your Will states, and the calculation also takes into account gifts made during your lifetime.  

For someone wishing to leave their estate exactly as they please, this is less a problem than a different set of rules, but it is one worth meeting on purpose. A plan that assumes full testamentary freedom, drafted where that freedom exists, simply does less than the client thinks once Italian law applies.  

Here the Regulation is more helpful than clients expect, because it carries its own remedy. Article 22 lets you choose, in your Will, the law of a country of which you are a citizen, whether at the time you make the choice or at your death, and apply it to your succession as a whole. The choice cannot be confined to some assets: it covers everything.  

Take a US citizen who has settled in Italy. In almost every US state, children have no reserved share, so the choice can restore much of the freedom they are used to, but it rewards precision on two counts. The first is which law, since the choice points to the US state with which they are most closely connected, not simply the one they would prefer. The second is the surviving spouse, who in most US states keeps a protected share of their own. The clause is a powerful tool, then, but not a blank check.  

One qualifier matters, though: that protection follows from making the choice. Without a clear choice-of-law clause, Italian law will normally apply, reserved shares and all. A choice can sometimes be inferred from the wording of an existing Will, but relying on inference invites exactly the dispute you want to avoid. A reserved heir who feels left out can then bring a claim against the others, and until the court rules, the estate can sit effectively frozen, its assets hard to move while the case runs its course. This is the practical case for handling the question early and on purpose, rather than leaving your heirs to discover it.  

The second point clients tend to miss is procedural, and it is easier to handle once expected. Italy, like the rest of civil-law Europe, has no probate. There is no court step that validates your Will and grants your heirs authority to act, and no equivalent of a US grant of probate for an institution to recognize. Instead, your heirs formally accept the inheritance, and their authority flows from that acceptance.  

A foreign Will is not shut out, and its form is usually accepted. But before an Italian bank or the land registry will act on it, it generally needs to be apostilled and officially translated.  

In our experience, this recognition step, rather than any dispute over who inherits, is the most common reason a foreign Will takes longer to use than clients expect. None of it is insurmountable. It simply takes weeks that good preparation can remove in advance.  

The takeaway is not alarm, and an Italian Will is not compulsory. The useful step is smaller. If you are relocating through the elective residency or investor visa route, your succession plan came with you. Two questions repay a little attention now:  

1. Which law will govern your estate, given where you now live?  
2. Can the documents your heirs will hold be used locally without a detour through court?  

Owning Italian property gives both questions extra weight, since the property is itself evidence of where you were based, and since it can only change hands through an Italian registry step.  

One thing the Regulation does not touch is tax: choosing a foreign law decides who inherits, not how the estate is taxed.  

What we usually suggest is modest: a short Italian Will that disposes of your Italian assets, carrying a choice-of-law clause that governs your succession as a whole, and sitting alongside the Will you already hold elsewhere rather than replacing it. The two documents must be drafted together: they should point to the same governing law, and neither should contain a standard clause revoking all previous Wills.  

On the Italian side, that is the work we do at Global Citizen Solutions. We lay out the options on applicable law, including how the professio iuris works and what each route would mean for your estate, so the choice stays yours, made on an informed basis.  

We prepare the content of an Italian Will covering your Italian assets, coordinated with the Will you already hold, and we arrange the signing with the notary, since Italian law reserves that act to them. What we do not take on is the law or tax of your home country, or of anywhere else you hold assets: that stays with your advisors there, and we are glad to work alongside them.  

None of this is the difficult part of moving to Italy. It may be the easiest, precisely because it can be planned for in advance. The folder in the leather case is not wrong. It is simply worth reopening once, now that you have changed the country it speaks for.