Will Montenegro Override Your Will? What US and UK Buyers Need to Know About Inheritance Law

Usually, no. Montenegro's Law on International Private Law sends the question of who inherits your estate — including a Montenegrin apartment — to the law of the country where you habitually live, not automatically to Montenegro's own inheritance code. For a US or UK buyer who keeps their primary home abroad, that means your own country's rules on wills, not Montenegro's forced-heirship statute, are the default starting point. The exceptions — becoming a Montenegrin habitual resident, or actively choosing Montenegrin law — are real, but they require something to actually change, not just a change of address on a deed.

The fear is not irrational — it is just imprecise. Most continental European legal systems, Montenegro included, do have a doctrine most buyers have heard of under its French name: forced heirship. Montenegro's own Law on Inheritance (Zakon o nasljeđivanju, "Sl. list CG", br. 74/2008 and 75/2017) sets out exactly this kind of rule. Article 27 names the forced heirs — descendants, the spouse, adopted children, parents, adoptive parents, and (only if unable to work and without means of support) grandparents and siblings. Article 28 fixes the share: descendants, adopted children and the spouse are entitled to one-half of what they would have inherited without a will; other forced heirs get one-third. A will cannot disinherit these people out of the part the law reserves for them. All of that is real. What is not automatically true is that it applies to a foreign buyer's Montenegrin apartment just because the apartment sits on Montenegrin soil.

Montenegro's Law on International Private Law (Zakon o međunarodnom privatnom pravu) is the statute that decides which country's inheritance rules apply to a cross-border estate, and it does not use the location of the property as the default trigger. Article 71 states it plainly: "Za nasljeđivanje cjelokupne zaostavštine mjerodavno je pravo države u kojoj je ostavilac imao uobičajeno boravište u vrijeme smrti" — the law of the state where the deceased had their habitual residence at the time of death governs the succession of the entire estate. Not nationality. Not where any single asset is physically located. One connecting factor, applied to everything the person owned, wherever it sits.

For most US and UK buyers of a Montenegrin apartment, habitual residence does not shift just because they own property there, visit twice a year, or even hold a residence permit. It means the place where someone actually, ordinarily lives — their real home, not a holiday address. A British buyer who keeps their job, their family and their daily life in Manchester, and uses the Montenegro apartment three weeks a year, has their habitual residence in the UK under any reasonable reading of Article 71 — which means English succession law, not Montenegrin forced heirship, is what Montenegrin law itself says should govern their estate, apartment included.

Article 72 goes further than just setting a default; it lets a testator actively choose the governing law, within limits. A person may select, for their entire estate, either the law of the country whose nationality they hold or the law of the country where they have their habitual residence. And for immovable property specifically, Article 72 allows an additional, separate choice: the testator may choose the law of the country where that real estate is located, just for that asset, independent of whatever law governs the rest of the estate. In other words, a US or UK buyer is not stuck with the default — but nothing requires them to opt into Montenegrin law either. Doing nothing leaves the Article 71 default (habitual residence) in place.

A separate question from "whose rules apply" is "does Montenegro even recognize the document." Article 73 of the same law takes a deliberately generous approach: a will is formally valid if it satisfies the law of any one of several alternative connections — the country where it was made, the testator's nationality, their residence, their habitual residence, or Montenegrin law itself. A standard US or UK will, properly executed under the law of the state or country where it was signed, clears this bar without needing to be redone in Montenegrin form.

For British buyers specifically, there is a belt-and-braces confirmation beyond Montenegro's own statute. Both the UK and Montenegro are parties to the 1961 Hague Convention on the Conflicts of Laws Relating to the Form of Testamentary Dispositions — the UK since 6 November 1963, Montenegro (as successor to the former state union) since 1 March 2007. The Convention exists for exactly this situation: it obliges contracting states to recognize a will's formal validity if it satisfies the internal law of any of several listed countries connected to the testator. A UK will that is valid in England is treated as formally valid in Montenegro twice over — under the Convention and under Montenegro's own Article 73.

The United States is not among the roughly 40 parties to the 1961 Hague Convention, which sometimes gets presented as a gap. In practice, it changes little for a US buyer, because Montenegro's own Article 73 already does the Convention's job unilaterally: it recognizes a will as formally valid if it meets US state law where it was executed, without needing a treaty to say so. The Convention adds a second layer of certainty for UK buyers; its absence does not remove the first layer that already covers US buyers.

The reassuring default is not permanent immunity. If a US or UK buyer eventually relocates permanently — moves their real, day-to-day life to Montenegro rather than just owning a holiday apartment there — habitual residence shifts with them. At that point, Article 71's default points to Montenegro, and Montenegrin forced heirship under Articles 27–28 of the Law on Inheritance applies to the full estate, not just the apartment. This is the scenario the myth is actually describing — it is real, but it is triggered by where someone genuinely lives, not by the mere fact of owning Montenegrin real estate.

Article 72's choice-of-law option exists precisely for this situation. A buyer who intends to retire to Montenegro, or who is unsure where they will end up living, can execute a will that explicitly elects the law of their nationality — US state law or English law — to govern their succession, overriding what would otherwise become the Montenegrin default once habitual residence shifts. This has to be done deliberately, in the will itself, with the help of a lawyer who can draft the choice-of-law clause correctly; it is not something that happens automatically just because someone is American or British.

The fear of forced heirship often comes from not realizing how close to testamentary freedom most of the US already is. The vast majority of US states let a person leave property to anyone, with one broad exception: a surviving spouse can generally claim an "elective share," typically around one-third of the estate, regardless of what the will says. Louisiana is the well-known outlier, retaining a French-influenced forced heirship rule for children aged 23 or younger, or of any age if they are permanently incapable of caring for themselves. Outside Louisiana and the spousal elective share, American buyers are used to disposing of property however they choose — which is closer to what Montenegro's own default rule hands back to them than most buyers expect.

English and Welsh law is built on testamentary freedom even more explicitly: there is no fixed reserved share for children or a spouse. The main constraint is the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975, which lets a spouse, child or dependant ask a court for "reasonable financial provision" if the will left them nothing — a discretionary claim decided case by case, not a guaranteed percentage. A British buyer whose UK will already reflects their wishes is not handing that control away by buying an apartment in Bar.

None of this means a Montenegrin court stays out of the picture. Article 128 of the same Law on International Private Law gives Montenegrin courts jurisdiction over succession proceedings whenever estate property is physically located in Montenegro, even if the deceased was never habitually resident there. In practice, that means the local inheritance proceeding (ostavinski postupak) — the formal process that updates the land registry and transfers title to the apartment — still runs in front of a Montenegrin court or notary, even when US or UK law is what substantively governs who inherits. The court is not choosing to apply Montenegrin inheritance law in that scenario; it is applying foreign law as determined by Article 71/72, but it has to be told what that foreign law says, with evidence, which is where real friction and cost show up.

Proving the content of foreign law to a Montenegrin court is not automatic or free. Heirs typically need a local lawyer, sometimes certified translations and sometimes expert opinion on US or UK law, before a Montenegrin notary will register the inherited apartment in their name. None of this changes who is legally entitled to inherit — but it is the honest, practical cost of the favorable default, and it is exactly the kind of detail a buyer should already be used to from the paperwork side of buying in the first place: consulting a Montenegrin lawyer before (not after) a death in the family is worth the modest cost.

Separate from who inherits is what they owe the state for inheriting. Montenegro does not run a dedicated inheritance tax regime; it folds an inherited property into the same real estate transfer tax that applies to any other transfer — a progressive 3% up to €150,000, then 5% up to €500,000 and 6% above that. In practice this rarely touches a family inheritance: spouses, children and parents are fully exempt from the tax when inheriting from each other, part of the same broader tax picture foreign owners deal with while they're alive. This is a secondary concern next to the forced-heirship question, but it is worth budgeting for in an estate plan rather than discovering later.

Three concrete steps cover almost every situation. First, keep (or make) a valid will under US state law or English law covering worldwide assets, including the Montenegrin apartment by name — Montenegro's Article 73 will recognize it without redrafting. Second, if there is any realistic chance of eventually making Montenegro a full-time home, have a lawyer add an explicit Article 72 choice-of-law clause naming US or UK law, so a future change of residence does not quietly change which inheritance law applies. Third, tell the heirs (or the executor) that a Montenegrin asset exists and will need a local probate step at a Montenegrin notary — it is a manageable administrative task, not a legal threat, as long as it isn't a surprise.

Montenegro does have forced heirship, and the fear is grounded in something real about how civil-law countries generally work. But Montenegro's own conflict-of-law statute does not reach for that rule automatically just because a foreigner owns an apartment on its coast — it reaches first for the law of wherever the owner actually lives, which for the overwhelming majority of US and UK buyers is still home. The honest risks are narrower and more manageable than the rumor: a future change in where you actually live, and a local paperwork step that foreign law still has to clear. Both are addressable with a properly drafted will and a conversation with a Montenegrin lawyer — the same kind of ordinary homework already covered in our look at Montenegro's safety record for buyers, not a reason to rewrite an estate plan around a myth. If the legal picture checks out, the next step is simply seeing what's available in Bar.