Probate and Estate Tax on US Holdings of Non US Resident?

Whether something is subject to probate is normally dependent on where the thing is located rather than the nationality of the owner. So yes, normally.

US checking accts are located in the US. But US stock and bond holdings may or may not be located in the US.

A very complex question. First you must look to where the person was domiciled. If not domiciled in the U.S., then primary administration of the estate takes place in the country that has jurisdiction. Typically, that is the country where domiciled. Secondary administration may take place in the US if there is property physically located in the US and that property requires probate under the laws of the state where the property is located.

When it comes to tangible property (real estate for example), its situs is where the property is located. If a UK domiciled person owns property in New Mexico that is probatable (e.g., not held in joint tenancy or a Transfer On Death Deed, or any other law that allows title to pass outside of probate), that property may be subject to New Mexico probate.

Intangible property of our hypothetical UK domiciliary, that is probatable (again not held in joint tenancy, etc.) typically stays with the person and the place where domiciled. So your stocks, bonds and bank accounts would not require any ancillary proceedings in the US. However...... this is not a universal rule and some jurisdictions in the US may have a Probate Code that requires proceedings based on the physical location of the asset. Typically, physical location of stocks is the address of the Transfer Agent; bonds are the place where they are kept; and bank accounts is the location where the account is kept. I am not sure what the location of an internet bank is, but I would guess it is the physical location of the computer server that maintains the account.

Okay, so by that answer *any* assets - including foreign stocks - held inside the US by a non-US citizen are subject to US probate at time of death.

What about estate tax? Will such tax apply only to assets of a non US citizen held inside the US at time of death? Will such estate tax only apply to the subset of those assets that are US source income (i.e., would they exclude a foreign stock from the estate tax)?

An Internet Bank, like any other bank, is a corporation, so I would think it's the corporation's location (which might well be in a different state, or even country, than any particular server).

Seth

Like I said.. I don't know, but a bank's corporate HQ is not necessarily the location of your bank account. If you open and maintain your account in a Los Angeles office of a national bank located in New York City, I believe your account is kept in California.

I didn't say it necessarily was.

But an Internet bank has no offices in the sense that a customer can walk in and make deposits or withdrawals (I know, I tried), so that method of determining location fails.

Any Internet bank I'd trust will not have one server location. It will have several, geographically dispersed, and all of them will maintain all of its data; so, again, "the location of the server that maintains the account" is not a well-defined concept.

Seth