Relocating to Italy changes the law that governs your estate — by default, not by choice. A will drafted in New York or London remains valid, but it may no longer be able to do what it was written to do. The time to find out is before habitual residence shifts, not after.
Your will survives the move. Its effect does not
Consider Mark and Susan, an American couple in their sixties who have bought an apartment in Florence and intend to spend most of the year there. Mark has two adult children from a first marriage. His will, drafted in Connecticut, leaves everything to Susan; the children are provided for through a separate trust. Under Connecticut law that is an ordinary, uncontroversial plan.
Once Mark is habitually resident in Italy, it is neither.
Nothing has happened to the document. Italy signed the 1961 Hague Convention on the form of wills but never ratified it; the same result is reached through Article 27 of EU Regulation No. 650/2012, under which a will is formally valid if it complies with the law of the place where it was made, or of the testator’s nationality, domicile or habitual residence. Mark’s will passes that test. What has changed is the substantive law that decides what the will can achieve — who must receive a share, how much, and what happens to dispositions that ignore them.
The law follows your residence, not your passport
For deaths on or after 17 August 2015, succession in Italy is governed by EU Regulation No. 650/2012. Its core rule is simple: the law applicable to the whole estate — movable and immovable, wherever located — is the law of the State in which the deceased was habitually resident at death (Article 21).
Two features matter for a non-European reader. First, the Regulation is of universal application (Article 20): it applies to American, British, Swiss and Gulf nationals exactly as it does to Italians, and the law it designates may be a non-EU law. Second, “habitual residence” is a factual assessment, not a registration or a tax status. Recital 23 directs courts to look at the duration and regularity of presence, the location of family and social life, the centre of interests. A person can be habitually resident in Italy without having registered with the local anagrafe, and can be Italian tax resident without being habitually resident. The two tests run on different tracks.
Denmark and Ireland are not bound by the Regulation; the United Kingdom never was. For anyone whose habitual residence ends up in Italy, that is irrelevant: an Italian court will apply the Regulation, and the Regulation points to Italian law.
What Italian forced heirship takes off the table
Italian succession law reserves a fixed portion of the estate — the legittima — for a closed group of protected heirs: the surviving spouse, children (or their descendants) and, only where there are no children, parents and other ascendants (Articles 536 et seq. of the Italian Civil Code).
The fractions are fixed by statute, not by a court’s sense of fairness:
- spouse alone, no children or ascendants: one half of the estate.
- spouse and one child: one third each.
- spouse and two or more children: one quarter to the spouse, one half shared among the children.
- ascendants only, no spouse and no children: one third.
- the spouse also holds a statutory right to live in the family home and use its furnishings, over and above the reserved share.
Only the remainder — the disponibile — is free for the testator to give as he wishes.
A will that ignores these shares is not void. It is reducible. Each protected heir can bring an azione di riduzione, a claim to cut back testamentary dispositions and, if those are insufficient, lifetime gifts, until the reserved share is restored. The claim is available for ten years from the opening of the succession, and it runs against the beneficiaries of the will — in Mark’s case, against Susan.
So “everything to my spouse” is not fully available to Mark in Italy. His two children hold, between them, a claim to half of his estate, and no drafting in Connecticut changes that unless the will addresses the applicable law.
Choosing your own law: the fix, and where it fails
The Regulation offers one instrument to override the default. Under Article 22, a person may choose the law of the State whose nationality they hold — at the time of the choice or at death — to govern their succession as a whole. Mark can, in a properly drafted disposition, elect Connecticut law. If he does, Italian reserved shares do not apply. The prevailing view in Italian doctrine and case law is that a foreign law allowing full testamentary freedom does not, in itself, offend Italian international public policy — a position the European Court of Human Rights reinforced in 2024 in Jarre v. France and Colombier v. France, holding that children have no fundamental right to inherit a share of their parents’ estate. The public-policy exception in Article 35 remains, but it is narrow.
Three limits.
The choice must be express, made in a will or other disposition upon death, or demonstrated unequivocally by its terms. An older will that recites “governed by the laws of Connecticut” as boilerplate may or may not clear that bar; it should be redrafted so that it plainly does.
For US nationals, “the law of my nationality” is not a single law. Article 36 refers the question to the internal conflict rules of the United States and, failing those, to the law of the state with which the person has the closest connection. A will made by someone who has since spent fifteen years in Italy should say which state’s law is chosen and why that state remains connected.
And a choice of law is a drafting exercise, not a checkbox. It must sit inside a will that works under the chosen law, coordinates with any trust, and has been reviewed by counsel on both sides. A choice made carelessly — pointing to a state with no remaining connection, or contradicting the trust instrument — creates litigation rather than preventing it.
A trust is recognised. It is not a shield
Italy ratified the 1985 Hague Trusts Convention by Law No. 364/1989, and Italian courts have recognised foreign trusts for more than three decades. Mark’s Connecticut trust will be recognised in Italy: the trustee’s title, the segregation of trust assets from the trustee’s own, the beneficiaries’ rights.
Recognition is not immunity. Article 15 of the Convention itself preserves the mandatory rules of the law applicable under the forum’s conflict rules on, among other matters, the protection of the rights of heirs. If Italian law governs the succession, transfers into the trust are treated as gifts for the purposes of reserved shares: they are counted back into the estate and, if they encroach on the legittima, they can be reduced in the hands of the trustee or the beneficiaries. Italian courts have done exactly that.
There is a tax dimension too. Since Legislative Decree No. 139/2024, inheritance and gift tax on trusts is assessed when assets pass to beneficiaries, with an option for the settlor to pay upfront; and a revocable trust is generally looked through by the Italian tax authorities as if the settlor still owned the assets. A US revocable living trust therefore protects nothing, for Italian purposes, that a will would not.
The regime nobody reads: your marriage
Before any succession question is asked, another one is silently answered: what belongs to whom. That is the domain of matrimonial property regimes, and it is where a relocating couple most often carries an assumption Italian law does not share.
Take James, a British widower who remarries in Italy and buys a house in Chianti in his own name. Or Mark and Susan, married in a US community-property state. Which law governs their property relations depends on when they married, on their nationalities, and on whether they have ever made a choice of law. Marriages concluded from 29 January 2019, or couples who make a choice of law after that date, fall under EU Regulation 2016/1103, whose default rule is the law of the spouses’ first common habitual residence after the wedding. Earlier marriages are governed, in Italy, by the conflict rules of Law No. 218/1995.
The result may leave the couple in the regime they expect, or it may not. Under Italy’s own default, community of property, half of what one spouse acquires during the marriage belongs to the other — which alters what is in the estate before any will is read. An Italian notary will ask the question at the first property purchase. It is better to have answered it earlier, in writing.
Inheritance tax is a different question — and a better one
Readers routinely fold tax into the succession question. The two are separate, and Italy’s answer on tax is considerably more welcoming than its answer on testamentary freedom.
Italian inheritance tax applies to the worldwide assets of a deceased who was resident in Italy, and only to Italian-situs assets of one who was not. The rates are among the lowest in Europe: 4% for the spouse and lineal relatives above an allowance of EUR 1 million per beneficiary; 6% for siblings above EUR 100,000; 6% for other relatives to the fourth degree with no allowance; 8% for everyone else. Since 1 January 2025 the tax is self-assessed in the succession return, under the reform introduced by Legislative Decree No. 139/2024.
The strongest point for an international family lies elsewhere. A new resident who elects the flat-tax regime under Article 24-bis of the Italian Income Tax Code — a fixed substitute tax on foreign-source income, now EUR 300,000 a year for those transferring residence from 1 January 2026, for up to fifteen years — is also exempt from Italian inheritance and gift tax on assets located outside Italy for the duration of the regime (Law No. 232/2016, Article 1(158)). Only Italian-situs assets remain taxable. For a family whose wealth sits largely in the United States or the United Kingdom, that exemption can be worth far more than the annual charge.
Two cautions. Countries excluded from the option — the regime allows cherry-picking — lose the exemption too. And the exemption governs Italian tax only. A US citizen remains subject to US federal estate tax on worldwide assets wherever resident, with an exemption of USD 15 million per person from 2026 and a 40% rate above it. A British national who was long-term UK resident stays within UK inheritance tax for a tail of up to ten years after leaving, under the residence-based rules in force since April 2025.
Before you move: the review, in order:
- fix the date. Identify when habitual residence in Italy will plausibly begin; that, not the date a residence permit is issued, is the deadline for the review.
- map the family against Italian protected-heir rules: spouse, children of every marriage, and parents if there are no children.
- decide whether to elect the law of nationality — and, for US nationals, which state’s law — and record the choice expressly in a new or re-executed will.
- audit every trust for contributions that could be treated as gifts against reserved shares, and for how Italy will tax it.
- establish the matrimonial property regime actually in force, and consider a written choice of law before the first Italian purchase.
- model the tax: Italian inheritance tax on the worldwide estate, the Article 24-bis exemption, and the home-country estate or inheritance tax that survives the move.
- have both counsels sign off. The home-country will and trust and the Italian analysis must be one plan, not two.
The trade Italy offers
Italy is competitive on tax and rigid on testamentary freedom. The first attracts international families; the second surprises them, usually after the fact. The combination rewards those who settle these questions before arrival, and penalises those who arrive, enjoy the tax regime, and postpone the will to a later year that turns out not to come.
