Forced Heirship in Belgium: The Reserve, the Disposable Part, and Reduction

Belgian law does not let a person give away an entire estate however they like. A portion, called the reserve (réserve héréditaire, wettelijke reserve), is set aside by law for certain heirs regardless of what a will or a lifetime gift says. This page covers how the reserve works today, who it protects, how much of the estate a testator can actually direct elsewhere, and what happens when a gift or a bequest tries to take more than the law allows.

The reserve was substantially rewritten by the law of 31 July 2017, in force for successions opened from 1 September 2018, and it now sits in Book 4 of the Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek Boek 4 / Code civil Livre 4), itself in force since 1 July 2022. The reform changed who is protected and, for the heirs who remain protected, fixed the size of their share so that it no longer grows with the number of children.

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

The children's reserve: a fixed one half, collectively

Article 4.145 of the Civil Code caps what a person can give away, by gift or by will, at one half of the estate wherever they leave one or more children, or descendants of a child taking that child's place by representation. That cap is collective: it is one half for the children as a group, not one half per child. Before the 2017 reform, in force from 1 September 2018, the reserve scaled with the number of children, one half for a single child, two thirds for two, three quarters for three or more, so a larger family shrank what a parent could freely direct elsewhere. Since the reform, the ceiling stays at one half regardless of how many children there are; only how that protected half then divides between the children themselves depends on their number.

Article 4.146 layers a usufruct on top of that reserve in some circumstances: where the surviving spouse is entitled to the usufruct of the whole estate, the children's reserved share carries that usufruct with it, so the children hold bare ownership of their reserve until the spouse's usufruct ends.

The surviving spouse's reserve: usufruct, not ownership

The surviving spouse's reserve takes a different form entirely. Article 4.147, paragraph 1, guarantees the spouse the usufruct of one half of the estate, notwithstanding any contrary gift. A will normally cannot remove it either, with one narrow exception in paragraph 4: a will may strip this usufruct, and the family-home usufruct below, where the couple had lived separately for more than six months at death and either spouse had taken a formal legal step toward separate residence or a fault-based divorce and they had not reconciled. Usufruct means the right to use the assets and draw their income for life; the underlying ownership passes to whoever the will or the law directs, subject to that usufruct.

A second, narrower guarantee sits inside the first and cannot be reduced away by gifts made during life: paragraph 2 of article 4.147 protects the surviving spouse's usufruct, or right of tenancy, over the property that served as the family's main residence when the estate opened, and the furnishings in it, even where the value of that usufruct would otherwise exceed the spouse's general half. Where the couple were factually separated at the time of death, the same protection attaches instead to the property that served as their last shared marital residence, provided the surviving spouse either still lived there or was prevented against their will from doing so, and provided the court finds that awarding the usufruct or tenancy right meets the law's fairness requirement.

Parents: no longer a reserved heir

The same reform removed the reserve for parents entirely. Before it, a parent who survived a childless son or daughter could insist on a fixed share of the estate. Now, a parent remains a legal heir under the ordinary order of succession where there are no descendants, but if a will excludes them they have no reserve to fall back on.

What they have instead is a needs-based maintenance claim (créance alimentaire, onderhoudsvordering), payable from the estate only if the parent can show genuine financial need at the time of the death. That is a materially weaker protection than a reserve: it depends on the parent's actual circumstances rather than arising automatically, and it is not a guaranteed share of a fixed size.

No surviving spouse, no descendants: no reserve at all

Article 4.148 removes the reserve altogether where a person dies leaving neither a surviving spouse nor descendants. In that situation, gifts and a will together may cover the entire estate: there is no reserved heir left to protect, and a parent's interest by then is limited to the needs-based claim described above.

When a gift or bequest goes too far: réduction (inkorting / réduction)

A gift or a legacy that exceeds the disposable part does not simply fail. Article 4.150 lets it be reduced, after the succession opens, back down to what the disposable part actually allows. As a rule, and despite anything the gift or the will says to the contrary, that reduction happens in value rather than by clawing back the gift itself: the recipient keeps what they were given and instead compensates the reserved heirs for the excess, calculated in money. Reduction in kind, meaning the actual property is handed back, only happens if the recipient themselves asks for it.

The one exception runs the other way: the spousal protection in article 4.147, paragraph 2, over the family home and its furnishings, is reduced in kind rather than in value if it comes to that, because a monetary substitute would defeat the whole point of guaranteeing the surviving spouse somewhere to live.

Succession agreements: some room to plan ahead

For most of its history, Belgian law treated a binding agreement about a still-open succession as void as a matter of principle. The 2017 to 2018 reform relaxed that, and Book 4 now permits succession agreements (erfovereenkomsten / pactes successoraux), executed before a notary after a mandatory reflection period. A global family pact brings a parent and all of the children together to record how earlier gifts will be treated and confirm the arrangement is balanced. A narrower, point-specific pact lets one heir agree in advance not to challenge a particular gift, without touching anything else. Either way, the reserve rules above are the backdrop these agreements operate against, not a rule they can quietly set aside outside the formal procedure.

The order of heirs when there is no will, and the surviving spouse's and cohabitant's positions, are covered on our who inherits in Belgium page. How the reserve interacts with the three forms a will can take, and with revocation, is covered on our wills page. Gifts made during a person's lifetime, rather than left by will, are covered separately on our lifetime gifts page, since a lifetime gift and a legacy are reduced under the same disposable-part ceiling.

This page describes the general reserve rules under Belgian federal civil law and does not constitute legal advice for an individual estate. Prior gifts, marriage contracts, succession agreements and cross-border elements can all change how much of a particular estate is actually protected, and the underlying law changes from time to time. Check the current text on ejustice.just.fgov.be, or consult a notary, before acting on anything here.