The basic idea behind an advance inheritance is the principle of equal treatment - i.e. that parents usually want to treat their children equally. Consequently, a valuable gift to a natural heir (a child, grandchild etc.) is treated as an advance, unless expressly stat...

A gift is something given voluntarily directly or indirectly without payment in return. A gift can be measured in money or money’s worth and is usually given to show favor toward someone or to honor an occasion.

As far as the concept of gifts goes, there is no distincti...

The main questions in inheritance planning are: 

- to whom?

- how much?

- when?

In order to plan you need tools. The most common tools in Finland are donations, last wills and marital contracts.

The tools are used at different times:

1) in life- these are for example donatio...

Last week I wrote about how your place of residence decides applicable law. I also mentioned that when it comes to certain specific legal issues like your succession, marital assets etc. you might want to consider the possibility to choose applicable law. Even if the c...

Last week I wrote about how a person by moving to another State can decide where he/she is taxresident. 

But just because a person has successfully managed to change his/her tax residency, does not automatically mean that the State, that has the right to tax him/her, al...

It's time to submit the annual tax returns in Finland and Finns are once again going through their receipts and checking for ways to reduce taxes. After all, Finland has made the top ten list of countries with the highest income taxes in the world.

Undisputable is howev...

Equality is a fundamental principle of taxation. Taxation must be carried out in such a way that the tax burden is imposed equally on all taxation subjects. The progressive tax, which imposes a higher rate of taxation upon individuals with large incomes than on those w...

According to Statistics Finland a cohabiting couple means:

"A cohabiting couple is defined as two spouseless adults of different sex aged 18 and over and occupying the same dwelling on a permanent basis, provided their age difference is less than 16 years and they are n...

When parents divorce and decide not to parent together, an arrangement has to be made when it comes to the their mutual children regarding questions like who has custody, with whom the child will live and how much childcare is to be paid.

In Finland most parents co-oper...

And the day has finally arrived when I get to order a European Certificate of Succession in one of my cases!

I have been waiting for a chance to use the certificate in my daily work since 17 August 2015 when the European Inheritance regulation started to apply. A Europe...