The countries that can overrule your will: forced heirship explained

By Jamie Lee · Published 20 January 2026

Someone at dinner has told you that in Spain the kids get everything, whatever your will says. The real rule is stranger. In much of the world, the law reserves fixed shares of your estate for your family, decides which relatives count, and lets your will control only what's left. It's called forced heirship, it's the normal way most of the planet does inheritance, and the person it most often squeezes is the surviving spouse. Here's how it works, and where an English will can and can't push back.

Start with the dinner-party version, because it's half right in the worst way. In Spain the children don't get everything: they're entitled to two thirds of the estate between them, and the will controls the remaining third. The half that's wrong is worse than the myth. The widow's guaranteed slice under the national Spanish rules is a usufruct over the middle third: a life interest, with the ownership sitting with the heirs. A British woman whose husband dies owning a Spanish villa under Spanish succession law can find she has a right to use part of it while her stepchildren own it. Nobody at the dinner party mentions that bit.

That mechanism has a name, forced heirship, and versions of it run across most of Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Asia. This is the concept guide: what the rule is, why it exists, how it reaches you, and where the exits are. For any one country, the detail lives in our country guides.

Where the rule comes from

Two big families of law reserve shares by default. The civil law family, descended through the Napoleonic codes, treats a slice of your estate as belonging to your close family by operation of law: the réserve in France, the legítima in Spain and Portugal, the legitime in the Philippines, similar machinery from Germany to much of Latin America. The will governs only the freely disposable part. The second family is Islamic law, where fixed Quranic fractions distribute the estate among a wide circle of relatives, sons taking twice the share of daughters, a widow taking one eighth where there are children, and the will free to direct at most a third.

England and Wales sit in the third, smaller camp: common law testamentary freedom, where the starting point is that your will means what it says. Most British expats have never had a reason to learn that this is the unusual position. Move to Alicante or Dubai and the default around you changes, while your English will stays written for the system you left.

How the shares work

The mechanics differ by country but the shape repeats. The law names protected heirs, nearly always the children, sometimes parents, sometimes the spouse. It reserves them a fraction of the estate: half, two thirds or three quarters in France depending on how many children there are, two thirds for children in Spain, half the intestate share in Germany, paid there as a cash claim against the heirs. The will operates on what remains. Any gift in the will that eats into the reserved portion can be cut back, and the shares depend on one thing: who survived you.

Notice how little most of these lists give the spouse. France reserves a quarter for a surviving spouse only where there are no descendants at all. Spain gives the widow a usufruct. A sharia court gives her an eighth. The people with the iron entitlement are the children, and children of every marriage count, which is why forced heirship bites hardest in second marriages. Your children from the first marriage hold reserved shares against your second wife's security in her own home, automatically, with no one having chosen it. Families where everyone would have agreed anyway barely notice the regime. Stepfamilies collide with it.

The estate is smaller and stickier than you think

Two multipliers sit under the headline shares. The first is the marriage itself. Many civil law countries run community property regimes, under which some or all of what a couple acquires during the marriage belongs to both of them. On a death, the community is divided first and only the deceased's half enters the succession. Which regime you married into, something few couples ever consciously chose, can matter as much as the will, and few expat couples can say which one governs them.

The second is reach into the past. Several systems count lifetime gifts back into the estate when calculating the reserved shares, so giving assets away early is a less reliable dodge than it looks. Germany does it on a sliding scale: a gift made a year before death counts in full, and each further year knocks a tenth off, until after ten years it drops out. France can go further and reduce gifts that breached the reserve. The details vary so much by country that the only safe general statement is this one: if your plan involves timing gifts around a forced heirship regime, that's a question for a lawyer in that country.

How it reaches you, or doesn't

Whether any of this touches a British expat comes down to which country's law governs the estate, and the world sorts that in three broad ways.

Some countries look to where you habitually live. Most of the EU runs on this rule (Ireland and Denmark sit outside it): live in Spain or France, and by default the local succession law, reserved shares included, governs your whole estate, wherever the assets are. Some countries look instead to your nationality. Japan, Qatar and Bahrain, in their different ways, ask what the law of your own country says, which for a British national points the question at English law and its testamentary freedom, though the route can twist: some nationality-rule courts accept the question being handed back when English law looks to where you were domiciled, which is how a long-settled foreigner can end up under local shares after all. The Philippines applies your national law too, and its Supreme Court has done exactly that hand-back for a foreigner domiciled there. And nearly everywhere, land answers to the country it stands in, though the EU's regime is itself the big exception, applying one law to the whole estate.

If that paragraph made your head hurt, that's the honest experience of cross-border succession, and it's why "which law governs which asset" is the first question a decent will process asks. Our domicile and residence guide untangles the vocabulary; the point here is only that the answer differs asset by asset, and guessing is how estates end up in court.

The exits, and where they run out

There are real exits, and they're narrower than the firms selling them imply.

The widest is the EU's own election. Since 2015 the Succession Regulation has let you choose the law of your nationality to govern your whole estate, in your will, and the choice binds EU courts (Ireland and Denmark aside) even though Britain never joined. One express clause, and a British resident of Spain or Portugal has English law, no reserved shares, deciding who inherits. Three honest caveats. It changes only who inherits: the tax rules themselves don't move, though because different people inherit the tax outcome can, and your matrimonial property regime is untouched. Wills written before 2015 almost never contain it. And France has tested its edges: since 2021, French law has given children a compensation right against French assets where the governing foreign law has no mechanism protecting them. France's published guidance treats English law's family provision regime as such a mechanism, which would leave English law estates outside the rule, but courts aren't bound by guidance, so our France guide carries the full story.

The Gulf's exits are opt-outs. The UAE has built a civil regime for non-Muslim residents and will registration routes through the DIFC and Abu Dhabi; Bahrain has applied home-country law to non-Muslim foreigners since 1971; Qatar's code points to nationality law. Each has its own scope and machinery, local real property is the recurring complication, and the country guides carry the detail.

Then there's the honest end of the map: situations with no exit. Saudi Arabia has no civil regime for non-Muslims and its courts rule on any assets in the kingdom; UK government guidance says a non-Muslim's national law may apply, but that is not a reliable exit. And anywhere at all, the combination of local land, local heirs minded to claim, and no election mechanism means the local regime wins for that asset, whatever the will says. When an asset sits in that box, the planning conversation changes from how to route around the regime to how to own the asset, and that's specialist local advice, as is anything involving trusts, which civil law systems often don't recognise.

England isn't absolute freedom either

One correction the other way, because this piece would be dishonest without it. English testamentary freedom has its own check: the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 lets a defined list of people, spouses and civil partners, former spouses who haven't remarried, cohabitants of two years, children and people treated as children of the family, and people the deceased was maintaining, ask a court for reasonable provision from the estate. It's discretionary, claim by claim, with no fixed shares, and it only applies where the deceased died domiciled in England and Wales, which leaves many long-term expats outside it entirely. Almost every system limits what a will can do; they differ in whether the limit is a fixed fraction applied automatically or a judge asked afterwards. The practical task is finding out which limits apply to which of your assets.

What to do with this

Three steps, none of them exotic.

List your assets by country, and mark the land. The flat usually answers to the country it stands in; most of the rest follows where you live or your nationality, depending on the country. Our country guides cover the ones British expats ask about most.
Check the date on your will. If it predates 2015 it almost certainly contains no choice of law clause, and if your life has crossed borders since it was written, it was drafted for a different legal world.
Make or remake the will with the cross-border questions asked properly. An Expat Legacy will is drafted under the law of England and Wales around expat circumstances, with choice of law considered as part of the drafting, and reviewed by a person before your documents are released: £149 for a single will, £249 for mirror wills for a couple.

Forced heirship is most of the world's answer to an old question, and it applies by default to people who never chose it. The will is where you get to choose.

Sources

Expat Legacy provides England and Wales wills and general information about cross-border estate planning. This is general information only. It is not legal or tax advice for your circumstances; succession and matrimonial property rules differ by country and region, change over time, and interact in ways that depend on individual facts. For assets or family in a forced heirship country, take advice from a qualified professional there. Scots law differs from the law of England and Wales. Position stated as at August 2026.

Common questions

What is forced heirship?

Forced heirship is a rule that reserves fixed shares of an estate for named close family, usually the children and sometimes parents or a spouse. The will controls only the part that is left over. It is the default position across much of Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Asia, while England and Wales start from testamentary freedom instead. The protected relatives and the size of the shares differ by country, so the position for any one country is general information here rather than advice.

Does forced heirship apply to a British expat living in Spain or France?

It can. Most of the EU decides succession by where a person habitually lived, so living in Spain or France can bring the local reserved shares into play across the whole estate. Since 2015 the EU Succession Regulation has allowed a person to choose the law of their nationality in their will, which for a British national points at English law. Wills written before 2015 rarely contain that clause, and France has since added a compensation right for children over French assets in some situations, so local advice is needed for any real case.

Can an English will override reserved shares?

Not on its own. An English will can carry a choice of law clause that EU courts will respect, but land often answers to the country it stands in, and some countries such as Saudi Arabia have no civil opt-out at all. English law also has its own limit, because the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 lets certain people ask a court for reasonable provision from an estate. Where assets or family sit in a forced heirship country, take advice from a qualified professional there.