Get Legal Help
A matter that reaches more than one country
A matter that touches two or more countries, and what that changes about the documents and the advice.
Most matters that end up crossing a border did not start that way. They started as an agreement, a hire, a business, a document or a move, and then a second country appeared — and what changes is usually not the thing itself, but whose law decides it and whether the paperwork will be accepted on the other side.
What this can involveWhat it can involve
Does one of these sound like yours?
You don’t need to know the legal term for it. Start with what actually happened.
- An agreement with someone in another countryThe agreement may be ordinary in every other way. What the second country adds is whose law reads it, and whether it says so itself.
- A business operating in more than one placeTrading, opening or holding something in a second country, which in practice means being set up twice rather than once.
- Someone working for you in another countryThe same role and the same person, in a different place — and employment paperwork that cannot simply be copied across.
- Work, a name or an idea used abroadWhat you protected in one place does not automatically carry to another, and that gap is usually noticed late.
- A document that has to be accepted somewhere elseSigning, witnessing, certifying and translating are what make a document usable in a country other than the one it was written in.
- Which country's law applies, and where a disagreement would goThe question underneath all of the above, and the one worth settling while everyone still agrees.
None of these is a different kind of matter. They are the ordinary ones — a contract, a hire, a business, a document — read a second time with another country in the room, which is why this page sends you back to the situation you actually have rather than treating the border as a subject of its own.
None of these quite right? You don’t have to pick one.
More than one area
One situation, more than one area of law.
A matter that reaches more than one country rarely sits in a single category. These are the areas it most often reaches, and why. You don’t have to pick one — the matter decides, not you.
Each one is a real page you can read before deciding anything.
And often also
- Corporate & CommercialA business operating in two places is, in practice, set up twice.
- ContractsThe agreement itself has to say which country's law decides it.
- ImmigrationPeople moving is the most common reason a matter stops being in one place.
- TaxTwo countries can each have a claim on the same income or the same asset.
Not sure where to start
Still not sure this is your situation?
Then don't pick one. Describe what's happening in your own words and we'll work out what it involves — and which areas of law it reaches.
Other situations
Is one of these closer?
Questions
Questions people ask at this point.
Get started
Tell us what’s happening. We’ll take it from there.
You don't need to know which area of law it is, or what the next step should be. Describe the situation and we'll work out what it involves.