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Dubai: Residents, investors can now register wills for digital assets

Digital assets industry has been growing exponentially in UAE and worldwide due to the advent of new technologies and asset classes

The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts on Tuesday launched 'digital assets will' which allows owners to distribute their digital assets using a non-custodial wallet.

The wallet allows an individual to reallocate the assets to the desired beneficiaries within their wallet and for full control to mobilise in and out of the wallet in their lifetime, with assets finally distributed as ‘specific gifts’.

Investors and residents can access it from anywhere in the world and be connected, via video link, to a compliance officer sitting in Dubai.

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This initiative was announced on the second day of the five-day Global Gitex 2024 edition, which kicked off at the Dubai World Trade Centre on Monday.

The digital assets industry has been growing exponentially in the UAE and worldwide due to the advent of new technologies and asset classes.

The new will template joins the extensive legacy will types offered by the DIFC Courts, including the full will, property will, financial assets will, business owners will and guardianship will. An existing online automated will drafting service, and a virtual registry reinforce a 360-degree digitally accessible service, allowing those living domestically and overseas to create and register a DIFC Courts will.

Digital format assets recognised by the wallet include ETH; BTC; MATIC; USDC; USDT; and HBAR. Going forward, others will also be included.

DIFC Courts said that the wills can also then be added to the global digital vault, tejouri, which functions simultaneously as a cloud vault and an online safe for data, supported by a state-of-the-art onsite DIFC data centre and a secondary UAE-based backup data centre. Access to all data is restricted to the ‘vault holder’ and the listed intended recipients.

More services

In addition, DIFC Courts also announced the launch of a notary service, a first-of-its-kind UAE service dedicated to notarising English documents. The service will provide three options for users; an automated self-service; a live virtual system; and an in-person service. Users of the service will also have the option to utilise an authentication service through primary source verification (PSV).

Moreover, an electronic or physical stamp and seal will be issued with each document and notarised documents will be verified using advanced cryptographic methods, powered by Hedera Blockchain, by logging notarisation events with a timestamp on the blockchain.

It said document types accepted for attestation and notarisation will include, but is not limited to, affidavits, witness statements, wills, power of attorney, trade licenses, title deeds, health certificates, marriage certificates, and bank statements.

As part of the mission of the DIFC Courts to provide an effective portfolio of dispute resolution mechanisms, a new alternative dispute resolution avenue will also be provided. The Mediation Service Centre will enable parties to negotiate resolution of their dispute with the help of DIFC Courts Part III registered mediators.

Parties will be able to choose the mediators and agree fees and terms in advance, as well as the choice to conduct mediation meetings online using the newly upgraded and AI-enabled Court Management System (CMS), or in-person at the DIFC Courts premises.

The new suite of services were launched with the support of The Hashgraph Association, specialists in building Distributed Ledger Technology ecosystems, with Hedera technology utilised by the DIFC Courts to construct a bespoke DLT architecture and establish access to a decentralised trust application.

Deca4 Advisory also supported the DIFC Courts with architecting the new digital services, as well as support from the DataFlow Group, who specialise in Primary Source Verification (PSV) solutions and background screening and provided a checkpoint for tamper-proof, verifiable credentials of documentation entering the DIFC Courts service systems.

“In our new digitally driven societies, individuals and businesses are demonstrating increased desire for easily accessible public services... Our obligation is to deploy the latest emerging technologies to facilitate this growth and demand. Breaking down the boundaries of access to justice sits at the core of our operations and these new digital services provide ease of process across administrative tasks, such as notarisation, to more complex matters involving alternative dispute resolution and inheritance,” said Justice Omar Al Mheiri, director, DIFC Courts.

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