Ashford International Law P.C. advises Americans on both the US and the German side of their financial lives: family members who move to Germany, inheritances from Germany, assets held there, and the tax and reporting obligations that follow in both countries. The firm works with American families whose members are divided between the two countries, with Americans living in Germany who hold assets in the United States, and with Americans in the United States who expect or have received a German inheritance.

Dr. Caroline Esche Ashford, JD is qualified in both jurisdictions. She is licensed to practice law both in Germany and in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, and she is a registered tax return preparer with the Internal Revenue Service. For seventeen years she has advised on German-American matters, and she represents clients before German authorities as well as in the United States. 

Dr. Ashford is the principal of Ashford International Law P.C., with offices in Washington, DC, Los Angeles and Munich. She is a JD graduate of Columbia University in New York. The firm accepts matters from a threshold of USD 3 million in assets, and the families it advises typically hold between USD 20 million and USD 100 million.

Contact us at (202) 790-2500 or info@internationalestatelaw.com for an Initial Consultation Package.

When a family member moves to Germany

A significant part of the firm’s work begins when someone in the family moves to Germany. The family’s wealth stays in the United States.

Under the German-American estate and gift tax treaty, Germany may tax a gift or an inheritance on an unlimited basis where the recipient is resident there. German allowances are modest by American standards, EUR 400,000 from a parent to a child within any ten-year period, and the rates above them rise steeply. The annual and lifetime exclusions that shape American gifting have no counterpart there.

A revocable trust, the ordinary vehicle of American estate planning, has no equivalent in German law, and distributions to a beneficiary resident in Germany can be treated as taxable acquisitions in their own right. Retirement accounts, life insurance and American mutual funds are taxed on German principles once their owner lives there, and those principles do not track the American ones. The family member’s own worldwide income becomes reportable in Germany while United States citizenship keeps the American filing obligation alive.

Almost all of this is manageable, and much of it is manageable only in advance. Gifts can be completed, trusts can be drafted or amended, and assets can be positioned while the family member is still outside the German system, and options open the month before the move are frequently closed the month after it. The firm advises the family as a whole rather than the departing member alone, because a plan drafted in the United States for the parents and a life built in Germany by the child will otherwise work against one another.

What the firm does

• Planning for Americans who are moving to Germany, or who have recently arrived, including the German treatment of American trusts, retirement accounts, funds, insurance policies and company interests, the timing of gifts, and the amendment of American estate plans that would otherwise fail for a beneficiary resident in Germany;
• Settlement of German estates where the heirs, legatees or beneficiaries are American, including preparing the German inheritance tax return, dealing with German banks and the transfer of proceeds to the United States
• Settlement of United States estates where heirs live in Germany;
• Estate and succession planning for Americans with assets in Germany and Germans with assets in the United States, drawn as one plan rather than two unconnected sets of documents;
• German inheritance and gift tax (Erbschaft- und Schenkungsteuer), United States estate and gift tax, and relief under the German-American estate and gift tax treaty;
• United States reporting obligations that follow a foreign inheritance or a foreign gift, including foreign financial account reporting and foreign asset disclosure;
• Ongoing advice on assets held on both sides, from securities accounts and rental property to interests in family businesses;
• Real estate in either country, including sales by non-resident owners and the withholding that attaches to them;
• Contested estates and probate proceedings.

Case Studies

The matters below are representative of the firm’s German-American practice. Details have been anonymized and figures rounded.

Estate value USD 44 million: residences in Germany and the United States

The decedent maintained residences in both Germany and the United States. Both countries therefore asserted a taxing right over the estate, and the administration had to satisfy two sets of succession and reporting rules at once. The firm administered the estate on both sides of the Atlantic, coordinated the German and American filings so that relief under the applicable treaty and credit rules was preserved, and structured the administration to reduce the overall tax burden on the estate. Tax matters left unresolved during the decedent’s lifetime were regularized within the same engagement.

Assets of EUR 400 million: compulsory portion of a disinherited daughter

The client, a daughter of a German business family, lives in the United States and had been excluded from her parent’s will. German law grants a disinherited child a compulsory portion (Pflichtteil), a monetary claim against the estate that cannot be removed by testamentary disposition, and claims of this kind turn on the valuation of closely held company assets and on strict statutory deadlines. The firm advised and represented the client from the United States and secured her entitlement.

Estate value USD 20 million: continuity of a German family business

The decedent’s will was intended to keep a German family business in the family’s hands, but it was defective in form. The firm obtained recognition and enforcement of the will in the United States and defended the estate against compulsory portion claims brought by other family members.

Matter value USD 8 million: challenge to a fraudulent codicil

A codicil surfaced unexpectedly in the administration of an estate of approximately USD 70 million in Washington, DC, purporting to grant a distant relative a legacy of USD 8 million. The firm challenged the document as fraudulent and conducted the litigation on behalf of the German heirs through to a satisfactory conclusion.

Asset level USD 38 million: American trusts with beneficiaries in Germany and France

The client, an individual resident in Virginia, held her wealth through a revocable trust and several irrevocable trusts, with the remainder beneficiaries living in Germany and France. Trusts of this kind are unremarkable in American planning and difficult everywhere else, because neither German nor French law has an equivalent institution and each treats the trust on its own terms rather than on the terms of the instrument. A distribution that is simply a distribution in the United States can be treated in the beneficiary’s country as an acquisition subject to inheritance or gift tax, and the trustee’s reporting duties differ again in each. The firm reviewed the existing instruments against the position of each beneficiary, advised on the American withholding and reporting that attaches to distributions to beneficiaries abroad, and on how the terms of the trusts, in particular whether income is carried out to the beneficiary or accumulated, change the result in Germany and in France. The trusts were then restructured so that they perform as intended for a beneficiary in each of the three countries.

Estate value USD 9 million: German real estate and precious metals in Switzerland

The clients, a married couple in New York, inherited from a German national whose estate consisted principally of a portfolio of German real estate together with a holding of precious metals in Switzerland. German succession law governed the estate and German inheritance tax applied to it in full, while the couple’s own position was determined by American law, which taxes them on the income the inherited assets produce and requires the receipt itself to be reported. The firm handled the German administration and the dealings with the German authorities, advised on the holding, letting and eventual disposal of the German property and on the German holding periods that bear on a sale, addressed the questions of situs, custody and reporting raised by the metals held in Switzerland, and set out the American filings the couple had to make. The inheritance reached them without unresolved exposure in any of the three countries.

Client identities and identifying details have been withheld or altered. Every estate turns on its own facts, on the jurisdictions involved and on the law in force at the time. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any other matter.

Recurring Matters

Estates of German decedents with beneficiaries in the United States

The firm settles the estates of Germans who die in Germany leaving heirs or legatees in the United States. These estates typically hold substantial financial investments together with a portfolio of leased commercial and residential real estate. The work covers the German administration itself, the ongoing management of tenanted property while the estate is open, the American reporting obligations of the beneficiaries, and the transfer of the proceeds to them in a form that neither triggers avoidable tax nor leaves reporting obligations unmet.

Settlement of United States estates for heirs in Germany

The firm settles estates in the United States where the heirs, legatees or trust beneficiaries live in Germany. The work covers the probate or administration proceeding in the relevant state, the collection and valuation of the American assets, creditor claims, the estate’s own tax filings, and the clearances, certificates and withholding formalities that American banks, transfer agents and title companies require before anything is released abroad. The German side raises its own questions, because the inheritance is taxed and reported there as well, and the firm coordinates the two.

Lifetime structuring and ongoing advice for Americans with assets in Germany

The firm advises United States citizens and residents on the holding and structuring of their assets during their lifetime, in Germany and at home, working with German counsel and tax advisers where local instruments are required. The object is a structure that is effective under German law and at the same time sound for United States income, gift and estate tax purposes, since arrangements that are ordinary in Germany can carry unexpected consequences under American law. The firm also advises the same individuals and families on their United States assets on a continuing basis, because the two sides together determine the exposure, the reporting obligations and the eventual disposition of the estate as a whole.

German-American estate plans

The firm drafts the plan for the transfer of an estate at death for individuals and families whose assets lie in both countries. A plan that works in one can defeat itself in the other, whether through conflicting succession rules, compulsory portions, matrimonial property regimes or a tax charge that arises only because of how the assets are held. The firm designs the plan as a single structure and prepares the American instruments, coordinating with German counsel for the German ones, so that the documents in each country operate together rather than against one another.

Advice to United States executors and administrators

The firm advises American executors, administrators and trustees on distributions to beneficiaries resident in Germany. An executor who releases funds across a border without first addressing withholding, clearance and reporting requirements may remain personally answerable for the shortfall after the estate has been distributed.

Advice to agents acting under powers of attorney

The firm advises agents appointed under German powers of attorney, including a Vorsorgevollmacht, on the American assets of the principal for whom they act, and agents under American powers on German assets. Much of the work concerns the instrument itself: what the agent is authorized to do, whether a particular transaction falls inside the grant, and the duties owed to the principal. Recognition is the second difficulty, since an instrument valid where it was executed is often not accepted by a bank or registry in the other country without further formalities.

Advice to German investors in the United States

The firm advises German nationals and residents on their investments in the United States, including real estate, interests in closely held companies and securities portfolios. The advice covers the choice of holding structure, the treatment of rental income, dividends and capital gains, the withholding that applies to a non-resident investor, and the exit. It also covers the exposure that is most often overlooked, namely that American assets held by a non-resident fall within the reach of United States estate tax on the owner’s death, with an exemption far below the amount available to an American, and that relief under the German-American estate tax treaty depends on how the investment was structured in the first place rather than on what is decided afterwards.

Family businesses from the German-speaking countries with subsidiaries in the United States

The firm advises family businesses from Germany, Austria and Switzerland on their American operations. It forms the American subsidiary, advises on the choice of entity, its capitalization and the contractual and pricing arrangements between it and the European parent, and then acts as outside counsel to the subsidiary on its continuing affairs, including governance, contracts, employment questions and the corporate formalities the entity must observe to keep its standing and its liability shield. The owning family’s own position belongs in the same picture, since shares in an American company are United States situs assets and fall to be considered in the family’s succession planning.