If you own a home or a bank account in Spain, what happens to it after your death runs through Spanish procedure — even if your will was written somewhere else. This guide explains, in plain English, why many expats are advised to make a Spanish will, how one is made before a notary, how the EU Succession Regulation lets you choose the law of your nationality, and what your family will actually have to do afterwards.
No rule forces a foreign national to make a Spanish will. A will made abroad can be valid in Spain, and Spanish authorities do deal with estates governed by foreign wills. The question is not really about validity — it is about what your family will have to do, in Spanish, at a difficult moment, and how complicated that process becomes.
In practice, most lawyers advising foreign residents and non-resident property owners suggest a Spanish will covering Spanish assets, because it removes several layers of friction at once. It is already in Spanish, already in the correct notarial form, and already recorded in the national wills register that every Spanish notary checks after a death. A foreign will usually has to be located abroad, proved or certified under its own country's rules, legalised or apostilled, and translated by a sworn translator before a Spanish notary will work from it.
None of that makes a foreign will wrong. It simply means the same outcome is reached more slowly and at greater cost, when a bereaved family is least equipped to cope — which is why the subject comes up so often in expat communities from the retirement towns of the Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol to Madrid and Barcelona.
The case for taking advice tends to be strongest where one or more of the following applies.
General procedural information in this guide draws on the Spanish Ministry of Justice and the Consejo General del Notariado (notariado.org) succession pages. It is not legal advice.
This is probably the single most common question expats ask, and the honest answer is: possibly, but not necessarily conveniently. A will validly made in another country can generally be recognised in Spain. What it will not do is behave like a Spanish will — it has to be proved abroad first, then brought into the Spanish process in a form a notary can accept.
That normally means a certified copy of the will and of any grant, probate or equivalent document; legalisation or an apostille where required; and an official translation into Spanish. Each step takes time and can stall if a document is missing or in the wrong form.
There is a second, subtler problem: a foreign will is often drafted without any thought for Spain. It may use concepts — trusts, life interests, executors with wide discretionary powers — that do not map neatly onto Spanish succession procedure, where the estate is generally accepted and divided by the heirs before a notary rather than administered by an executor.
Some people are advised to make a single worldwide will; others to make one will limited to Spanish assets and keep a separate will for everything else. Both approaches are used, and which is right depends on where your assets are and how your affairs are structured.
A Spanish will is a formal, notarial document. The usual form for foreign residents and property owners is the testamento abierto — an "open" will, made before a notary who reads it, confirms it reflects your wishes, and authorises it. This is not something you download and sign at the kitchen table; the notary's involvement is what gives it standing.
The notary in Spain is a public official as well as a legal professional. In a succession context the notary checks that the person making the will has legal capacity, that the will is in a permitted form, and that it complies with Spanish formal requirements. The original stays in the notary's protocol — the notary keeps it, not you — and you receive an authorised copy. The notary then notifies the central wills registry that a will exists, which is what allows it to be found later.
Because the original is held by the notary, a Spanish will cannot be lost, destroyed or quietly suppressed in the way a homemade document can — a practical advantage people tend to underestimate.
The will is a Spanish legal document, and the notary must be satisfied that you understand what you are signing. Foreign nationals are commonly assisted by a bilingual version of the document, or by an interpreter or sworn translator. Arrangements vary between notaries and regions, so confirm what is required before the appointment rather than on the day.
Spanish law also recognises the testamento cerrado (a "closed" will, whose contents are not disclosed to the notary) and the handwritten testamento ológrafo. Both are far less common for foreign nationals, and the handwritten form in particular carries a risk of being challenged or failing on a formality. For most expats, the open notarial will is the straightforward route.
Notarial role and will formalities: Consejo General del Notariado — Sucesiones.
Spain keeps a central register of wills, the Registro General de Actos de Última Voluntad, run by the Ministry of Justice. It does not hold the contents of your will — it records that a will exists, when it was made, and which notary authorised it.
After a death, anyone dealing with the estate obtains a certificado de actos de última voluntad (often shortened to certificado de últimas voluntades). As the Ministry explains, it confirms whether the deceased made a will and before which notary, so heirs can request an authorised copy from that notary's office. Without it, no Spanish notary or bank will proceed, because there is no way to be sure a later will does not exist.
This is the mechanism that makes a Spanish will so much easier to administer than a foreign one: once the family has the death certificate and the wills certificate, the correct current will can be located anywhere in Spain. A will sitting in a filing cabinet in Manchester or Ohio has no such safety net.
Official information on the certificate and the registry: Ministerio de Justicia — Certificado de Actos de Última Voluntad.
This is the part of Spanish succession that most affects foreign nationals, and it is the part most often misunderstood. Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 — commonly called the EU Succession Regulation, or "Brussels IV" — governs which country's law applies to a cross-border succession. It applies to the estates of people who died on or after 17 August 2015.
The starting point is habitual residence. As the European Commission's Your Europe service puts it, an inheritance "will usually be handled by an authority — often a court or a notary — in the EU country where you last lived", and that authority "will in most cases apply its own national law to your inheritance". So if you die habitually resident in Spain, Spanish succession law is, by default, the law that decides who inherits — including Spain's forced-heirship rules, described in the next section.
For many non-Spanish expats that default is a surprise: people assume being a foreign national means foreign law follows them automatically. Under the Regulation it does not. Where you habitually live matters more than which passport you hold, unless you take a specific step.
The Regulation allows you to override that default. In the words of Your Europe, "EU rules however allow you to choose that the law of your country of nationality should apply to your inheritance — whether this is an EU country or not." Crucially, that choice has to be made properly: you must "express your choice of law explicitly and clearly, in a will or in a separate declaration".
This is the single most important reason expats are advised to make a Spanish will rather than assume. A will drafted by a lawyer who understands the Regulation can contain a clear, unambiguous election of your national law. An old will made abroad, years before you moved, almost certainly says nothing about it.
The same Regulation created the European Certificate of Succession, which heirs, legatees, executors and administrators can use to prove their status and powers in another EU country without a separate national procedure each time. Where an estate has assets in more than one member state, that can save considerable duplication.
The Regulation has universal effect: the law it designates applies even where that law is not the law of an EU member state. A UK or US national habitually resident in Spain can therefore, in principle, elect the law of their nationality. But both countries contain more than one legal system — England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; fifty-odd US states — so exactly which internal law applies is a technical question, and there is long-running professional debate about how UK law responds when designated, particularly for immovable property. These are not questions to settle from a website.
Sources: Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 on matters of succession (EUR-Lex); Your Europe — Planning your inheritance; European e-Justice Portal — Succession.
Spanish succession law does not give you complete freedom to leave your estate to whoever you like. A portion is reserved by law for certain close relatives — the legítima, or forced share. This is the most significant structural difference from the common-law approach familiar to British, Irish and American readers, where testamentary freedom is the starting point.
The outline below describes the Spanish Civil Code position in very broad terms only. It is here so you understand the shape of the problem, not so you can apply it yourself: how shares are calculated, how lifetime gifts are brought into account and how a surviving spouse's rights work are all considerably more involved than any summary can convey.
| Portion of the estate | In outline |
|---|---|
| Strict reserved share tercio de legítima estricta | Reserved for children and descendants. Where there are no descendants, ascendants may have a reserved entitlement instead. |
| Improvement share tercio de mejora | Also reserved for children and descendants, but generally distributable among them unequally, so one child can be favoured. |
| Freely disposable share tercio de libre disposición | The portion you can generally leave to anyone — a partner, a friend, a charity, a stepchild. |
| Surviving spouse | Generally has a protected entitlement, which under the Civil Code commonly takes the form of a life interest (usufructo) rather than outright ownership. Its extent depends on who else survives. |
Two consequences follow. If Spanish law applies to your estate — which it may, by default, if you are habitually resident here — you may not be able to leave everything to your spouse or partner. And this is precisely the situation the choice-of-law election under the EU Succession Regulation is designed to address, which is why the two subjects are always discussed together.
Unmarried couples and blended families feel this most acutely. An unmarried partner is not a forced heir under the Civil Code, and stepchildren are not descendants. Families who assume "everything goes to my partner" can be badly wrong, and the point at which they find out is the worst possible one.
Understanding the sequence explains why so much emphasis is placed on having documents in order in advance. In outline:
The death is registered and a death certificate (certificado de defunción) issued through the Civil Registry. Almost every later step requires it, usually in multiple certified copies.
Once the required waiting period has passed, the family obtains the certificado de actos de última voluntad from the Ministry of Justice, showing whether a will exists and which notary holds it. An authorised copy is then requested from that notary.
Spain also keeps a register of death-cover insurance contracts, and a certificate from it shows whether the deceased held policies with a death benefit — easily overlooked, since families frequently have no idea what cover existed.
The heirs identified by the will (or, where there is none, by law) formally accept or renounce the inheritance and agree how the estate is divided, generally in a deed before a notary. Renouncing is a real option and sometimes a sensible one, particularly where debts are involved.
Inheritance tax must be dealt with, and there is a filing deadline. Where property is involved a local tax on the transfer of urban land may also apply, and the change of ownership has to be registered at the Land Registry.
Every one of those stages runs more smoothly when there is a clear, current Spanish will and the family knows who to call.
Official certificate information: Ministerio de Justicia — Certificado de Defunción and Certificado de Contratos de Seguros de Cobertura de Fallecimiento.
Spanish inheritance and gift tax (Impuesto sobre Sucesiones y Donaciones) is one of the most misreported subjects in the expat press, and we are not going to add to the noise. You will see confident percentages quoted online; most are incomplete, out of date, or true only for one region and one relationship.
What is safe to say is structural. Unlike the UK system, where inheritance tax is generally a charge on the estate, Spanish inheritance tax is levied on the beneficiary — each person who receives something is assessed individually. What they pay depends on their relationship to the deceased, the value received, in some cases their own existing wealth, and very significantly on the autonomous community involved, because regions set their own allowances and reliefs on top of the state framework. Two families in identical circumstances can face dramatically different bills depending on where in Spain they are. Separate rules apply where the deceased or a beneficiary was not resident in Spain, administered nationally rather than regionally.
Official tax information: Agencia Tributaria — Impuesto sobre Sucesiones y Donaciones and the non-residents section. Regional rules are set by each autonomous community.
The underlying Spanish procedure is the same for everyone. What differs is the home-country system your Spanish arrangements have to sit alongside.
England and Wales does not have Spanish-style forced heirship, and Scotland has its own distinct rules; either way, the assumptions built into a typical British will are quite different from Spanish ones. Since the UK left the EU it is a third country for these purposes — but the Regulation applies in Spain regardless of whether the designated law is that of a member state, so the ability to elect your national law is not lost. What has changed is the wider administrative context: documents, apostilles, tax residence and reporting all need looking at together. Our guide to moving to Spain from the UK covers the surrounding admin, and legal planning should sit alongside it rather than be left until last.
US citizens face an extra layer, because succession is state law rather than federal law and US tax obligations generally continue regardless of where you live. A Spanish will covering Spanish assets is often part of the answer, but it should be co-ordinated with your US estate planning rather than bolted on.
EU nationals resident in Spain sit squarely within the Regulation, and the choice-of-law election is generally available in the same way — Ireland being the exception, as it does not participate. Nor do you have to live in Spain for any of this to matter: if you own a holiday home here, your heirs still go through the Spanish process, still need the Spanish certificates, and still face Spanish inheritance tax on the Spanish asset.
None of these are exotic. They are the ordinary, avoidable problems that turn a manageable process into a long and expensive one.
A will decides who inherits. It does not deal with the first few days after a death — and in Spain those days move quickly. Funerals here typically take place far sooner than families arriving from the UK, Ireland or North America expect, so arrangements and costs land on relatives almost immediately, often before anyone has thought about the will.
That is why estate planning and funeral arrangements are usually discussed together, even though they are entirely different things handled by entirely different people. A will is a legal document made before a notary. Funeral cover in Spain — the seguro de decesos — is an insurance arrangement designed to organise and pay for the funeral itself and give the family a single Spanish-speaking point of contact at the moment they most need one. Neither replaces the other. Our separate guide sets out what a funeral in Spain actually costs, and for expat families there is the further question of whether a loved one would be brought home — repatriation cover is a distinct arrangement with its own terms, and not something a will can arrange.
To be clear about roles: Spanish Health Insurance is an insurance agency working with English-speaking expats. We do not write wills, we do not give legal advice, and nothing here should be read as either. What we can do is connect you with a partner legal team who handle wills and inheritance in Spain, so you are speaking to a qualified professional rather than piecing information together from forums.
A first conversation with a lawyer usually covers the same ground: what you own and where, where you are habitually resident, who you want to benefit, whether an election of your national law is appropriate, how any existing foreign will interacts with a Spanish one, and the tax position for your intended beneficiaries. Come prepared — a note of your Spanish assets, details of any property and whose name it is in, copies of existing wills, and your family situation including children from previous relationships.
We do not provide legal services — but our partner legal team can help with wills and inheritance in Spain. Tell us what you need and we will point you in the right direction, in English.
Contact us about wills & inheritance →Looking for the practical side instead? See funeral cover in Spain (seguro de decesos) — a separate arrangement that eases the immediate burden on family.