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When someone dies leaving assets in Spain, the clock starts immediately. You have six months to declare and pay Spanish inheritance tax before surcharges begin, accounts are frozen until the estate is formally accepted, and property cannot be sold or mortgaged until it is registered in the heirs' names. We handle the entire process — from death certificate through to the Land Registry — in English, and from wherever in the world you happen to be.
Inheritance in Spain is a sequence of deadlines, documents and offices — the notary, the central wills registry in Madrid, the regional tax office, the Land Registry, and each Spanish bank the deceased held accounts with. None of them coordinate automatically. Each one has its own form, its own evidentiary requirement, and its own pace. For a family abroad, trying to navigate that sequence in a second language while also grieving, dealing with a home-country estate, and meeting a tax deadline they didn't even know existed is exactly the kind of situation we were built to take over.
The Spanish system is not forgiving about late declarations. Inheritance tax in Spain (Impuesto sobre Sucesiones y Donaciones) is due within six months of the date of death. If the tax return isn't filed on time, surcharges start at 5% and climb to 20%, with interest on top. Banks won't release funds until the tax has been paid and a formal acceptance of inheritance is signed. Property stays locked in the deceased's name until the same conditions are met. Families who wait "until everything else is sorted" are the families who arrive at our door nine months later facing penalties that were entirely avoidable.
This is the hub for every inheritance service we provide in Spain. We've written it for families, executors and beneficiaries dealing with a Spanish estate — whether the deceased was a British expat who retired to the Costa del Sol, an American who owned a holiday apartment in Barcelona, an Irish couple who spent winters in Alicante, or any non-Spanish national whose death left Spanish assets behind.
If you already know the service you need — probate administration, an inheritance tax declaration, forced heirship advice, cross-border coordination with a UK solicitor or a US attorney — jump down to the services grid. If you're earlier in the process and still trying to understand what actually has to happen, keep reading. The next sections walk through the Spanish probate sequence step by step, explain how inheritance tax really works across Spain's seventeen regions, and set out what trips families up most often.
There is no single "probate" process in Spain in the way the English and American systems imagine it. There is no court-supervised grant of representation, no executor sworn in by a judge, no public probate registry. Instead, Spanish inheritance is notarial: it runs through a Spanish notary who documents the acceptance of the inheritance (the aceptación y adjudicación de herencia) as a public deed, and it runs through the regional tax authority which assesses the inheritance tax on each heir's share.
That means the work shifts from "getting a grant" to "assembling the file." The notary doesn't investigate anything. They simply need the right documents in front of them: death certificate, Spanish wills certificate, any existing Spanish will, the home-country grant of probate (translated and apostilled), the inventory of assets with valuations, identification for every heir, and evidence of tax residency. The hard work is the preparation. Once the file is complete, the notary appointment itself is straightforward.
The Spanish inheritance process is document-heavy rather than court-heavy. Our job is to build the file correctly, meet the six-month tax deadline, and hand your family a clean set of deeds and a Land Registry entry in their name — not a pile of Spanish forms to translate.
Spain has a national inheritance tax framework, but the real tax bill is decided at regional level. Each of Spain's seventeen comunidades autónomas has substantial power to reduce, rebate or effectively eliminate inheritance tax through regional allowances. The same estate, inherited by the same child, can attract wildly different tax outcomes depending on whether the deceased was last tax-resident in Andalusia, Valencia, Madrid, Catalonia, Murcia, the Balearics, or the Canaries.
In Andalusia and Madrid the effective tax for spouses and children is close to zero on most estates, because near-total regional rebates apply. In Valencia and Murcia, generous allowances also apply for close family. In Catalonia the picture is more nuanced, with sliding reliefs. For the Balearic and Canary Islands, the treatment is again favourable for direct relatives. The practical upshot: a badly-timed residency status, or missing a regional relief because the claim wasn't made correctly, can cost a family tens of thousands of euros on an estate that should have paid almost nothing.
For non-residents inheriting Spanish assets, the treatment used to be materially worse than for residents — a discrimination that the EU Court of Justice struck down in 2014. Since then, non-resident EU heirs have been entitled to the same regional reliefs as residents. Post-Brexit rulings have extended this equal treatment to non-EU heirs too, including British heirs. Getting the regional relief correctly claimed on the non-resident return is one of the most valuable pieces of work we do on inheritance files.
Spanish civil law includes a concept of forced heirship known as the legítima. Under domestic Spanish law, children are entitled to a reserved share of their parent's estate (typically two-thirds), and a testator cannot simply disinherit them. This rule has caught out foreign estates repeatedly, usually in situations where a second spouse was meant to inherit ahead of children from a first marriage, or where one child was deliberately excluded.
For foreign nationals who made a Brussels IV election in their Spanish will (choosing the law of their nationality to govern their succession), the Spanish legítima does not apply. English and American succession law both recognise testamentary freedom. For foreign nationals who did not make that election, or who died without a Spanish will at all, Spanish forced heirship can and does apply. A large part of our inheritance work involves navigating this question on files where the Brussels IV position was never clearly set, and our team includes estate planning specialists who handle this analysis regularly.
Every part of a Spanish inheritance handled under one roof — from the first steps after a death through to the final Land Registry entry in the heirs' names, tax declarations filed on time, and any cross-border coordination with solicitors in the UK, Ireland or the US.
End-to-end administration of a Spanish estate — document gathering, notary acceptance deed, tax declarations, bank release, property transfer and Land Registry entry. One point of contact throughout.
See the service TaxDeclaration and payment of Impuesto de Sucesiones within the six-month window, with full use of regional allowances and non-resident reliefs to keep the bill as low as lawfully possible.
Tax service Succession LawHow the Spanish legítima interacts with foreign wills, and how the Brussels IV election can lawfully disapply it. Advice, analysis and where needed, contentious representation.
Understand legítimaCoordinated administration of UK and Spanish estates in parallel — grant of probate in England, acceptance deed in Spain, double tax relief, asset transfer across both jurisdictions.
Cross-border serviceFor American estates with Spanish assets, or Spanish estates with US heirs. State-level probate coordinated with Spanish acceptance, federal and Spanish tax positions reconciled.
US cross-border PropertyThe full sequence for inherited real estate — valuation, tax declaration, notary acceptance, Land Registry transfer, Plusvalía, and the future position for resale or retention by the heirs.
Property inheritance PropertyOnce registered in the heirs' names, an inherited Spanish property can be sold — but capital gains tax base, non-resident withholding and the 3% retention all behave differently. We handle the conveyance.
Selling the estate No WillWhere the deceased left no Spanish will, Spanish intestacy rules (or the home-country equivalent, if properly evidenced) determine the heirs. A declaration of heirs has to be obtained before anything else.
Intestate process RepudiationWhere the estate is heavily indebted, or where accepting would trigger a tax charge the heir can't fund, a formal renunciation before a notary is the cleanest exit — but it is irrevocable.
Renounce an estateThe effective tax on the same estate can vary by tens of thousands of euros depending on the region of the deceased's last residence. Below are our dedicated regional guides — each sets out the current allowances, rebates and calculation rules for that comunidad autónoma.
Near-zero effective tax for spouses and direct descendants thanks to the 99% regional rebate.
View regional guide → MadridGenerous 99% rebate for Group I and II heirs — the lowest effective IHT burden in Spain for close family.
View regional guide → ValenciaMajor 99% bonificación for Group I and II heirs on the Comunidad Valenciana estate.
View regional guide → Murcia99% regional bonificación for close family — favourable regime for Costa Cálida estates.
View regional guide → Balearic IslandsStrong reliefs for direct descendants and spouses on Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera estates.
View regional guide → Canary IslandsFavourable treatment for Group I and II heirs across Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.
View regional guide →Catalunya, Asturias, Galicia, Aragon, Castilla y León, Basque Country, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Navarre, La Rioja, Cantabria, Ceuta and Melilla guides are in active build.
Read the full Spanish inheritance tax guide →The work splits into four phases. On a typical estate with a Spanish will and a residential property, the whole sequence runs between three and five months, comfortably inside the six-month tax deadline. On more complex estates — multiple properties, business interests, heirs in different countries — we start earlier and run the phases in parallel to stay within the window.
First, the certificado literal de defunción (full death certificate) is obtained, followed by the certificado de últimas voluntades from Madrid's central wills registry (confirming whether a Spanish will was registered) and the certificado de seguros (evidence of any life insurance). If there is a Spanish will, the notary who holds the protocol issues a certified copy. If the deceased was foreign with no Spanish will, the home-country grant of probate (or equivalent) is obtained, translated by a sworn translator and apostilled. NIE numbers are checked for every heir. Bank balances are requested as at the date of death. Property valuations are instructed. This phase is entirely document-gathering and typically takes four to six weeks.
Once the file is complete, we book a notary appointment for the escritura de aceptación y adjudicación de herencia — the public deed in which the heirs formally accept the inheritance and the estate is divided between them in accordance with the will (or the intestacy rules). Heirs who cannot attend in person sign a Spanish power of attorney that lets us represent them at the notary. The deed records the assets, the valuations and the allocation between heirs. It is the master document that every subsequent office will ask for.
With the deed signed, we prepare and file the inheritance tax return (Modelo 650 for residents, Modelo 652 where partition has not yet occurred, and the non-resident equivalent where relevant) with the correct regional tax office. All applicable reliefs are claimed — spousal and descendant allowances, regional multipliers, habitual-residence reliefs on the family home, business continuity reliefs where the deceased held a Spanish SL. Tax is paid; stamped returns are issued. If the deceased owned real estate in a municipality, the Plusvalía (municipal capital gain on urban land) is also filed within the same window.
With the acceptance deed and the paid tax returns in hand, the heirs' new ownership is registered. Banks release the accounts once presented with the deed and the stamped tax return; balances are transferred to the heirs' own accounts or liquidated. Real estate is filed at the Land Registry (Registro de la Propiedad) for the property's district, which takes a few weeks to process and produces a fresh nota simple showing the heir as owner. Vehicles are re-titled with the DGT. Shares in a Spanish company are re-noted in the corporate books. The estate is closed.
Spanish inheritance tax is due within six months of the date of death. A one-time extension of a further six months can be requested within the first five months of that period, but it carries interest from the original due date. Miss the deadline without an extension and the surcharge system begins: 5% in the first three months late, 10% between three and six months, 15% between six and twelve, and 20% plus late-payment interest after twelve months. On a moderate estate, that conversion of a zero-tax position (after regional reliefs) into a four- or five-figure surcharge is entirely avoidable — but we see it every month on files we take over from families who waited.
The cost of a mishandled Spanish estate is rarely the headline tax figure. It is the surcharges, the frozen accounts, the blocked properties, and the family relationships that erode while a file drags on for a year longer than it should.
Families who wait "until everything in the UK is finished" routinely cross the deadline. The surcharge is not theoretical — it is automatic, and it compounds. Our first job on any file is to secure the tax position within the window, even where the rest of the administration will take longer.
Claiming the right regional rebate on the right return can be the difference between a near-zero tax bill and a six-figure one. Those reliefs are self-assessed; they are not applied automatically. Missing a relief is not corrected by the tax office — it has to be claimed on time, in the right form, with the right evidence.
Spanish banks freeze accounts on notification of death and will not release funds to heirs until the acceptance deed is signed and the tax return is stamped. Families who urgently need access to estate funds for funeral costs, mortgage payments or outstanding bills depend on the file moving quickly.
Until an inherited property is registered in the heirs' names at the Land Registry, it cannot be sold, mortgaged or meaningfully rented. Heirs who want to list an inherited apartment on the open market cannot proceed until the file is closed. The inheritance file is the prerequisite for everything that follows.
Most of our inheritance clients never fly back to Spain. With a Spanish power of attorney in place, we represent the heirs at the notary, the tax office, the banks and the Land Registry — keeping the family informed in English at each stage.
Arrange a CallEvery one of these we see on files we take over from families who tried to handle Spain themselves, or who instructed someone who didn't specialise in expat inheritance.
The Spanish tax clock does not pause while the home estate works through its own probate. Both have to run in parallel, with the Spanish deadline treated as the controlling one.
It doesn't. A UK grant must be apostilled and translated by a sworn translator before a Spanish notary will accept it. Sending a raw grant to Spain and waiting for acceptance wastes weeks.
Each region's relief has specific conditions — habitual residence, relationship to deceased, holding period, form of election. Getting the paperwork wrong means paying tax that the legislation would otherwise have waived.
A standard acceptance deed makes heirs personally liable for estate debts, including unknown ones. On an uncertain estate, acceptance a beneficio de inventario or outright renunciation may be the right call — but the choice is made at the notary and is hard to undo.
Municipal Plusvalía on inherited urban property is a separate municipal tax with its own six-month deadline. It's not folded into the main inheritance tax return and is often missed entirely by families administering alone.
If the deceased was foreign but did not elect their national law in a Spanish will, Spanish forced heirship may apply to the Spanish estate. That can override what the home-country will said — and the time to fix it has passed.
The deceased's nationality, where the heirs live, whether there's a Spanish will — these variables change the approach but not the outcome. A clean closed estate is what the file is for.
Retirees who bought on the Costa del Sol or Costa Blanca, children in the UK, grant of probate in England, Spanish inheritance run in parallel. Our most common file profile.
State-level probate in the US, Spanish acceptance deed, reconciling the federal estate position with the Spanish regional tax — coordinated through one English-speaking team.
A Spanish apartment that sat in the background of the family's life for years, now inherited. Low-value estates still need full Spanish administration — and our fees scale down for them.
Surviving spouse inheriting under a Spanish will, often with children from previous relationships, Brussels IV election to be relied on. Sensitive files we handle every week.
Where children or beneficiaries live outside Spain and cannot easily travel, we use Spanish powers of attorney to represent them across the entire process.
Where the deceased's Spanish paperwork has been lost, we trace Spanish accounts, property, pension interests and investment holdings through the official registries before building the file.
The legal vocabulary around a Spanish inheritance is unavoidable. Here are the terms that appear most often on files, in plain English.
The public deed signed before a Spanish notary by which the heirs formally accept the inheritance. The master document that unlocks the rest of the process.
Spanish inheritance tax. Due within six months of death, assessed per heir, with regional allowances that often eliminate most of the bill for close family.
Spanish forced heirship — the reserved share owed to children under domestic Spanish succession law. Disapplied where a valid Brussels IV election exists.
A municipal tax on the increase in urban land value since the previous transfer. Triggered by inheritance as well as sale. Separate deadline, separate form.
Certificate from the central wills registry in Madrid confirming whether the deceased left a Spanish will and, if so, which notary holds it.
A formal declaration of heirs, needed where no Spanish will exists. Obtained by notarial act for close relatives, by judicial process for more distant ones.
Acceptance of an inheritance limited to the value of the assets — protecting the heir from personal liability for estate debts. Strictly procedural; has to be done at the notary.
The EU Succession Regulation allowing foreign nationals in Spain to elect the law of their nationality to govern their succession, overriding Spanish forced heirship.
The Spanish inheritance tax return forms. Modelo 650 for full declarations after partition; Modelo 652 for provisional declarations where partition is deferred.
Official extract from the Land Registry showing the current owner and charges on a property. The first document we pull on any inherited Spanish real estate.
The questions we answer most often on first calls with families dealing with a Spanish estate.
If someone has died leaving Spanish assets, the six-month tax window has already started. Book a call and we will lay out exactly what the next eight weeks need to look like.
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