Conflict of Laws

Conflict of laws (or private international law) is a set of rules that determines which legal system and which jurisdiction apply to a given dispute with an international nexus. In the area of trust and estate law, there are some international treaties (e.g. Hague Convention on the Form of Testamentary Dispositions), however, most of conflict of laws is national law (EGBGB) or European law (e.g. the European Succession Regulation). The three branches of conflict of laws are

• Jurisdiction (Internationale Zuständigkeit) – whether the forum court has the power to resolve the dispute at hand;
• Choice of law (Internationales Privatrecht) – the law which is being applied to resolve the dispute;
• Foreign judgments – the ability to recognize and enforce a judgment from an external forum within the jurisdiction of the adjudicating forum