In re Annesley

This was an action in England to determine the validity of a decedent’s will which, according to English conflict-of-laws rules, was to be decided according to the law of the decedent’s domicile at her death. The decedent was an 80-year-old English subject-of-origin who moved to France and lived there exclusively for nearly 60 years until her death. The decedent’s will provisions purported to distribute all her personal property and declared the decedent’s intent to keep her English domicile. Under English law, the decedent became a de facto French citizen and was domiciled in France when she died, so French law would apply, and under French law, the will would be invalid because it could only dispose of one-third of the decedent’s personal property. However, under French law, the decedent never became a citizen of France and was an English subject when she died, so English law would apply, and under English law, the will was valid because it allowed a decedent’s personal property to be entirely distributed through a will. Thus, the case presented questions about where the decedent was domiciled at her death and which domicile law applied—its domestic law only or also its choice-of-law rules, because if both applied then there would be no resolution because each jurisdiction would send the question back to the other. Specifically, the law of the country of nationality would invoke the law of the country of domicile, which in turn would invoke the law of the country of nationality.