Disclaiming an Inheritance in Germany (Erbe ausschlagen): The Six-Week Deadline

Under German law, inheriting is not something a family member chooses to step into the way that word often implies elsewhere. Under § 1922 BGB, the whole estate, assets and debts together, passes to the heir automatically and immediately at the moment of death. No probate court screens the estate first, and unless the deceased left a will naming an executor, nothing stands between the heir and whatever the deceased owed.

That structure, Gesamtrechtsnachfolge, universal succession, is why German law gives every heir a short window to step back out again. Six weeks, running from the moment the heir learns both that they have inherited and why, under § 1944 BGB. Miss it, and the law treats the estate as accepted whether or not the heir ever meant to take it on.

This page works through that deadline in detail, how it doubles to six months in two specific and separate situations, the strict form the disclaimer itself must take, what happens to a disclaiming parent's own children, and the alternatives that let an heir cap their exposure at the estate's value instead of walking away from an inheritance that might still be worth having.

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

Why German inheritance starts with acceptance, not probate

Many legal systems interpose a court, an administrator, or an executor between a death and the point at which an heir actually receives anything. German law does not. § 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 waiting period for a court to inventory the estate, pay its creditors, and only then distribute what is left, the way probate commonly works in common law systems. An heir who simply does nothing has, by that inaction, already stepped into every asset and every liability the deceased held. That is the entire reason the six-week clock discussed below carries so much weight: it is the one general opportunity to opt back out before the law treats the question as settled.

The six-week clock: when it starts, and what makes it double

§ 1944 BGB sets the basic rule in one sentence: a disclaimer can only be made within six weeks. The clock does not start on the date of death itself. It starts once the heir has actual knowledge both of the fact that the inheritance has fallen to them and of the specific ground for their entitlement, for example that they are a child of the deceased, or that a will names them. For an heir appointed only by will, the period cannot begin before the Nachlassgericht has formally opened that will to the heir.

Two separate circumstances extend this six-week period to six months, and it is worth being precise about them because they are alternatives, not a pair of conditions that both have to be satisfied. The first is that the deceased's last residence was abroad. The second, entirely independent of the first, is that the heir themselves is abroad at the point the period would otherwise start. Either one on its own is enough to trigger the longer period.

A short example makes the difference concrete. Consider a parent who lived in Germany their entire life and died in Germany, survived by an adult child who happens to be working on a fixed-term assignment in Singapore at the time. The deceased's residence was purely domestic, so the first trigger does not apply, but the child is abroad when the period would start, so the six-month period applies anyway under the second, independent trigger. Now reverse the facts: a parent who retired to Portugal years earlier and died there, survived by a child who has always lived in Frankfurt. The child is not abroad at all, but the deceased's last residence was abroad, which is enough on its own to extend the period to six months.

How to actually disclaim: the form matters as much as the deadline

Meeting the six-week deadline is not simply a matter of deciding to disclaim within that time. § 1945 BGB requires the disclaimer to be declared to the Nachlassgericht itself, and it must take one of exactly two forms: recorded there in person as a formal Niederschrift, or submitted in notarially certified form. Nothing else satisfies the statute. A letter to the family, an email to the executor, or a conversation with a bank does not disclaim anything, however clearly it states an intention to walk away.

This is the single most common way people lose the right by accident. Someone tells relatives they want nothing to do with an indebted estate, believes the matter settled, and only learns after the six weeks have run that no declaration ever reached the Nachlassgericht in the form the statute requires. Where someone else acts through a proxy rather than declaring in person, § 1945 Abs. 3 BGB requires a notarially certified power of attorney, which must either accompany the declaration or follow within the same six-week period.

What happens after a disclaimer, and the problem of minor children

Disclaiming does not make the inheritance disappear. § 1953 BGB treats the disclaiming heir as though they had never been alive at the moment of death, so the share falls instead to whoever would have inherited in that scenario. For a disclaiming parent, that is very often their own children.

This creates a specific risk that is easy to overlook. A parent who disclaims an indebted inheritance, satisfied they have solved the problem for themselves, may simply have redirected the same debt to their own children without realising it, because the children are now the ones the estate falls to under § 1953 BGB. The children then have their own separate six-week period to disclaim in turn, and if nobody acts on their behalf within it, the same § 1943 BGB acceptance-by-default rule applies to them.

Because a minor cannot disclaim on their own behalf, a parent or other legal representative generally needs family court approval to disclaim an inheritance for a child, under § 1851 Nr. 1 BGB. There is a narrower rule for the specific situation this page is about: where a child's own calling to inherit arises only because a parent disclaimed first, § 1643 BGB dispenses with that approval requirement unless the disclaiming parent was themselves also called to inherit alongside the child. In practice, this means a family weighing whether to disclaim an indebted estate needs to think about the children's position from the outset, not as an afterthought once the parent's own declaration is already filed.

Challenging a disclaimer or an acceptance for mistake

German law treats both acceptance and disclaimer as final in almost every case. § 1954 BGB allows a challenge, but only on recognised grounds such as a genuine mistake about who was actually entitled to inherit, or a threat that induced the decision, and the challenge itself must be made within six weeks of the point the person entitled to challenge learns of that ground. The same two triggers that extend the original six-week period to six months apply here as well, and no challenge is possible at all once 30 years have passed since the original acceptance or disclaimer.

What § 1954 BGB does not provide is a route back in simply because the estate turned out to be more indebted, or more valuable, than initially assumed. Discovering the estate's true financial position after the fact is not, on its own, a recognised ground for undoing a disclaimer that has already taken effect.

Why disclaiming is not always the right move

Disclaiming is an all-or-nothing decision. An heir cannot disclaim only the debts while keeping the assets, and if the estate later turns out to have been solvent after all, a disclaiming heir has given up any right to that value along with the liabilities. Where the real difficulty is not knowing how indebted an estate actually is, rather than a firm wish to walk away from it altogether, German law offers narrower tools that cap exposure without requiring the heir to give up the inheritance entirely.

§§ 1975 ff. BGB let an heir apply to the Nachlassgericht for Nachlassverwaltung, estate administration run for the benefit of the estate's creditors, or, where the estate is genuinely insolvent, for Nachlassinsolvenzverfahren, formal estate insolvency proceedings. Both limit the heir's liability to the value of the estate itself rather than exposing the heir's own separate assets, while still preserving any surplus for the heir if the estate proves solvent after all. § 1980 BGB goes further for an estate the heir already knows or should know is insolvent or overindebted: it makes applying for Nachlassinsolvenzverfahren without delay a duty, not merely an option, and an heir who fails to apply can be personally liable for the resulting harm to creditors.

A narrower, shorter-term tool sits alongside these. § 2014 BGB gives an heir who has already accepted an inheritance the right to refuse settling estate debts during the first three months after acceptance, though not beyond the point an inventory of the estate has been drawn up. This buys time to assess what the estate actually contains before committing further, without requiring either a disclaimer or a full Nachlassverwaltung application.

The broad distinction worth holding onto is this: disclaiming under § 1944 BGB is the tool for an heir who is already sure they want nothing to do with the estate. Nachlassverwaltung, Nachlassinsolvenzverfahren, and the Dreimonatseinrede are the tools for an heir who is not yet sure how indebted the estate is, and wants to find out before deciding anything is final.

What it costs to disclaim

Recording a disclaimer at the Nachlassgericht, or having it notarially certified instead, is not free. A court or notarial fee applies, calculated from the value of the estate or of the share being disclaimed, under Germany's general court and notary cost schedule, the Gerichts- und Notarkostengesetz. The exact amount scales with the size of the estate, so the fee on a modest estate is correspondingly modest, and the fee on a substantial one is not.

Disclaiming and the compulsory share: two narrow exceptions

As a general rule, disclaiming an inheritance also gives up any Pflichtteil, compulsory share, claim tied to it. An heir who disclaims steps outside the succession entirely, and the compulsory share exists only for someone the succession has excluded, not for someone who has voluntarily removed themselves from it.

Two situations work differently. § 2306 BGB covers an heir entitled to a compulsory share who has instead been left a share burdened by conditions, for example a Nacherbe appointment, an executor (Testamentsvollstreckung), a partition direction, or a legacy or charge attached to the share. That heir may disclaim the burdened share and demand the plain compulsory share instead, and the disclaimer period for this specific route runs from when the heir learns of the restriction or burden itself, not simply from the death.

§ 1371 Abs. 3 BGB provides the second exception, specific to a surviving spouse. A spouse who disclaims the inheritance can still claim the compulsory share, calculated without the additional marital quarter, alongside the ordinary Zugewinnausgleich, the marital property equalisation claim, even though the general rule would otherwise deny any compulsory share claim to someone who disclaimed.

An only child left nothing but a modest set of household items, with the rest of a substantial estate tied up under a long-running Testamentsvollstreckung the child would rather avoid, illustrates the § 2306 BGB route well. Disclaiming that specific burdened share lets the child instead pursue a straightforward cash claim for the compulsory share, roughly half of what they would have received as a statutory heir, without waiting out years of executor administration. See the compulsory share page for how the Pflichtteil itself is calculated.

Whichever route applies, the underlying lesson is the same one that runs through this whole page: the six-week window is short, the form the declaration must take is strict, and what happens next, to children, to a compulsory share claim, to any surplus value in the estate, depends on decisions made correctly within that window rather than on good intentions expressed to the family afterward. See writing a will and intestate succession for how an estate is structured in the first place, and German law explained for the wider set of topics relevant to holding assets or family ties in Germany.

Frequently asked questions