Recently, it was announced that the Ministry of Justice is proceeding with changes to inheritance law. Some of these changes were necessary to modernize inheritance law, which has existed within the Greek legal framework for over 80 years. In this document, we will detail all the changes that have been discussed for implementation in the upcoming March, while also presenting our suggestions for a comprehensive review of inheritance law and how it could be improved over time in various areas.
1.Abolition of holographic testaments.
The most significant change anticipated in inheritance law is the abolition of holographic wills as a means for the testator to manage their estate after death. This change primarily stems from the law’s and Greek courts’ mistrust towards holographic wills, which are often forged by the deceased’s heirs, either to alter the distribution of assets or to regulate succession through a will, particularly if the deceased had not left a will.
Holographic wills will be replaced by public wills—those made in the presence of a notary and witnesses, which are already recognized in inheritance law. Additionally, there are provisions for the replacement of handwritten wills with so-called “digital wills.” Here, the notary will draft the will as dictated by the testator in a computer file, which will be stored in a database until it is required to be published by the court at the heirs’ request.
For this change, a transitional period could be necessary for holographic wills created before the new laws come into effect, as not all testators have easy access to a notary due to age or financial reasons. Thus, the idea of an interim solution before completely abolishing holographic wills is seen as a positive step to allow citizens time to adjust to this significant change.
2.Limitation on certain relatives’ inheritance rights.
Currently, inheritance law allows the deceased to name even parents/uncles as heirs. Provided that the inheritance allocated to the children and spouse meets the required legal portion, the testator can decide how to distribute the rest of their estate among other relatives. This provision reflects the care and affection a testator may wish to show to extended relatives beyond their immediate family.
With the new legislative changes, relatives over the age of 80 will no longer be eligible to inherit from the deceased. The law assumes that relatives of this age will not manage the inheritance effectively. Simply put, a testator who wants to draft a will early will not be able to name their parents as heirs if they are over 80 years old (which is not uncommon, especially given generational age differences today).
Regarding this specific change, it should be noted that if the testator names relatives under 80 years old as heirs, but those relatives are over 80 at the time of the testator’s death, they would need to return the inheritance to the remaining (younger) heirs. This restriction may lead to double inheritance taxes and possibly double transfer taxes (particularly if the inheritance includes real estate, as we discussed in a previous document).
3.Marriage no longer required for inheritance rights.
A fundamental principle of inheritance law has been that for a spouse to inherit from the other, a valid marriage or cohabitation agreement must exist. This rule has recently been extended to same-sex couples under the law. Additionally, a spouse may lose inheritance rights if the deceased had filed for divorce with justifiable grounds for dissolving the marriage.
The upcoming changes in inheritance law will remove these requirements. Marriage or a cohabitation agreement will no longer be necessary for a spouse to gain inheritance rights from the deceased. It has been stated that someone who had a relationship with the deceased for a certain period, without a formal marriage or agreement, will also be eligible to inherit.
This change may present practical challenges: the law will need to define the necessary duration of the relationship to be legally valid for inheritance rights. Proving such a relationship through witnesses in court is almost certain to lead to potential misuse (a topic we covered in another document last week regarding witness credibility under current law).
4.Inheritance rights may be subject to prescription(expiration).
The current regulation in inheritance law is as follows: an heir has a legal deadline of four months to renounce the inheritance. This deadline begins from the deceased’s death and from the moment the heir becomes aware of both the death and their designation as an heir. However, there is no legal deadline to accept the inheritance; this can be done at any time, provided it is not so delayed as to give other heirs the impression that this particular heir does not intend to exercise their inheritance rights.
Under the proposed changes, in addition to the deadline to renounce the inheritance, the heir will also have an additional statutory deadline within which they must accept the inheritance. If the heir does not exercise their inheritance right within this specified timeframe, it will expire, as explained in other documents discussing prescription laws in Greece.
This change has several advantages, as many heirs neglect to accept the inheritance, causing the inherited assets to fall into disuse and lose their economic value. In cases where an heir deliberately avoids accepting the inheritance to escape debts to creditors, the law already provides for such situations: each creditor can legally compel the heir to accept the inheritance and can record the heir’s acceptance themselves in the Land Registry/Cadastre (in cases of real estate, where inheritance acceptance must be recorded).
5.The path opens for inheritance contracts.
Inheritance contracts, which are currently explicitly prohibited by law, represent a written agreement between the testator and their heirs specifying precisely which assets each heir will receive from the deceased’s estate. This can eliminate the lengthy procedures of drafting and publishing wills, issuing certificates, and processing inheritance documents. Furthermore, heirs can avoid lengthy legal disputes over their portions, as these are predetermined, often with the heirs’ knowledge.
Among the changes to inheritance law is that inheritance contracts between the testator and their heirs will now be permitted. These contracts can follow the procedure described above, with legal details established to ensure validity. What is important is that an inheritance contract should not limit any heir’s share beyond what they are legally entitled to by the law of forced heirship.
If an heir’s share is unduly limited by the inheritance contract, it is possible that the contract could be invalidated to the extent that it affects an heir’s lawful portion. The primary reason inheritance contracts were previously forbidden was to prevent the testator from wasting assets, thus ensuring that there would be enough for the heirs’ lawful share and preventing the inheritance of the deceased’s assets by individuals without close familial ties. It remains to be seen how these objectives will be met in practice.
6.Even intellectual property rights can now be inherited.
The rule in inheritance succession is that all legal property relations of the deceased, which they held during their lifetime, can be inherited. This means that in addition to familiar assets (real estate, movable property, bonds, shares, etc.), heirs are entitled to receive other legal rights from the deceased, such as time accrued for adverse possession on another’s movable or immovable property, or participation in a lawsuit initiated in the name and for the benefit of the deceased.
However, up until now, the law imposed certain restrictions on the legal relations that heirs were entitled to inherit. Specifically, while heirs could inherit the trademark, reputation, and clientele of a business (if the deceased owned one), there were restrictions on intellectual property rights related to the authorship of books, etc. Similarly, restrictions applied to industrial property rights, such as patents, if the deceased held any inventions they had registered while alive.
The legislator now seeks to amend this restriction, particularly concerning intellectual property rights. This means that the deceased’s heirs will be able to inherit intellectual property rights related to book authorship, articles, scientific works, etc. Likewise, in cases where intellectual property rights were previously inheritable by heirs but with clear restrictions, it is said that under the new changes, all such restrictions on the inheritance of these assets will gradually be removed.
Our four proposals on the subject:
a.Expediting the testament publication process.
Currently, for heirs to accept an inheritance, the deceased’s will must first be published by the court and declared primary (if multiple wills exist). In practice, heirs often wait extended periods for these procedures to be completed by the courts, despite the recent implementation of a new judicial framework that has yet to speed things up.
As a result, heirs may be liable for a different inheritance tax if a legislative change occurs between the time the will is located and its publication, while valuable time is lost during which the inheritance remains unutilized. This process could be improved by reducing the time required for the will’s publication in court, with the cooperation of the heirs.
The transfer of responsibility for publishing wills to single-judge courts (following the abolition of Justice of the Peace courts) could expedite this process, as cases will no longer be distributed among various levels of jurisdiction. Digitization of wills by notaries, enabling faster access for the courts, may further reduce reliance on heirs who may have neglected to locate the will.
b.Recognizing the importance of the certificate of inheritance in transactions.
The certificate of inheritance holds considerable significance for society as it is now issued by a lawyer and serves as legal proof that the named individual is the lawful heir of the deceased. This document is particularly important when there is no will, and heirs own undivided shares in plots or real estate that they wish to transfer by any means.
However, a certificate of inheritance may contain errors or omissions and can be inaccurate, especially if a claimant submits false documents to the lawyer to obtain the certificate and thus unlawfully possess the inheritance without the knowledge of the rightful heirs. With the elimination of handwritten wills and the overall digitization of wills, there is a legislative aim to prevent the issuance of forged inheritance certificates.
The existing regulations regarding inheritance certificates are clear and beneficial. If an unlawful claimant uses a forged inheritance certificate to transact with a third party unaware of the fraud, the law protects this third party who was unaware they were dealing with a non-heir. We await to see how these provisions will align with upcoming changes in inheritance law (perhaps with inheritance certificates available in digital form in the future).
c.Making the institution of the trust more comprehensible in law.
Regarding the institution of the trust, which is widely used in the United Kingdom and other countries, the following should be noted: The law allows the testator to temporarily pass on the inheritance through a will to an heir, who, upon the occurrence of a certain event specified in the will, is then obliged to transfer the inheritance to the ‘final’ heir. The institution of the trust also serves transactional needs, as the last heir in line may not be able to receive the inheritance at the time of the testator’s death.
Additionally, the deceased may specify in their will that the final heir will receive the inheritance from the trustee after a certain period, which must be proven. This may also depend on the occurrence of an event, such as whether the final heir completes a university degree. For the trust to be valid, however, the final heir (or trust beneficiary) must be born or at least conceived at the time of the testator’s death, unless the testator specifies otherwise, in which case their wishes prevail.
Generally, the institution of the trust is well-understood in practice. However, there are certain specialized legal provisions, which, due to the difficulty in proving them, complicate matters in borderline cases. For example, the law provides that a trust beneficiary may also be a legal entity (such as a business or corporation), and under forthcoming changes, a legal entity will be able to inherit directly from the testator if expressly stated by the latter. Therefore, harmonization between these two legal provisions is needed, as they include several details requiring regulation.
d.Judicial liquidation of inheritances should align with modern needs.
The specific legal provision allowing heirs to discharge themselves from inheritance debts has been discussed in detail in another article. Judicial liquidation of inheritance functions similarly to enforced execution through auction of movable or immovable property: creditors of the estate file claims in the judicial liquidation, and if their claims are verified, they are entitled to financial satisfaction from the proceeds of the inheritance’s liquidation.
Problems arise in practice when other creditor collection mechanisms are simultaneously underway with the judicial liquidation of the inheritance. For instance, if the testator was declared bankrupt before death, an inventory and liquidation of their bankrupt estate would have begun to satisfy their creditors. Similarly, if the testator’s property was seized, auction procedures may have already started for liquidating the estate.
In our view, a clear distinction needs to be established by law among these three processes to prevent them from running in parallel, as the progression of one can render the others redundant. Furthermore, with the new possibility of inheriting intellectual property rights, as mentioned earlier, there must be clear legislative provisions on how these rights will be liquidated if the inheritance undergoes judicial liquidation and an auction is pursued.
Next to the client and his needs.
Athina Kontogianni-Lawyer
The above does not constitute legal advice, and no responsibility is assumed for it. For more information, please contact us.