A growing number of the files this firm handles contain the same pair of assets: an apartment on the Montenegrin coast and a property in Turkey. The owner usually has one will, made at home, and one assumption — that a single document distributes a single estate. This page is about why that assumption fails between these two particular countries, what actually happens instead, and the small number of planning moves — all of them ordinary law, none of them products — that make the two-code estate behave like one.
It builds directly on our single-jurisdiction guides: Montenegrin succession for foreign owners and the Turkish inheritance guide. Read those for each system alone; this page is about what happens where they meet.
Two conflict rules that point in different directions
Neither state is bound by the EU Succession Regulation — both are EU candidates, neither a member — so each applies its own private international law, and the two Acts are built on different philosophies.
Turkey answers with nationality and an immovables carve-out. Article 20 of the Turkish PIL Act (MÖHUK) subjects succession to the deceased's national law — but Turkish law applies to immovable property located in Turkey, full stop. There is no choice-of-law mechanism: whoever you are and wherever you live, the Istanbul apartment devolves under the Turkish Civil Code. The form of your will is judged generously (the place of making or your national law will do), but its content, as applied to the Turkish immovable, meets Turkish substantive rules.
Montenegro answers with habitual residence and a menu. Article 71 of the 2014 Private International Law Act subjects the whole estate to the law of the state where the deceased was habitually resident at death — a unitary rule, with no automatic immovables carve-out. Article 72 then allows a choice: you may elect your national law for the estate, and for the Montenegrin immovable specifically, Montenegrin law as the law of its location — expressly, in testamentary form.
Put the two side by side and the practical geometry emerges. The Turkish property's governing law is fixed and non-negotiable. The Montenegrin property's governing law is movable — it follows your residence by default and your written choice if you make one. Which means the only variable you control is on the Montenegrin side, and controlling it is how the two-code estate is made coherent: an owner who elects, say, their national law for the Montenegrin estate can bring both properties under regimes they have actually read, instead of leaving one asset to a residence assessment conducted after their death.
| Question | Turkey's answer | Montenegro's answer |
|---|---|---|
| Default law for the estate | The deceased's national law | Law of habitual residence at death |
| The local immovable | Turkish law, mandatorily — no choice | Follows the general rule, unless situs law is chosen |
| Can the owner choose the governing law? | No | Yes — national law, or situs law for the immovable, chosen in testamentary form |
| Formal validity of a foreign will | Generous — place of making or national law suffices | Generous — Hague 1961 plus a seven-item domestic list |
The double probate is not optional
However elegantly the governing law is arranged, procedure does not merge. The Montenegrin property passes through the Montenegrin ostavinski postupak, conducted by a notary as commissioner of the court, producing an inheritance decision that the Montenegrin cadastre registers. The Turkish property passes through the Turkish chain — the certificate of inheritance and the land-registry transfer conducted under Turkish procedure. Each proceeding admits its own documents, in its own language, with its own apostilles and sworn translations; neither country's certificate operates directly in the other's registry.
For the family, this means the estate has two procedural chapters that can run in parallel but cannot substitute for each other — and the practical planning point is documentary: civil-status records, the wills, and the property folios for both countries should exist in a form each proceeding can digest, located where the heirs can find them. An estate whose Turkish file is complete and whose Montenegrin file is a drawer of assumptions will settle one property in months and the other in years.
The revocation trap: the two codes are opposite by default
Here is the drafting error we most often see in two-country files, and it is sharper than most owners can be expected to guess, because the two codes resolve the same situation in opposite directions.
Under the Turkish Civil Code, a later will that does not expressly deal with the earlier one replaces it, unless it is beyond doubt that the later will merely supplements the earlier (Article 544). Under Montenegro's Law on Inheritance, the presumption runs the other way: if the later will does not expressly revoke the earlier, the earlier will's provisions remain in force except where they conflict with the later one (Article 118) — and revoking the later will revives the earlier, unless a contrary intent is shown.
Now watch what happens to the classic boilerplate. An owner makes a careful will for the Turkish property, then years later signs a new will at home that opens with "I revoke all previous wills". Both systems will read that clause seriously — the Turkish will may be gone. Conversely, an owner who makes a new Turkish will without revocation language may find, from Montenegro's side, that an inconsistent earlier document is still partly alive. Two codes, two defaults, one estate — and the interaction is decided by wording the owner probably copied from a precedent without reading it.
The coordinated-wills discipline that avoids all of this is short: one will per jurisdiction, each expressly limited to that jurisdiction's assets, each expressly stating that it does not revoke the other, reviewed together whenever either is changed. It is an afternoon of drafting, and it removes the single largest failure mode in cross-border estates.
Two forced-share regimes, side by side
Both systems reserve part of the estate for close family, and the fractions differ enough to change outcomes. At summary level — the deep treatments live in the single-jurisdiction guides:
Turkey (Civil Code, Article 506): descendants are reserved one half of their statutory share; each parent one quarter; the surviving spouse the whole of their statutory share when inheriting alongside descendants or the parents' class, and three quarters otherwise — a notably strong spousal position.
Montenegro (Law on Inheritance, Articles 27–28): descendants, adoptees and the spouse are reserved one half of their intestate share; parents and other qualifying forced heirs one third — with the further feature that grandparents and siblings qualify only on need.
The planning consequence of the difference is concrete: a disposition that clears the reserved shares under one code can violate them under the other, and — because the Turkish immovable is mandatorily under Turkish law while the Montenegrin one may be under a law you chose — a single estate can genuinely be subject to both regimes at once, each governing its own asset. The wills should be drafted against the actual fractions of the law that will govern each property, not against a general memory that "there are forced shares".
The tax picture: two systems, no treaty bridge
The two states tax inheritance in unrelated ways, and no treaty connects them for this purpose. The double-taxation arrangement in force between Turkey and Montenegro is an income-and-capital convention; like the standard international model it does not extend to inheritance and gift taxes, and no separate estate-tax treaty exists between the two states. Each side simply applies its own rules.
On the Montenegrin side, the rules are kind to the ordinary family: inheritance is a taxable acquisition under the transfer-tax law, but first-order heirs, the spouse and the parents are exempt — most family successions produce no Montenegrin charge. On the Turkish side, inheritance and gratuitous transfers sit under the inheritance and transfer tax (veraset ve intikal vergisi): a progressive ladder — currently structured from 1% up to 10% for inheritances, and 10% up to 30% for gratuitous transfers — applied above exemption amounts for close family, with the brackets and exemptions re-set annually by revaluation. The structural point for planning is the asymmetry itself: the Montenegrin asset will usually pass tax-free to the family, the Turkish asset will usually generate a modest progressive charge, and any home-country estate tax sits on top under its own rules — with nothing to credit from the Montenegrin side precisely because Montenegro exempted the transfer.
The plan, stated as law
Everything above compresses into four moves, each of them ordinary legal machinery. First, decide the governing law where the law lets you decide: the Article 72 election for the Montenegrin estate is the one lever that exists, and it should be pulled deliberately. Second, run parallel wills — one per jurisdiction, mutually non-revoking, each drafted against the forced shares of the law actually governing its asset. Third, prepare the double probate while alive: documents apostilled, translated and findable for both proceedings. Fourth, check the tax exposure in all three places — Montenegro, Turkey, and the owner's home system — before the structure is fixed, because how title is taken is decided at purchase and is expensive to change later. How the two-jurisdiction practice fits together in one file is described in our note on two jurisdictions, one counsel.
Send us the two property folios, your existing will or wills, and a note of where you actually live and who should inherit. We will tell you plainly which law currently governs each property, whether your documents work together or against each other, and what the coordinated version looks like. That work sits with our inheritance and estate practice.
