Forced heirship in Spain: what a parent can and cannot do with a will (and when disinheriting holds)

A couple who retired to Corralejo fifteen years ago. They own the house they live in, a flat in Costa Adeje that they let, and the savings of two working lives. They have three children; the youngest has not spoken to them since a quarrel twelve years ago, and the eldest nursed the mother through a long illness. At the notary they ask the question every lawyer on the islands hears: can we leave everything to each other, then to the two who stayed close, and nothing to the third? If their will chooses the law of their nationality, the answer comes from that law. If it does not, or if they are Spanish, the answer comes from the Civil Code, and it is more layered than a yes or a no. This article explains who the Code protects and with what share, what a parent can still do with a will, how gifts made in life are counted against the children's share, when a child can be disinherited and what the Supreme Court has demanded since 2014 for the clause to hold, what a child who was wrongly cut out recovers and how long they have to claim it, and how a foreign resident of the Canary Islands decides which law answers the question at all.

Who the law protects, and with what share

The Civil Code calls the protected share the legítima and defines it in article 806: Legítima es la porción de bienes de que el testador no puede disponer por haberla reservado la ley a determinados herederos, llamados por esto herederos forzosos, the portion of the estate that the testator cannot dispose of because the law has reserved it for certain heirs, who are for that reason called forced heirs. Article 807 names them in order: Los hijos y descendientes respecto de sus padres y ascendientes, children and descendants in the estate of their parents; failing them, the parents and ascendants in the estate of their children; and the surviving spouse, en la forma y medida que establece este Código, in the form and measure the Code sets out. Forced heirship in Spain is therefore not about who inherits by default when there is no will, which the firm explains in its article on dying without a will in Spain; it is about what a will cannot take away.

For children the share is large. Article 808 fixes it: Constituyen la legítima de los hijos y descendientes las dos terceras partes del haber hereditario de los progenitores, the legítima of children and descendants is two thirds of the parents' estate. Those two thirds are not alike. One third, the legítima estricta or strict share, belongs to the children in equal parts and the parent cannot move it between them. The second third is the mejora, the share of betterment: the parents podrán estos disponer de una parte de las dos que forman la legítima, para aplicarla como mejora a sus hijos o descendientes, may use one of the two thirds to favour some children or descendants over others, and if the will says nothing about it, it is divided like the strict share. The last third is free: La tercera parte restante será de libre disposición, and it may go to a spouse, a friend, a charity or a child, without restriction. When a parent dies leaving parents but no children, the parents' legítima is la mitad del haber hereditario de los hijos y descendientes, half of the estate, reduced to a third when a surviving spouse concurs with them (article 809).

The spouse's share is a usufruct, a right to use and enjoy assets for life, and its size depends on who else survives. Article 834 gives the widow or widower who was not separated, legally or in fact, and who concurs with children the right al usufructo del tercio destinado a mejora, to the usufruct of the third reserved for betterment. With ascendants and no children the spouse is entitled al usufructo de la mitad de la herencia, to the usufruct of half the estate (article 837); with neither, al usufructo de los dos tercios de la herencia, to two thirds (article 838). The usufruct is not necessarily lived with. Article 839 lets the heirs pay it off, asignándole una renta vitalicia, los productos de determinados bienes, o un capital en efectivo, by assigning the spouse a life annuity, the income of certain assets or a cash capital, by agreement or, failing it, by court order; and where the children are the deceased's alone and not the spouse's, article 840 lets the spouse demand that payment, in cash or in a lot of assets at the children's choice.

What a parent can do with the will

The limits are real, but so is the room inside them. A parent of three who wants to favour the child who stayed can leave that child the whole free third and the whole mejora third: two thirds of the estate to one child, with the other two sharing the strict third between them, a ninth each. The mejora must be ordered as such. Article 823 allows the father or mother to dispose de una de las dos terceras partes destinadas a legítima in favour of some of the children or descendants, and the Code is strict about silence: no lifetime gift to a child counts as a mejora si el donante no ha declarado de una manera expresa su voluntad de mejorar, if the donor has not expressly declared the intention to better (article 825), and a legacy to a child counts as mejora only when the will says so or when it does not fit in the free third (article 828). The mejora may also skip a generation: it can be given to grandchildren while their parent is alive, because article 823 speaks of children o descendientes.

The second tool is the right to keep an asset whole. Article 841 lets the testator, or an executor the testator authorises, adjudicar todos los bienes hereditarios o parte de ellos a alguno de los hijos o descendientes ordenando que se pague en metálico la porción hereditaria de los demás legitimarios, award all or part of the estate to one child and order that the others' shares be paid in money. The clause is how a family house or a business passes undivided. It has clocks: the decision has no effect si no se comunica a los perceptores en el plazo de un año desde la apertura de la sucesión, if it is not notified to the recipients within a year of the death, and El pago deberá hacerse en el plazo de otro año más, salvo pacto en contrario, payment must follow within a further year unless otherwise agreed (article 844); miss them and the estate is divided under the ordinary rules.

The third tool is the spouse. Besides the usufruct, article 831 allows a testator to entrust the surviving spouse with the power to distribute the estate among the common children later, including mejoras charged to the free third, with two years to do it unless the will gives longer, and always respecting the strict shares. For a couple who do not yet know which child will need more, that clause postpones the decision to the parent who survives.

What the will cannot do is attach strings to the protected share. Article 813 is categorical: El testador no podrá privar a los herederos de su legítima sino en los casos expresamente determinados por la ley, the testator may not deprive the heirs of their legítima except in the cases the law expressly determines, and Tampoco podrá imponer sobre ella gravamen, ni condición, ni sustitución de ninguna especie, nor impose on it any burden, condition or substitution of any kind, save the spouse's usufruct and the two exceptions of articles 782 and 808. The exception in article 808 is the reform of 2021 for disability: when one of the children is in a situation of disability, el testador podrá disponer a su favor de la legítima estricta de los demás legitimarios sin discapacidad, the testator may give that child the strict share of the others, subject by default to a trust of the residue in favour of the siblings whose share was touched, and a sibling who challenges the clause must prove that there was no cause for it. Two more rules frame everything a parent plans. Wills are always revocable: Todas las disposiciones testamentarias son esencialmente revocables, whatever the will itself says (article 737). And the children cannot be bought out in advance: Toda renuncia o transacción sobre la legítima futura entre el que la debe y sus herederos forzosos es nula, any renunciation of or settlement over a future legítima between the parent and the forced heirs is void (article 816); they may claim it at the death, bringing into account what they received for the renunciation.

What a parent cannot do: the share is counted on everything

The legítima is not a fraction of what happens to be left. Article 818 fixes the base: Para fijar la legítima se atenderá al valor de los bienes que quedaren a la muerte del testador, con deducción de las deudas y cargas, the value of the assets left at death, less debts and charges, and then Al valor líquido de los bienes hereditarios se agregará el de las donaciones colacionables, the value of the collationable gifts is added to that net figure. A parent who gives the Corralejo house to one child in 2026 and dies in 2036 has not taken the house out of the account; the Code adds it back for the arithmetic. Article 819 then says where each gift lands: Las donaciones hechas a los hijos, que no tengan el concepto de mejoras, se imputarán en su legítima, gifts to children that were not declared mejoras are charged against that child's own share, while gifts to strangers are charged to the free third. What exceeds what the parent could have left is inofficious. Article 636 puts the principle in one line, ninguno podrá dar ni recibir, por vía de donación, más de lo que pueda dar o recibir por testamento, nobody may give or receive by gift more than they could give or receive by will; article 654 orders excess gifts reduced computado el valor líquido de los bienes del donante al tiempo de su muerte, once the net value of the donor's assets at death is computed; and article 655 bars the children from waiving that protection in the parent's lifetime, since they no podrán renunciar su derecho durante la vida del donante. Testamentary gifts that eat into the share are cut first, a petición de éstos, en lo que fueren inoficiosas o excesivas, at the heirs' request and to the extent they are inofficious or excessive (article 817).

Collation is the second operation, and it is easy to confuse with the first. Under article 1035 a forced heir who inherits with others must bring into the estate what they received from the deceased in life by gift or other gratuitous title, para computarlo en la regulación de las legítimas y en la cuenta de partición, to be counted in fixing the shares and in the partition account. The parent can switch collation off, but only in words: article 1036 removes it si el donante así lo hubiese dispuesto expresamente, when the donor expressly so provided, salvo el caso en que la donación deba reducirse por inoficiosa, except where the gift must be reduced as inofficious. What comes back is the value, not the thing: sino su valor al tiempo en que se evalúen los bienes hereditarios, the value at the time the estate's assets are valued (article 1045), so a flat given in 2010 is counted at today's figure. Ordinary spending on a child is outside it: article 1041 excludes los gastos de alimentos, educación, curación de enfermedades, aunque sean extraordinarias, aprendizaje, ni los regalos de costumbre, maintenance, education, medical costs even when extraordinary, training, and customary presents.

Three recent Supreme Court rulings show where the line runs. On 7 January 2025, in judgment 13/2025, the Court restated that la computación es una operación mental para calcular las legítimas que consiste en sumar al valor líquido de los bienes relictos todas las donaciones o liberalidades realizadas en vida por el causante, tanto a extraños como a legitimarios, computation is a mental operation for calculating the shares that consists in adding to the net value of the assets left all the gifts the deceased made in life, to strangers and to forced heirs alike; and it held that letting a son live rent-free in his mother's flat was not a gift to be counted, nor was paying the community fees and property tax of that flat, so that against the 200 000 euros the mother's will told him to account for, only the sums actually handed to him without payment were added. On 27 April 2026, in judgment 634/2026, a daughter attacked the contract by which her father, born in 1930, had transferred three properties to her sister in exchange for being housed, fed and cared for in the sister's home; the Court upheld it as what it said it was, No estamos ante un contrato gratuito sino ante un contrato oneroso de alimentos, not a gratuitous contract but an onerous maintenance contract, after seven years of care, so that nothing was added back for the other daughter's share. And on 1 October 2026, in judgment 1542/2026, the Court upheld a grandmother's will that ordered her son to bring into account the maintenance she and her husband had paid for his children for years when he did not, and a bank loan of his they had settled: sums paid to cover a child's own obligations son colacionables no solo al amparo del art. 1035 CC, sino por disponerlo expresamente el art. 1043 CC, are collationable not only under article 1035 but because article 1043 expressly says so.

Gifts in life have a tax side as well as a civil one, and in the Canary Islands the two often pull in opposite directions; the firm's article on giving to your children in the Canary Islands compares the gift with the inheritance. Whatever the tax result, the civil result is the one above: a child who received less than the share the law reserves may claim the difference. Article 815 gives the action its name, the supplement: the forced heir to whom the testator left, by any title, less than the legítima due podrá pedir el complemento de la misma.

Disinheriting a child: only for the causes the law lists

Disinheritance is the one route by which a parent may lawfully leave a child nothing, and the Code hedges it on every side. Article 848: La desheredación sólo podrá tener lugar por alguna de las causas que expresamente señala la ley, disinheritance may take place only for one of the causes the law expressly lists. Article 849: La desheredación sólo podrá hacerse en testamento, expresando en él la causa legal en que se funde, it may be done only in a will, stating in it the legal cause on which it rests. A letter, a conversation with the notary, a clause that says the child «has behaved badly» without naming the cause, none of these is a disinheritance.

The causes come from two lists. Article 852 borrows most of the grounds of indignity of article 756, the conduct that makes a person unworthy to inherit at all, and article 853 applies four of them to children: a final criminal conviction for offences against the parent's liberty, moral integrity or sexual freedom, or against those of the parent's spouse, partner, descendants or ascendants; a false accusation of a serious crime against the parent; forcing the parent by threat, fraud or violence to make or change a will; and preventing the parent from making or revoking one, or hiding or altering a later will. Article 853 then adds its own two: Haber negado, sin motivo legítimo, los alimentos al padre o ascendiente que le deshereda, having refused maintenance, without a legitimate reason, to the parent who disinherits; and Haberle maltratado de obra o injuriado gravemente de palabra, having mistreated the parent physically or gravely insulted them in words. There are mirror lists for disinheriting a parent (article 854) and a spouse (article 855), the latter opening with Haber incumplido grave o reiteradamente los deberes conyugales, a grave or repeated breach of the duties of marriage, and a separate indignity ground, added in 2003 and reworded in 2021, for the estate of a person with a disability: las personas con derecho a la herencia que no le hubieren prestado las atenciones debidas, those entitled to inherit who did not give that person the care owed under the Code's maintenance rules (article 756).

Three further rules decide most cases before any court does. First, forgiveness ends the cause. Article 856: La reconciliación posterior del ofensor y del ofendido priva a éste del derecho de desheredar, y deja sin efecto la desheredación ya hecha, a later reconciliation between offender and offended deprives the latter of the right to disinherit and voids a disinheritance already made; the Christmas lunch after the quarrel can undo the clause signed the year before. Second, the burden of proof is on the heirs who keep the estate, not on the child. Article 850: La prueba de ser cierta la causa de la desheredación corresponderá a los herederos del testador si el desheredado la negare, proving that the cause is true falls on the testator's heirs if the disinherited child denies it. Third, disinheriting a child who has children of their own does not free the share. Article 857: Los hijos o descendientes del desheredado ocuparán su lugar y conservarán los derechos de herederos forzosos respecto a la legítima, the disinherited child's own children or descendants take their place and keep the rights of forced heirs over the legítima. The grandchildren step in, with the same share their parent would have had.

What the Supreme Court has made of «maltrato de obra»: 2014 to 2026

The cause that matters in practice is the second of article 853, mistreatment, because the modern quarrel between parents and children is rarely a blow or a conviction and almost always a silence. For decades the courts read the word physically. On 3 June 2014, in judgment 258/2014, the Supreme Court changed the reading. The causes remain the ones the law lists, sin posibilidad de analogía, ni de interpretación extensiva, without analogy or extensive interpretation; but the content of a listed cause, the Court said, deben ser objeto de una interpretación flexible conforme a la realidad social, al signo cultural y a los valores del momento en que se producen, must be read flexibly in the light of social reality, culture and the values of the time. The conclusion followed: el maltrato psicológico, como acción que determina un menoscabo o lesión de la salud mental de la víctima, debe considerarse comprendido en la expresión o dinamismo conceptual que encierra el maltrato de obra, psychological mistreatment, as conduct that impairs or injures the victim's mental health, is included in the concept of physical mistreatment. In that case two children had left their sick father to his sister's care for the last seven years of his life, una conducta de menosprecio y de abandono familiar que quedó evidenciada en los últimos siete años de vida del causante, a course of contempt and family abandonment proven over those seven years, and had reappeared only to claim the estate. The disinheritance stood.

On 30 January 2015, in judgment 59/2015, the Court repeated the doctrine and applied it to a son who had tricked his mother into donating almost all her property to him and his children, leaving her without income for her last years, a state the Court described as el estado de zozobra y afectación profunda que acompañó los últimos años de vida de la causante, the anguish and deep distress that accompanied the mother's last years. The disinheritance stood too. Since then the Court has spent a decade saying what the 2014 ruling does not mean. On 27 June 2018, in judgment 401/2018, a father had disinherited a daughter without naming a cause, attaching to the will a letter in which he asked to resume a contact lost since she was a child and a complaint for assault that had been shelved; the Court held the clause void. It restated the mechanics, al legitimario le basta negar su veracidad para que se desplace la carga de la prueba al heredero, the child need only deny the cause for the burden of proof to shift to the heir, and it set the test for estrangement: solo una falta de relación continuada e imputable al desheredado podría ser valorada como causante de unos daños psicológicos, only a continued lack of relationship attributable to the disinherited child could be weighed as the cause of psychological harm, and here el origen de esa falta de relación familiar no puede imputarse a la hija, dado que se trataba de una niña, the origin of the estrangement could not be laid at the daughter's door, since she was a child when it began. The same judgment widened the reconciliation rule: although article 856 names only reconciliation, a parent's forgiveness of the specific offence also disarms it, because quien puede hacer valer la causa de desheredación también puede remitirla eficazmente, whoever may invoke a cause of disinheritance may also effectively remit it.

On 2 June 2025, in judgment 865/2025, the Court gathered the line into a formula. Psychological mistreatment can be the abandonment and contempt of children towards a parent, but es necesario que el maltrato psicológico sea imputable al heredero, y que el testador sufra realmente sus consecuencias, it must be attributable to the heir and the testator must really suffer its consequences, and no court may treat every cooling of a family relationship as a cause, which would amount to una suerte de libertad de testar no reconocida actualmente por el legislador, a kind of freedom of testation that the legislator does not currently recognise. In the words the Court quoted from its own 2024 case law, no toda falta de relación afectiva o de trato familiar puede ser enmarcada, por vía interpretativa, en las causas de desheredación establecidas de modo tasado por el legislador, not every absence of affection or family contact can be fitted by interpretation into the closed list of causes. The father in that case had separated from the children's mother and disinherited all three children three years later, when they were between eighteen and twenty-five, for a lack of contact that began when two of them were fifteen and sixteen; la falta de relaciones con su padre difícilmente cabe reprochársela exclusivamente a éstos, the lack of relations could hardly be blamed on them alone, and the clause fell. On 21 April 2026, in judgment 624/2026, the Court struck down another: a son raised by his grandparents because of his parents' addictions, who later did not greet his father at family meals and did not attend the funeral. Mutual coldness, the Court said, lo que indicaría es una falta de relación mutua, no que ello le fuera imputable en exclusiva al hijo, points to a lack of relationship on both sides, not to one attributable to the son alone; for abandonment to count as a cause es preciso que sea imputable a un comportamiento reprobable e injustificado de los hijos, al que sea ajeno el testador, it must flow from reprehensible and unjustified conduct of the children in which the testator had no part.

Read together, the rulings give a parent in Tenerife or Fuerteventura a clear picture. A disinheritance for estrangement holds when the child, as an adult and without cause, cut the parent off, kept it up for years, and the parent demonstrably suffered: illness faced alone, care left to a sibling or a stranger, messages unanswered, a parent's attempts to reconnect refused. It fails when the distance began in the child's minority, when it followed a divorce in which the child was the passive party, when the parent also made no effort, when the conduct is a single episode, or when the parent forgave. Courts weigh who tried, when, and what it did to the person who died; the testator's own statement in the will that they felt abandoned is where the inquiry begins, not where it ends.

When the disinheritance fails: what the child recovers, and how long they have

A disinheritance that names no cause, names one the law does not list, or names one the heirs cannot prove when the child denies it, is unjust, and article 851 spells out the consequence: it anulará la institución de heredero en cuanto perjudique al desheredado; pero valdrán los legados, mejoras y demás disposiciones testamentarias en lo que no perjudiquen a dicha legítima, it annuls the appointment of heirs to the extent that it prejudices the disinherited child, while legacies, mejoras and the other dispositions stand in so far as they do not harm that share. The child does not inherit as if there had been no will. What the courts restore is the strict legítima, the child's part of the first third; the mejora and the free third go where the parent sent them, and the heirs the parent chose keep everything above the protected share. In the 2015 case the appeal court had done exactly that before the Supreme Court restored the disinheritance; in the 2018 case the father had himself written the fallback into his will, leaving the daughter lo que por legítima estricta le corresponda should the clause fail. Writing the fallback is good practice: if the cause is not proven, the child takes the strict share in cash and the rest of the will survives intact.

The action has a short life. On 25 September 2019, in judgment 492/2019, the Supreme Court settled a long dispute among the appeal courts and declared as doctrine that la acción para impugnar la desheredación que se considera injusta está sujeta en su ejercicio al plazo de cuatro años desde que se abre la sucesión y puede ser conocido el contenido del testamento, the action to challenge a disinheritance considered unjust is subject to a period of four years from the opening of the succession, once the content of the will can be known. The reasoning is the burden of proof: because the heirs must prove conduct that may be decades old, the child cannot be allowed to wait for the general limitation period of personal actions. Four years from the death, in practice, and the window closes. A child who was not disinherited but simply left out of the will, not named at all, is in a different position, called preterición: under article 814 La preterición de un heredero forzoso no perjudica la legítima, the omission of a forced heir does not prejudice the legítima, and the appointment of heirs is reduced before the legacies and mejoras; where the omission of a child was unintentional, the appointment of heirs is annulled altogether and only legacies and mejoras survive, so that the omitted child shares as in an intestacy.

Two practical notes close the picture. A child who was disinherited, or who suspects they were left less than their share, needs the will first: the Spanish registry of last wills tells them which notary holds it, and an authorised copy is theirs by right as an interested party. And a child who recovers a share recovers a share of an estate with debts; the firm's article on renouncing an inheritance in Spain explains the choice between accepting outright, accepting with the benefit of inventory, and walking away.

Foreign residents: which law decides, and whether you can choose

Everything above is Spanish law, and for a foreign national living in the Canary Islands the first question is whether Spanish law applies at all. Since 17 August 2015 the answer comes from Regulation (EU) 650/2012, which governs la sucesión de las personas que fallezcan el 17 de agosto de 2015 o después de esa fecha, the succession of persons dying on or after that date (article 83), in Spain and in every Member State except Denmark and Ireland, and which Spanish notaries and courts apply to British, Swiss or American nationals as readily as to Germans and Italians. Its default rule is residence: the law of the State in which the deceased had their habitual residence at death governs the whole succession (article 21). And the Regulation says in so many words that the forced shares and the disinheritance travel with that law: the applicable law governs la desheredación y la incapacidad de suceder por causa de indignidad, disinheritance and unworthiness to inherit, and la parte de libre disposición, las legítimas y las demás restricciones a la libertad de disposición mortis causa, the disposable part, the reserved shares and the other restrictions on freedom of testation (article 23). A German, Dutch or English resident of Costa Adeje who dies without a choice of law has a Spanish succession, with two thirds reserved for the children, over everything they own, in Spain and abroad.

The Regulation also hands the resident the key. Article 22: Cualquier persona podrá designar la ley del Estado cuya nacionalidad posea en el momento de realizar la elección o en el momento del fallecimiento, anyone may choose the law of the State whose nationality they hold at the time of the choice or at death, and a person with several nationalities may choose any of them. The choice has one form: La elección deberá hacerse expresamente en forma de disposición mortis causa, o habrá de resultar de los términos de una disposición de ese tipo, it must be made expressly in a will or result from the terms of one. An English will that leaves the estate as the testator pleases, under English law, takes the Spanish legítima out of the picture; the firm's article on the Spanish will for a foreign resident and the choice of law explains how the clause is drafted, how a will made before 2015 under the national law is treated, and how the choice meets the public-policy clause of the Regulation, under which a court may refuse a foreign rule only when applying it would be manifiestamente incompatible con el orden público del Estado miembro del foro, manifestly incompatible with the public policy of the forum (article 35). A Spanish national has no such door: the only law they may choose is Spanish law, which is also the law of their residence, and the Code's shares apply.

Spanish law is not one law. Catalonia, Aragon, Navarre, the Basque Country, Galicia and the Balearic Islands have civil laws of their own with their own reserved shares; the Canary Islands do not, and the Civil Code applies here in full. For a foreigner the Regulation itself decides which Spanish law is meant, because Spain's internal rule points to a civil domicile that only Spaniards hold: a reference to the law of a State with several territorial systems is read, for the rules based on residence, as a reference to la ley de la unidad territorial en la que este hubiera tenido su residencia habitual en el momento del fallecimiento, the law of the territorial unit in which the deceased was habitually resident at death (article 36). For a resident of Tenerife or Fuerteventura, that is the Code described in this article.

What to decide before the notary

• The inventory and the arithmetic. List what you own in Spain and abroad, what you owe, and what you have already given each child and when; the shares are computed on all of it, at the values of the day the estate is valued, so the plan has to be made on the whole picture.
• Which law, in writing. If you are not Spanish and you want your national law to govern, the will must say so expressly; if you want Spanish law, say nothing or say so, and plan within the thirds.
• The free third and the mejora, named. Decide who takes the free third and whether the mejora third goes to one child, to several in unequal parts, to grandchildren, or stays undivided; a mejora exists only when the will or the deed of gift calls it one.
• Gifts, documented. Every gift to a child goes into a deed that says whether it is a mejora, whether it is exempt from collation and at what value it was made; a bank transfer with no paper is a lawsuit between siblings later.
• The spouse's position. Decide whether the usufruct of the mejora third is enough, whether it should be commuted to cash or an annuity, and whether the surviving spouse should hold the power of article 831 to distribute the estate among the children later.
• The house or the business, whole. If one child is to keep an asset undivided, write the clause of article 841 and remember its two one-year clocks, or the asset is divided like everything else.
• The cause of a disinheritance, with facts. Name the article and describe the conduct: since when, what was refused, what it did to you; a clause that cites article 853 and nothing else is the clause that fell in 2025.
• The evidence, kept while you live. Unanswered letters and messages, medical reports, a sibling's or a carer's account, the dates of your own attempts at contact; the heirs will have to prove the cause after you are gone, and only you can leave them the means.
• The fallback and the grandchildren. Leave the disinherited child the strict share in cash in case the cause is not proven, and decide what the child's own children receive, because they step into the legítima by law.
• The date of revision. A reconciliation, a new gift, a child's disability, a move to another island or another country, each can change the result; a will is revocable, and the one that counts is the last.

What our team does

The firm's wills and estate-planning practice drafts Spanish wills for residents and non-residents, writes the choice of your national law under the European rules when that is the right course, coordinates the Spanish will with the one at home so that the two never contradict each other, plans the inheritance-tax position of your future heirs, and arranges the notary's signature and the registration in the central registry of wills. Its inheritance practice acts for heirs on the other side of these questions, from the supplement of a legítima to the challenge of a disinheritance, negotiated between the heirs where that is possible and litigated before the courts of Las Palmas or Santa Cruz de Tenerife where it is not, and settles cross-border estates by power of attorney for heirs who live abroad. Both offices, Costa Adeje and Corralejo, take these matters in person or by video, in the firm's twelve working languages; write to us or book a consultation and tell us where you live, who your heirs are and what you have in mind.

Common questions

Can I leave everything to my wife or husband and nothing to our children?

Under Spanish law, not everything. The children keep two thirds of the estate, and the spouse may receive the free third outright and the usufruct of the mejora third for life, which in practice means the use of the family home and a share of the income. The children may pay off that usufruct in cash or an annuity, by agreement or by court order. A foreign national may change the answer by choosing their national law expressly in the will; a Spanish national cannot.

My daughter has not spoken to me in ten years. Can I disinherit her?

Only if the estrangement is her doing and it has caused you real harm, and only if the will names the cause and the heirs can later prove it. The Supreme Court has upheld disinheritances where adult children abandoned a sick parent for years, and it has struck them down where the distance began in the child's childhood, followed the parents' separation, was mutual, or was forgiven. Describe the facts in the will, keep the evidence, leave her the strict share in cash in case the cause fails, and remember that if she has children they take her share by law.

I gave my son the deposit for his flat. Does it count against his inheritance?

Yes, unless the deed of gift said otherwise. A gift to a child is charged against that child's share of the legítima and brought into the account at its value when the estate is valued, not at the figure of the day it was made; if you wanted it to be in addition to his share, the gift had to be declared a mejora, and if you wanted it left out of the account altogether, the deed had to exempt it from collation expressly. Ordinary spending on a child's upkeep, studies and health is not counted.

I am British and live in Fuerteventura. Do these rules apply to me?

They apply unless your will chooses English law, or the law of another nationality you hold, in express words. Since 2015 the European regulation applies the law of your habitual residence to your whole succession, including the reserved shares and any disinheritance, and for a resident of the Canary Islands that is the Civil Code described here, because the islands have no civil law of their own. The Regulation lets you choose your national law instead, and the choice must be written into a will, not assumed.

My father disinherited me. What can I do, and how long do I have?

Obtain the will through the registry of last wills and the notary, and read the cause. If none is stated, if it is not one the law lists, or if it is untrue, you may bring an action to have the disinheritance declared unjust; the heirs must then prove the cause, and if they cannot you recover your strict share, a part of the first third of the estate, computed on everything your father left and had given away. The action must be brought within four years of the death, once the will's content could be known.

General information on the law as it stands in October 2026 (Código Civil, articles 636, 654, 655, 737, 756, 757, 806 to 809, 813 to 819, 823, 825, 828, 831, 834, 837 to 841, 844, 848 to 857, 1035, 1036, 1041, 1043 and 1045; Regulation (EU) 650/2012, articles 21, 22, 23, 35, 36 and 83; Sentencias del Tribunal Supremo 258/2014, 59/2015, 401/2018, 492/2019, 13/2025, 865/2025, 624/2026, 634/2026 and 1542/2026). It is not advice on a particular case: your nationality, your residence, your family and the words of each deed decide what applies to you.