Thank you Peter Harris. Well, you have stretched the topic further to cover property rights, which is a wild area of law if one is not really versed in both jurisdictions. I won’t address those property rights issues here, there will be too much to say.
Interesting to note that you were saying the UK competent will issue grant of probate to movable estates covered by a will dealing only with such movables, a departure from the Peter and Paul. I thought it should have been well established in UK law regarding such an issue, since UK citizens are more likely to have overseas assets.
So far, the consensus is that UK courts won’t probate a will dealing only with foreign real estates.
A separate note to all interested: China (excluding HK for purpose of this post) does not usually enforce foreign court judgments (arbitral awards are different), so it will be unwise for a UK court to assign title of China properties to foreign trustees. At the end of day, a separate court action shall have to be initiated in China to deal with the substantive issues adjudicated by the UK court already.
However I do notice that a recent landmark case (Akers V Samba) in UK affirming that UK court can exercise in personam jurisdiction over trustees who hold title in assets in civil law jurisdictions. That may partially solve the trust issue in China (namely, China doesn’t recognize family trusts over real properties) by appointing a proper trustees (legal heirs) under a UK trust (governed by UK or other offshore trust laws) to take up title of real properties in China, and then the trustee sells the properties, and get the sale proceeds repatriated out of China and settle the same on the said UK trust. I believe this may work in some cases according to the law expressed in Akers V Samba case.
Jason Tian
Shanghai Landing Law Office