Inheritance Law in Austria: Erbrecht Overview (Wills, Compulsory Share, Probate and Tax)

Austrian inheritance law, Erbrecht, decides what happens to a person's property, debts and rights after death: who can write a will and how, which relatives cannot be fully disinherited, who administers the estate, and what it costs to inherit. Most of it sits in one statute, the Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (ABGB), Austria's general civil code, in the sections on succession law.

The current rules are newer than many readers assume. The ErbRÄG 2015 reform (Erbrechts-Änderungsgesetz 2015) rewrote the will formalities, the compulsory share and the intestate succession rules, and has been in force only since 1 January 2017. Older articles, including some still online, describe the pre-2017 law and are wrong on several specific points as a result.

Information last verified on 22 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Austrian law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

This page orients a reader across the cluster rather than repeating what each linked page already covers in depth. It explains the ABGB framework and the two headline changes that surprise people who learned about Austrian inheritance law years ago, then gives a short summary of probate, wills, the compulsory share and real estate tax, with a link to the page that works through the full detail, tables and worked examples for each.

The ABGB framework and two headline changes

Everything on this cluster traces back to the ABGB's succession-law provisions, as amended by the ErbRÄG 2015. Two changes from that reform matter most and are the two facts most likely to trip up a reader relying on an older source.

The first is tax. Austria's Erbschaftssteuer and Schenkungssteuer were struck down by the Verfassungsgerichtshof, the Constitutional Court, and the underlying statute has not applied to any tax liability arising after 31 July 2008. There is no dedicated inheritance or gift tax in Austria today.

The second is the compulsory share. Before the 2017 reform, a deceased person's parents could claim a Pflichtteil if there were no descendants to inherit. The ErbRÄG 2015 removed parents from the list entirely, so today only descendants and a surviving spouse or registered partner have a compulsory share under § 757 ABGB.

The ABGB also sets a default order of intestate succession, grouped into lines called Parentelen, that applies whenever there is no will or a will does not cover the whole estate. That default order matters even on an estate with a valid will, because the compulsory share is calculated as half of what the same person would have inherited without one.

Probate at a glance: the Verlassenschaftsverfahren

Nobody in Austria applies for probate the way an heir in Germany applies for an Erbschein. The Verlassenschaftsverfahren, the court-led estate proceeding, opens on the district court's own motion as soon as a death is reported, under § 143 AußStrG. The court does not do the legwork itself. It assigns a notary to act as its Gerichtskommissär, its court commissioner, and that notary draws up the Todesfallaufnahme, the record of the deceased's assets, debts, will and heirs.

Nobody may simply take possession of estate property. § 797 ABGB states plainly that an inheritance may not be seized privately, and that acquisition normally happens through the Einantwortung, the court's formal act at the end of the proceeding that hands the estate over to the heirs. For real estate, that same act is what allows the Grundbuch, the land register, to be updated under § 819 ABGB.

The probate process page works through the full sequence, from the Todesfallaufnahme through the Erbantrittserklärung to the Einantwortung, along with a realistic timeline and the costs that apply when the estate includes real estate.

Making a will at a glance

Austrian law recognises two ordinary private forms of will. The eigenhändiges Testament, the fully handwritten will, must be written entirely in the testator's own hand and signed with their own hand under § 578 ABGB. No witnesses are required, and a date and place are recommended but not mandatory.

The fremdhändiges Testament, a typed will or one written by someone else, is valid under § 579 ABGB only if the testator signs it in front of three witnesses present at the same time and adds a handwritten note confirming the document is their last will. Each witness must also add a handwritten note identifying themselves as a witness. All three of those requirements were tightened by the 2017 reform, so advice describing looser witness rules predates the current law.

The writing a will page covers both forms in detail, the edge cases for a testator who cannot write or read, and the most common mistakes that void a will under the current rules.

The compulsory share at a glance

The Pflichtteil sets a minimum share for certain close relatives even against a will that tries to exclude them. Since the 2017 reform, § 757 ABGB limits that circle to descendants and a surviving spouse or registered partner. Parents and other ascendants no longer have any compulsory share at all.

The amount is half of what the same person would have received under intestate succession, not half of the whole estate, under § 759 ABGB. It is paid as a money claim against the estate or the heirs, not as a right to a specific asset, under § 761 ABGB. A testator has some room to manage the claim: it can be reduced by half where there was no real family relationship for a long period before death, and payment can be deferred for up to five years, extendable by a court to ten years in deserving cases.

The compulsory share page sets out the full entitlement rules, worked examples of the calculation, and the reduction and deferral tools in detail.

No inheritance tax, but real estate still costs money

Austria has no inheritance or gift tax for any tax liability arising after 31 July 2008, so a cash inheritance or a transfer of movable property generally reaches the heir without a dedicated death tax. That is the correct headline answer to a common search, and it is not the whole picture.

Inherited real estate is treated as a gratuitous acquisition under the Grunderwerbsteuergesetz and taxed on a graduated scale applied to the statutory Grundstückswert, not the market price: roughly 0.5 percent on the first part of the value, 2 percent on the next band, and 3.5 percent above that. On top of that, registering the heir as owner in the Grundbuch carries a separate court fee of 1.1 percent of the value of the right being registered.

The inheritance tax page works through both charges with a full worked example on a specific property value, since the gap between no inheritance tax and no cost at all is exactly where most confusion happens.

Where to start

A reader who has just lost a relative and needs to know what happens next should start with the probate process page. A reader planning their own estate should start with writing a will, then check the compulsory share page to see which relatives cannot be fully cut out. A reader who has been told they are inheriting property, rather than cash, should read the inheritance tax page before assuming nothing is owed. For Austrian law generally, outside inheritance law, the Austria overview page links to the other clusters in this build.