As some of you may know, we have an office in the rainy city of Manchester. In fact, this office was Gunnercooke´s first office. Fifteen years down the line, we now have offices all across the UK as well as in other countries. However, Manchester is where everything started. It is normal that when some new clients asked to hold a meeting in our Manchester office, I didn´t hesitate. Not only because I like visiting the Manchester office and seeing my colleagues in the North but also because this new matter constituted a real challenge.

Two families of Spanish-British origin owned a small apartment in the South of Spain and 3 of its members had passed away with no action taking place to transfer their shares to their respective beneficiaries. As an added factor, two of them had no Spanish Will but had an English Will and the other one no Will at all. Last but not least, no Grant of Probate was issued for the UK estates of the two who had an English Will. Clients were therefore facing the administration of three estates where no Spanish Will had been put into place and each estate had to be administered in a different way.

The clients told me that a Spanish lawyer who was initially instructed to deal with this case had to give up as he did not know how to administer three estates with such a deep international element. However, the clients were extremely happy after seeing that I knew exactly what to do with each of the estates: a Grant of Probate would be needed for the two English estates where the was an English Will and the third one would require Letters of Administration, all of them accompanied by a certificate of English law and the usual supporting documentation and tax forms.

As briefly mentioned in an earlier article, a certificate of English law signed by either an English Solicitor or Notary Public is always required when the deceased´s last Will was a British Will (this could mean English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish). And an intestacy case is no different. Although the said certificate needs to be signed by a person qualified to advise on English law, it is paramount that the said person is also qualified to deal with Spanish law to enable the certificate cover both legal systems. Having said that, the Spanish Authorities prefer that the certificate of law is signed by a Notary Public. The solution? I usually draft the certificate of law in conjunction to a Notary Public of the applicable Jurisdiction, in this case it would be England, and in this manner I ensure that the certificate covers the required points that will satisfy the Spanish Authorities.

At the end of the meeting, I informed the clients that they were facing a long procedure but that I had a clear idea of what to do and the process to follow, which to my delight brought a nice smile to their faces (probably the best part of my job.)

And since life is not only about work and reading is one of my passions, I took the opportunity to pop into my firm´s bookstore “The House of Books & Friends” to buy a few books. For those who don´t know the bookstore, The House of Books & Friends is a nonprofit, community focused bookshop and café in Manchester created and funded by the law firm Gunnercooke. Its core purpose is impact not commercial profit and its main mission to reduce loneliness in Manchester by providing a warm, welcoming space where people can connect.

The shop is a few metres away from our office and I always pay a visit to the bookstore every time that I am in Manchester. After spending 20 minutes browsing the shelves and waiting for the books to speak to me (I have the theory that books come to us for a reason), a name caught my attention: Erling Kagge.

Kagge is a former Norwegian polar explorer turned lawyer, turned writer and eventually philosopher. I have read all his books and to my surprise he had just written a book about the story of the North Pole that I was not aware of. With curiosity, I checked the impressive bio of the writer, specially his achievements as a lawyer and Polar explorer but then I told myself in a low voice: Quite the man, this Erling Kagge, but would he able to deal with a triple inheritance case with an international element? Not so sure, not so sure..