Pflichtteil in Austria: Who Gets a Compulsory Share Under the ABGB

Austrian succession law lets a person leave most of an estate freely by will, but it does not let a testator cut out certain close relatives entirely. That guaranteed minimum is the Pflichtteil, the compulsory share set out in §§ 756 and following of the Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (ABGB), the Austrian civil code.

The circle of people who can claim a Pflichtteil is narrower than many readers expect, and it changed materially in a 2017 reform. This page sets out who currently qualifies, how the amount is calculated, and the tools a testator has to reduce or delay the claim.

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.

Who has a compulsory share

§ 757 ABGB names the people who can claim a Pflichtteil: the deceased's descendants, and the surviving spouse or registered partner. Nobody else is on that list.

This is a narrower group than the ABGB used to provide. Before the ErbRÄG 2015 reform (Erbrechts-Änderungsgesetz 2015), a deceased person's parents could claim a Pflichtteil if there were no descendants to take priority. That reform entered into force on 1 January 2017, and it removed parents from the compulsory-share circle entirely. Grandparents, siblings, and more distant relatives were never entitled to a Pflichtteil and still are not.

Being on the § 757 list is not automatic entitlement on its own. § 758 ABGB adds three conditions: the person must be someone who would actually inherit under the rules of intestate succession, must not have been validly disinherited, and must not have waived the claim in advance. A descendant who would not inherit on intestacy, for example because a closer descendant stands ahead of them in line, does not get a Pflichtteil either.

A practical consequence of the 2017 change: an elderly parent whose adult child dies without a spouse or children of their own can no longer claim a compulsory share against that child's estate, even though the parent could have done so under the pre-2017 law. Content written before 2017, including a good deal of material still circulating online, describes the older, broader rule and is out of date.

How much the compulsory share is worth

§ 759 ABGB fixes the amount: each person entitled to a Pflichtteil receives half of what they would have inherited under intestate succession. The Pflichtteil is not a flat fraction of the whole estate, and it is not the same figure for everyone. It depends entirely on what that specific person's intestate share would have been, which in turn depends on who else survives the deceased.

A worked example makes this concrete. Consider a person who dies leaving one child and no spouse. With no will, that child would inherit the entire estate under intestate succession, an intestate share of the whole. Halved under § 759, the child's Pflichtteil is one half of the estate.

Change the facts: the deceased leaves two children and a surviving spouse. Under the intestate rules in § 744 ABGB, a spouse or registered partner takes one third of the estate alongside children, leaving two thirds to be split between the children, one third each. Each child's Pflichtteil is therefore half of that one-third intestate share, meaning one sixth of the estate per child. The spouse's own Pflichtteil is half of the spouse's one-third intestate share, meaning one sixth of the estate as well.

Because the calculation runs through the intestate share first, working out anyone's Pflichtteil requires establishing who would inherit, and in what proportion, as if there were no will at all. That intestate baseline follows the Parentelen (line) system in §§ 730 and following ABGB, with the surviving spouse or registered partner's fraction set separately in § 744.

The Pflichtteil is a money claim, not a share of the assets

§ 761 ABGB states that the Pflichtteil must be satisfied in money. The entitled person has a claim for a sum of cash calculated against the value of the estate; they do not automatically become a co-owner of the family home, a business interest, or any other specific asset the deceased left behind.

This matters for estate planning. A testator who wants a particular child to keep a farm or a company intact, for instance, can leave that asset to one heir while the other children's Pflichtteil claims are paid out in cash from other estate funds or by the heir personally. Heirs and Pflichtteil claimants can also agree between themselves to satisfy a cash claim by transferring an asset instead, but that is a voluntary arrangement, not something the law requires.

Reducing the compulsory share: Pflichtteilsminderung

A testator is not limited to an all-or-nothing choice between leaving the Pflichtteil intact and fully disinheriting someone, which requires a specific statutory ground such as a serious offense against the testator or a permanent breakdown of contact caused by the entitled person. § 776 ABGB provides a middle option, the Pflichtteilsminderung.

Under § 776, a testator can reduce a person's Pflichtteil to half of the usual amount in a will, where the testator and that person had no real family relationship, of the kind ordinarily existing between such relatives, for a long period before the testator's death, or never had one at all. The reduction does not apply if it was the testator, not the entitled person, who caused or maintained that estrangement without a good reason.

Deferring payment: Stundung

The Pflichtteil becomes due on death, but Austrian law recognizes that an heir may not have the liquid funds to pay it out immediately, particularly where the estate consists mainly of a house or a business.

§ 766 ABGB lets the testator order in the will that payment of a Pflichtteil claim be deferred for up to five years after death, or paid in instalments spread across that period. In cases the court considers especially deserving, that deferral period can be extended to a total of ten years.

§ 767 ABGB gives the heir a separate route to the same relief: even without a testamentary order, an heir can apply to the court for a deferral of up to five years, again extendable to ten years in total in warranted cases. Either way, the Pflichtteil claimant does not lose the claim through a deferral, and the underlying half-of-intestate-share calculation is unaffected; only the payment timeline changes.

Where the compulsory share fits with the rest of estate planning

The Pflichtteil operates as a floor under whatever a will provides, not as a description of what most estates actually look like. Many estates pass entirely as the will directs, with no Pflichtteil dispute at all, because the named heirs and the compulsory-share claimants are the same people, or because the entitled descendants and spouse are content with what the will gives them.

Anyone drafting a will who wants to depart significantly from the intestate outcome, whether by favoring one child over another or leaving substantial assets outside the family, needs to account for the Pflichtteil claims that descendants and a spouse or registered partner can still bring regardless of what the will says. For the mechanics of making a valid will in the first place, see writing a will. For how an estate is actually administered after death, including the court-led Verlassenschaftsverfahren, see the probate process.