Will and Power of Attorney for UK citizen

Family, Education, Health and Pets
1
Hi we are a married couple living in Fribourg on permit C. We contacted a notaire to do a will and power of attorney for each other. We are now stuck because they want a stamped extract less than six months old for all our birth and marriage certs. We can only get replica's of originals so we have now been told we need to apply for the certs and then get then stamped by a UK solicitor and ditto in Scotland for me. That would mean high flight costs and legal fees and even then we are not sure they would be accepted as we don't have extracts for the register like you have here. Has anyone been through the process easily or can recommend a notaire that understands the situation and can assist us please? Many Thanks

2

I would ask here.

https://www.gov.uk/general-register-office

I got several certificates when I was researching the family history and they were sent by post to me here in Switzerland. They’d be able to tell you if you can get originals or certified copies.

I’m surprised to hear this since we did our wills a few years ago with a notary here in Fribourg and didn’t need any of those far as I can recall. We just did wills though, no power of attorney involved.

3

Getting fresh birth and marriage certificates should be relatively easy:

For Scotland see here:
https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/c…tes-and-copies

On top of that you might need an apostille which you can get here:
https://www.gov.uk/get-document-legalised

4
Hi Thanks all, It seems to be a requirement post Brexit so we do need the apostille unfortunately.

5

For the power of attorney, could you simply complete a hand written poa? I’m not sure if the procedure is the same in Fribourg but in Zurich you can simply write out a full letter stating who you’d want to be poa. It doesn’t even have to be registered but perhaps it’s a good idea to do it. A notary isn’t needed. Here’s a link from the ZKB with info on it (in German but can be deepld):

https://www.zkb.ch/de/private/vorsor…geauftrag.html

It’s not much help with the will but for poa it seems to be much more straight forward. I haven’t gone through the process myself so not sure what is involved in terms of documents e.g birth, marriage certs etc and again it might differ in each canton.