Forced heirship in Europe: why you can't always leave everything to whoever you want
2 August 2026 · Inherit Vault
British and Irish people moving to continental Europe are often surprised to learn a basic assumption doesn't travel with them: that a will can leave an estate to whoever the owner chooses. In much of the EU, it can't, not entirely.
What forced heirship means
Many civil-law countries, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain among the largest, reserve a fixed portion of an estate for close relatives, usually children, by law, known as the réserve héréditaire in France, the Pflichtteil in Germany, and legittima in Italy. That reserved share exists regardless of what the will says, a parent cannot legally will their entire estate to a new spouse, a charity, or a friend and disinherit their children entirely.
How much is protected
The exact share varies by country and by how many children there are, in France, for example, the protected portion can range from half the estate with one child to three-quarters with three or more, leaving only the remainder freely disposable. Germany and Italy apply their own, differently calculated shares. The freely disposable portion, the part you can actually direct as you wish, is often smaller than people assume.
Why this catches people out
Someone who wrote a will under UK or US law, then moved to Spain or France without updating their planning, may assume their will controls the whole estate. Whether it does depends on which country's succession law actually applies, itself decided by the EU Succession Regulation's habitual-residence default, unless a choice of law was made explicitly.
The workaround, where one exists
The EU Succession Regulation's choice of law option can, in many cases, let a British or Irish national elect their national law instead, sidestepping forced heirship rules that would otherwise apply by default. It has to be set up deliberately in the will itself, and even then, some countries apply limited exceptions that a cross-border solicitor should be consulted on.
Forced heirship doesn't remove the need for an executor to find everything, if anything it raises the stakes: an estate split by law across multiple heirs, in multiple countries, is exactly the situation where an undocumented account or an unclear property title turns a legal formula into a years-long dispute.
Leave your family a map, not a mystery.
Inherit Vault is a digital inheritance vault: every account, policy, and instruction your family will need, encrypted so only you can read it, released to your executor when it genuinely matters.
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