Erbrecht: The Complete Guide to German Inheritance Law

German inheritance law, Erbrecht, starts from a structural point that surprises almost every reader arriving from a common law country. There is no probate court that takes charge of an estate first, inventories it, and only then hands out what is left. Under Gesamtrechtsnachfolge, § 1922 BGB, the whole estate, every asset and every debt together, passes to the heir automatically and immediately at the moment of death.

That single fact shapes everything else on this hub: why the six-week disclaimer window matters so much, why a will still cannot fully disinherit a child, and why the tax allowances below vary so sharply by relationship. This page orients you across the whole cluster and routes you to the page with the depth you actually need.

Information last verified on 20 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Universalsukzession: why nothing waits for a court

An heir under German law does not apply to inherit, wait for a grant, or receive assets only after a court-supervised administration period. § 1922 BGB provides that the estate passes to the heir, or to several heirs together, as a whole, in a single moment, at the point of death itself. There is no default executor unless the deceased named one in a will, and no general waiting period before an heir's rights and obligations attach.

This is also why doing nothing is not a neutral choice. An heir who simply lets time pass has, by that inaction, already stepped into every liability the deceased held, along with every asset. The one general opportunity to step back out is the disclaimer period described next, and it is considerably shorter than most newcomers expect.

Where several people inherit together, they do not each simply receive a separate slice of the estate on the day of death. They form an Erbengemeinschaft, a community that jointly owns the whole estate, asset by asset, until it is formally divided, and ordinary decisions about that estate generally need every co-heir's cooperation. A deceased person can soften this by naming a Testamentsvollstrecker, an executor, in a will, giving one person authority to administer and divide the estate without needing every heir to agree at each step, an option that does not exist at all under the intestate rules.

The six-week deadline that runs the whole system

§ 1944 BGB gives an heir six weeks to disclaim an inheritance, running from the point the heir learns both that the inheritance has fallen to them and the specific ground for their entitlement. That period extends to six months in either of two separate situations: where the deceased's last residence was abroad, or where the heir themselves is abroad when the period would otherwise begin. Either condition alone is enough; they are alternatives, not a pair of requirements that both have to be met.

Missing the deadline is not a minor administrative slip. Once six weeks pass without a valid disclaimer, the estate is deemed accepted, debts included, with no informal grace period. The declaration itself also has to take a specific form, recorded at the Nachlassgericht in person or submitted notarially certified, so simply telling relatives an intention to disclaim does nothing on its own. See disclaiming an inheritance for the full deadline mechanics, what happens to a disclaiming parent's own children, and the narrower alternatives that cap liability without giving up a potentially solvent estate entirely.

Testamentary freedom, and the limit a will cannot remove

German law lets a person leave their estate largely as they choose, including cutting a child out of a will entirely. What a will cannot do is remove that child's Pflichtteil, compulsory share. § 2303 BGB gives a descendant, and in narrower circumstances a parent or spouse, excluded from the succession by will a money claim against the heirs equal to half of what they would have received under the statutory rules.

This is a claim for cash against the people who did inherit, not a right to any specific asset or a share of the estate itself, and it runs on its own separate rules for calculation and timing. Gifts made in the ten years before death can also inflate this claim, since the Pflichtteilsergänzung adds a lifetime gift back into the calculation on a sliding scale that reduces its effect by one tenth for each full year since the gift was made. See the compulsory share for how that claim is worked out in full.

Writing a will: the handwritten form trips up more people than any other rule here

§ 2247 BGB requires a private will to be written and signed entirely in the testator's own handwriting. A typed document, even one signed in front of witnesses in the way that satisfies a will in the United States or the United Kingdom, simply does not meet this requirement and is void as a private will under German law. Anyone who cannot write a full will out by hand, whether from a physical limitation or simple preference, needs a notarial will instead.

Age matters here too. § 2229 BGB lets a minor make a will only once they turn 16, without needing a parent's consent to do so, but § 2233 BGB then restricts that minor to a notarial will, either declared to the notary directly or handed over as an open, unsealed document. The sealed option that § 2232 BGB gives an adult testator is deliberately closed to a minor, so the notary can read what is actually in it. The purely handwritten private form under § 2247 BGB is only available once the testator reaches full age.

Married couples also have a distinctive option unavailable to unmarried people: the Berliner Testament, a joint will naming each other as sole heir first and the children only afterward, with its own binding-effect trap once the first spouse dies. See writing a will in Germany for the full form rules, the Berliner Testament in detail, and how to revoke or change a will already made.

Intestate succession: ranked orders, and a quarter that is not automatic

Where no valid will exists, §§ 1924 ff. BGB distribute the estate through Ordnungen, ranked orders of relatives, where a single living member of a nearer order excludes every relative in a more distant order entirely. A surviving spouse's basic share under § 1931 BGB then depends on which order also survives: one quarter alongside children, one half alongside parents or siblings, or the whole estate if neither exists.

The detail that trips up the most people is the additional quarter under § 1371 BGB, often repeated as a flat one-quarter-plus-one-quarter rule for any spouse. It only applies where the couple was married under the default Zugewinngemeinschaft, community of accrued gains, regime. A couple who signed a marriage contract choosing Gütertrennung or Gütergemeinschaft does not receive it, and a different, headcount-based rule applies instead. See intestate succession for the full order structure, worked examples under both property regimes, and what happens where no relatives exist at all.

Inheritance tax: the allowance gap that catches unmarried partners

§ 16 ErbStG sets tax-free allowances that have not changed since 2009: 500,000 euros for a spouse or registered life partner, 400,000 euros for each child, 200,000 euros for each grandchild, and only 20,000 euros for Steuerklasse III, the tax class that includes an unmarried partner along with unrelated third parties. That gap, twenty-five times smaller than the spousal allowance, is the single most consequential fact on this page for any unmarried couple.

Beyond the allowance, § 19 ErbStG applies a rate table that climbs with both the size of the inheritance and the Steuerklasse, so the same euro amount can be taxed very differently depending on the relationship between the deceased and the heir. See German inheritance tax for the full rate table, the additional exemptions for a spouse's pension provision and the family home, and a worked calculation.

A short example shows why the allowance and the rate table have to be read together. An only child inherits 900,000 euros from a parent, with no spouse or grandchildren involved. After the 400,000 euro child's allowance, 500,000 euros is taxable, and § 19 ErbStG places that whole amount inside the Steuerklasse I band running up to 600,000 euros, taxed at a flat 15 percent rather than a rate that climbs gradually within the band. The result is 75,000 euros of tax on the taxable portion, with § 19 Abs. 3 ErbStG smoothing only the effect of crossing from one band into the next, not the rate within a band.

Lifetime giving: why the ten-year rule drives the planning

Because the inheritance tax allowances above apply once per relationship rather than once per lifetime, § 14 ErbStG aggregates every gift and inheritance from the same person over a rolling ten years, adding earlier transfers back at their earlier value before calculating tax on the latest one. In practice, this means each allowance effectively renews every ten years, which is exactly why spreading a large transfer across several gifts, timed a decade apart, is the main lawful way families reduce the total tax paid across a lifetime rather than concentrating everything into a single inheritance.

See gifts and gift tax in Germany for how Schenkungsteuer shares these same allowances and rate tables with inheritance tax, the separate exemption for a family home transferred between spouses during their lifetimes, and how the ten-year clock actually runs across several gifts.

A reform to watch, not to act on yet

A case has been pending before the Bundesverfassungsgericht, 1 BvR 804/22, testing whether the business-asset reliefs in §§ 13a to 13c ErbStG breach the constitutional equal-treatment principle in Article 3 of the Basic Law. As of this page's verification date, no ruling has issued. The case concerns relief for business assets and shares in companies specifically, not the personal allowances described above, so nothing here changes what a spouse, child or grandchild can currently receive tax-free. Treat any claim that this case has already been decided, or that it affects the personal allowances, as incorrect until an actual ruling is published.

Your situation, and the right page

Anyone weighing a lifetime gift alongside a divorce or a marriage contract's effect on what a spouse eventually inherits should also see German family law for how the Zugewinngemeinschaft property regime works during a marriage, not only after death. For the wider set of topics relevant to living or holding assets in Germany as a foreign national, see German law explained.

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