La Legittima: Italy's Forced Heirship and the Reserved-Share Table

Italy does not let a person disinherit a spouse or a child simply by writing a will that says so. A fixed share of every estate, the legittima, is reserved by law for a defined group of close relatives, and no will can lawfully take it away from them.

This page sets out that reserved-share table article by article, how the disposable share is calculated around it, and what a legittimario can actually do if a will, or a lifetime gift, has cut into their reserved share.

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

Who the law protects: the legittimari

Art. 536 c.c. names exactly who benefits from a reserved share: the spouse, the children, and, only where there are no children (or descendants standing in their place), the ascendants. Where a child cannot or does not want to inherit, their own descendants can step into their place and grade by representation, keeping the same reserved rights the child would have had.

Nobody outside that list, not a sibling, not a parent when children survive, not an unmarried partner, is a legittimario. That does not mean those relatives have no place in an estate; it means the law does not reserve them a share a will could otherwise remove.

The reserved-share table

The table below states the reserved share (legittima) and the freely disposable share (disponibile) for each combination of surviving legittimari, drawn directly from artt. 537, 538, 540, 542 and 544 c.c.

Two things are easy to miss on a first read. First, "children" always includes descendants standing in a child's place by representation. Second, the disponibile is a residual: it is whatever is left once the legittima is subtracted, never a fixed fraction independent of who survives.

The spouse's diritto di abitazione

On top of the fractions above, art. 540 comma 2 c.c. reserves the surviving spouse a diritto di abitazione, a right to live, in the home used as the family residence, and a right to use its furniture, where the property belonged to the deceased or was jointly owned. This right applies even where the spouse also inherits alongside other legittimari.

The article is explicit that these rights are charged first against the disponibile, and only against the reserved shares themselves if the disponibile is not enough to cover them. In practice this can meaningfully affect what an estate with a single residential property actually leaves for the children once the spouse's housing rights are accounted for.

How the reserved share is actually calculated: the riunione fittizia

Stating the fractions is the easy part. The harder, and more consequential, question is what they are fractions of. Art. 556 c.c. answers it directly: a court (or a notaio settling the estate) forms a mass of everything the deceased owned at death, subtracts the debts, and then adds back, fittiziamente (on paper, not physically), the value of any gifts (donazioni) the deceased made during their lifetime.

That combined figure, the relictum (what was left) net of debts, plus the donatum (what was given away), is the base against which both the legittima and the disponibile are calculated. This is the single most common thing a simplified explanation gets wrong: an estate that looks small at death can still carry a large reserved-share obligation if the deceased made substantial gifts earlier in life.

Worked example: one child, a spouse, and lifetime gifts

A person dies leaving a spouse and one adult child. At death, the net estate (assets minus debts) is worth 600.000 euro. During their lifetime, the deceased had also given the child a property worth 200.000 euro as a gift.

The riunione fittizia base is 600.000 + 200.000 = 800.000 euro. Under the spouse-plus-one-child row of the table, the legittima is one third to the spouse and one third to the child, so each is reserved 800.000 / 3 = 266.666,67 euro in value terms. The child already received 200.000 euro as a lifetime gift, which counts against their reserved share, leaving 66.666,67 euro still owed to the child out of the estate actually available at death, plus the spouse's own 266.666,67 euro and diritto di abitazione. The remaining disponibile, one third of 800.000 euro, or 266.666,67 euro, is what the deceased was free to leave by will to anyone, including the same spouse or child beyond their reserved amount.

Worked example: two children, no spouse

A person dies unmarried, survived by two adult children, with a net estate of 900.000 euro and no lifetime gifts to account for. Under the two-or-more-children row, the reserved share is two thirds of the estate, split equally: 900.000 x 2/3 = 600.000 euro, or 300.000 euro to each child.

The disponibile is the remaining third, 300.000 euro, which the deceased could have left by will to either child beyond their reserved amount, to a third party, or to a charity. Without a will, the intestate rules, not the legittima table, would determine how the full 900.000 euro is actually divided between the two children.

Worked example: a will that ignores the legittima

A person dies leaving a spouse and two adult children, a net estate of 1.200.000 euro, and a will leaving the entire estate to a friend. Under the spouse-plus-two-or-more-children row, the reserved share is a quarter to the spouse (300.000 euro) and half to the children collectively, split equally (600.000 euro total, 300.000 euro each), leaving only a quarter, 300.000 euro, as the disponibile the will could actually dispose of.

The will's attempt to leave the friend the full 1.200.000 euro is not automatically void, but it is not fully effective either: it can dispose of the 300.000 euro disponibile, while the spouse and children can bring an azione di riduzione to recover the 900.000 euro the will wrongly took from their reserved shares. This is not a hypothetical edge case; it is the ordinary function of the legittima, and it is precisely why a will drafted without checking this table against the family's actual composition is a common and avoidable mistake.

No conditions on the reserved share

Art. 549 c.c. adds a separate protection: a testator cannot attach a condition or a burden to what a legittimario is reserved. A will that says a child inherits their reserved share "only if" some condition is met, or that ties it to an obligation the will itself imposes, cannot enforce that condition against the reserved portion, whatever else the will validly does with the disponibile.

Enforcing the floor: the azione di riduzione

A legittimario cannot be disinherited, but the law's protection is not self-executing. Where a will, or lifetime gifts, have left a legittimario with less than their reserved share, they must actively bring an azione di riduzione (an action for reduction) under artt. 554 and 555 c.c., within the reduction chapter that opens at art. 553.

The action asks a court to scale back the dispositions that exceeded the disponibile, whether in a will or as lifetime gifts, to the extent necessary to restore what the legittima requires. A legittimario who has already received something toward their share, by gift or by legacy, must credit that against what the reduction recovers (imputazione), so the action restores the shortfall, not a windfall on top of what they were already given.

The version trap: which text of art. 542 c.c. applies

Anyone researching this topic online is likely to encounter more than one version of art. 542 c.c., and getting the wrong one changes the answer completely. The current text, in force since 7 February 2014, is what the spouse-plus-children rows above are built on: a spouse and one child each take a full-ownership third; a spouse and two or more children take a quarter and a collective half respectively.

An earlier text, in force from 1975 to 2014, used the same fractions but distinguished figli legittimi from figli naturali in a way the 2013 reform (D.Lgs. 154/2013) removed. An even older text, in force from 1942 to 1975, worked completely differently: it gave the spouse a usufruct interest over part of the estate rather than a full-ownership share. Neither older version has any bearing on a death occurring today; only the version in force from 7 February 2014 does.

What this table does not resolve

This page states the fractions and how the base is calculated. It does not, and cannot, tell a reader what a specific family will actually inherit: that depends on the estate's real composition, any lifetime gifts, any usufruct interests, and the property's own valuation, none of which this page has facts about. A notaio or avvocato working from the actual estate is the only source for a number tied to a real family.

For how an estate reaches this point in the first place, see the inheritance overview. For what happens when an heir wants no part of the estate at all, including the trap of renouncing "for" a minor child, see disclaiming an inheritance.

Reserved share calculator