Who Gets Guardianship of Your Children in the UAE If You Have No Will

Without a guardianship nomination on file, a UAE court decides who raises your children, weighing welfare and available family members rather than your own choice. Both the DIFC Wills Service Centre and Abu Dhabi's non-Muslim wills registry let you formally nominate a guardian as part of a registered will.

The Question Most Parents Never Actually Answer

If you are raising children in the UAE and something happened to you and your spouse, who would a UAE court hand your children to? Most expat parents have a mental answer, a sibling, a close friend, the grandparents back home, but a mental answer is not a legal one. Without a document naming a guardian, that decision is made by the court applying the default framework, not by whoever you would have actually chosen.

What the Default Tends to Look Like

Where no will or guardianship nomination is on file, a UAE court works out guardianship itself, considering the child's welfare and the available family members rather than simply reading off a nomination you made. Since 1 February 2023, non-Muslim custody and guardianship matters generally start from a civil framework under Federal Decree-Law No. 41 of 2022 rather than the older Sharia-influenced approach, but exactly how a court weighs which relative should take over, if neither parent is available, is not something reducible to a simple, guaranteed order, it depends on the facts of the case and the specific court. What is consistent either way: it is the court's assessment, not the family's own choice, unless a nomination is on file. If the surviving parent is not the person the family would have chosen to raise the children alone, or if both parents are unavailable, that gap between the court's assessment and the family's actual wishes can become a real, contested problem.

Why This Is Different From Inheritance

Guardianship and inheritance are related questions but not the same one. Inheritance is about who receives your property. Guardianship is about who raises your children day to day, makes school and medical decisions, and has legal authority over them. A will that only addresses property but says nothing about guardianship still leaves the guardianship question to the default framework. Make sure any will you register explicitly names a guardian, not just beneficiaries.

How Registered Wills Change This

Both the DIFC Wills Service Centre and the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department's non-Muslim wills registry allow you to formally nominate a guardian for your minor children as part of the will. Note that the DIFC guardianship nomination specifically requires the child to reside in Dubai or Ras Al Khaimah, if that doesn't fit your situation, the ADJD route is the one to use. Either way, this is one of the single most consequential things a UAE-registered will does for a family with children, it puts your actual choice, not a court working from scratch, in front of the judge from the outset.

It is worth naming both a primary and a backup guardian, and discussing the nomination with the people you are naming before you register, courts still retain oversight and can consider the child's best interests, but a clearly documented parental choice carries real weight and removes ambiguity at the worst possible moment for your family.

If Your Chosen Guardian Lives Outside the UAE

Many Indian families in the UAE would want a grandparent or sibling back in India to take on guardianship. This raises practical questions beyond the will itself: immigration and travel logistics for the children, how the guardian would access funds held in the UAE or in India, and whether the nominated guardian is realistically able to relocate or take the children to India quickly. These are worth working through with a lawyer while planning the will, not left as an assumption.

Do This Before You Assume It Is Handled

If you have a will from your home country that names a guardian, check whether it is likely to be recognised by a UAE court for children resident in the UAE, in many cases it is safer to register the guardianship nomination directly through the UAE route as well, rather than relying on a foreign document to be honoured automatically.

Talk to Vaksy about your estate plan →