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Emigration: Do The Right Thing - Hannah Beecham, ExpatMoneyChannel.com

Do The Right Thing

If you plan to move abroad, knowing your rights is one of the most crucial pieces of research if you want a successful, trouble-free adventure, according to Hannah Beecham.

It will not have escaped the attention of Angelina Jolie fans that she has a tattoo etched on her shoulder saying “Know Your Rights”. Unfortunately, thousands of British expats don’t know their rights and are losing out on significant rights and benefits. Taking the tiny island of Menorca alone, official figures record 4,700 British expatriates but estimates put the figure higher than 6,000. A similar scenario is be-ing repeated in other popular expatriate locations around the world.

Yet by formally registering in a new country, an expatriate and his or her family can become full members of the community with all the entitlements to local health and education systems, access to help in the case of emergencies as well as the other facilities that membership brings.

For those retirees casting restless eyes around the world looking for the best location for their twilight years, knowing your rights is essential, particularly if you plan to rely on a UK state pension. Just a cursory glance at what happens here will re-veal a sharp distinction between rights and expectation. Yes, provided you have paid up along the way, you are entitled to a UK state pension no matter where you live in the world. But, depending on which country you settle in you do not have automatic rights to a pension that increases in value after your year of departure. Such inflationary increases do apply in the EU and European Economic Area, which include Gibraltar, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and those countries with which the UK has signed a reciprocal social security agreement.

However, some of the most popular retirement destinations favoured by Brits, in-cluding Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, do not qualify as loca-tions where the automatic rise in value is implemented. In fact, retirees in these countries will find their state pension’s value is frozen from the day of retirement. It doesn’t require the services of a calculator to work out that if you move abroad at 65, your pension could be frozen for a couple of decades by which time the value will be half what you set out with. Ask yourself, how are you going to live off that?

So take a tip from Angelina Jolie and get to Know Your Rights and follow my top five tips on making sure you don’t lose out on benefits:

1) Health and Education: Register with the local authorities on arrival in your new country of residence. This will ensure you have full access to information and help on your health and education entitlement. In EU countries that have recipro-cal arrangements with the UK, expats registering on arrival become classified as ‘resident’ and find themselves with the same rights and obligations as a local in-habitant.

2) Emergencies: The British Consul is a good starting point for finding out informa-tion and they can direct you to the relevant local departments. They can also help you in cases of emergencies, with the notable exceptions of getting you out of jail or lending money!

3) Buying Property: Few expats can now be unaware of the land-grab laws which regulate compulsory property purchases in certain regions of Spain – but how many know exactly how such legalities impinge on the property they paid market-fuelled prices for? Researching titles before handing over money is the only way to acquaint yourself with the rights of others and so protect your own. In Spain, the FCO now has Spanish civil servants working alongside its Embassy col-leagues advising on property issues. Similar problems with property are also af-fecting expats in Cyprus.

4) Pensions: Avoid surprises! If you are relying on a State pension when you retire abroad, check on whether your pension will be frozen or will increase in line with inflation in your new country of residence. This will allow you to make financial plans accordingly.

5) Know Before You go: The FCO’s website should be regularly visited by all ex-pats checking up on their rights in a new country. This can be accessed either via the FCO’s travel information pages or the country-specific sites – http://ww.fco.gov.uk/travel

Hannah Beecham

Hannah Beecham is one of the founding editors of the first comprehensive personal finance website for British expats. www.expatmoneychannel.com. She has appeared on TV and radio and is one of the most experienced and best known financial journalist writing for the British expatriate market.

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