Estate Planning For Expat Life: Blanket Launches In The UAE
Blanket, a UAE-born estate planning platform built for expats and cross-border lives, has officially launched in the UAE, offering residents a simpler, clearer and more affordable way to put the right protection in place for their families, assets and wishes.
Created by Anton Pirinen, a lawyer and part of the founding team at Wio bank, Blanket was built to address the reality of modern expat life, where families, finances and responsibilities often sit across more than one country. Bringing together legal expertise, fintech experience and product-led thinking, the platform gives expats a more accessible route into estate planning, with wills and powers of attorney available through one guided process.
Anton chose to launch Blanket in the UAE after seeing a clear gap in a market. With a large expat population, multiple legal frameworks and many residents holding assets across more than one country, estate planning can quickly become fragmented, expensive and difficult to navigate. Backed by investors and advisors from Wio and Revolut backgrounds, Blanket helps close that gap by giving residents access to more serious, cross-border estate planning support without the cost, complexity or offline experience of the traditional law firm route.
Alongside UAE wills, Blanket also supports expats with the wider estate planning decisions that come with living internationally. The platform helps customers understand what protection makes sense across the different countries connected to their life, family and assets, before guiding them through the right documents in one coordinated process. Blanket currently supports wills for the UK and India, with plans to expand globally.
For many UAE-based expats, putting a will in place is often delayed because the process feels expensive, complicated or overwhelming. Yet without a registered will, families can face frozen bank accounts, delayed access to assets, court-led guardianship decisions and lengthy probate processes at an already difficult time. In some cases, the process can take six to eighteen months.
Blanket also offers powers of attorney, helping residents appoint someone they trust to act on their behalf when needed – from banking and government paperwork, to healthcare matters and practical UAE admin if they are travelling or no longer in the country. For expats, it adds another much-needed layer of protection.
Anton Pirinen, Founder and CEO of Blanket, comments:
“Estate planning is one of those things people know they should do, but usually put off because it feels too complex, too expensive or just not urgent enough. For expats, that problem is even bigger, because life does not always sit neatly in one country.
“You may live in the UAE, own assets somewhere else, have family overseas and be dealing with different legal systems at the same time. I built Blanket to make that process easier to understand, easier to access and more suited to how people actually live today.”
Users can sign up with an email address, complete an online intake in around 15 minutes, and manage the process without in-person meetings. From there, a draft will is created using lawyer-designed templates, reviewed by a qualified human expert, translated into Arabic by a Ministry of Justice-licensed translator, and submitted through the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department’s notarial process. Once registered, the official will is held with ADJD as the government repository, while the user’s personal copy and supporting documents can be stored securely in Blanket’s Vault.
Each customer is assigned a specific expert at Blanket from the start. That means they have someone to manage their case, guide them through the entire process, and be on hand to answer questions along the way.
Blanket’s service fee starts from AED 799 and includes drafting, changes, translation, Vault and Capsules. The Vault gives customers a secure place to store important estate planning documents, while Capsules allows them to securely share selected information, instructions or documents with the right people when needed. The ADJD government registration fee is AED 950 for a single will, while mirror wills carry an ADJD government registration fee of AED 1,900, paid directly to ADJD.
Blanket is now available in the UAE at blanket.ae.
For more information and/ or interview opportunities with Anton Pirinen, please contact Alexia Lawrence-Jones at Lex Comms: alexia@lexcomms.com
