Legitieme Portie 2026: The Dutch Forced Share Explained

The Dutch forced share (legitieme portie) is the part of a deceased person's estate that a descendant can claim in spite of what the will says. It is the reason a Dutch will cannot cut a child out completely, and it is also the most widely misunderstood rule in Dutch succession.

The misunderstanding is about who holds it. A forced share belongs to descendants only, so a surviving spouse or registered partner who is left out of a will has no legitieme portie at all and has to rely on entirely different provisions.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Netherlands law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Only descendants are legitimarissen

Artikel 4:63 lid 1 BW defines the legitieme portie as the part of the value of the deceased's assets that a legitimaris can claim in spite of gifts and testamentary dispositions. Lid 2 then says who that is.

Legitimarissen, forced heirs, are the descendants of the deceased who are called by law to the estate, either in their own right or by succession by substitution (plaatsvervulling) in respect of people who no longer exist when the estate falls open or who are unworthy. Nobody else qualifies.

The surviving spouse or registered partner is therefore not a legitimaris. This is the single point on which advice about Dutch estates most often goes wrong, and it changes the whole shape of a case, because a widowed spouse cut out of a will has no forced share to invoke.

What the spouse has instead are separate statutory rights. Artikel 4:29 lid 1 BW obliges the heirs to cooperate in a usufruct (vruchtgebruik) over the home the couple lived in and its contents, and artikel 4:30 lid 1 BW extends that to other estate assets so far as the spouse needs them for their maintenance and care (verzorging).

Parents, brothers and sisters have no forced share either. They are not descendants, so a will leaving them nothing leaves them with nothing.

It is a claim in money, not a share of the assets

Artikel 4:80 lid 1 BW is the operative provision. A legitimaris who claims their forced share has a vordering in geld, a claim in money, against the joint heirs, or against the surviving spouse where the estate was divided under artikel 4:13 BW.

Nothing in that gives a right to particular assets. A legitimaris cannot demand the house, a share in the company or a specific painting, and cannot block the heirs from selling any of them.

Lid 2 caps the exposure. The heirs, or the spouse after a division under artikel 4:13 BW, do not have to satisfy the claims so far as together they exceed the value of the estate, and where that ceiling bites each claim is reduced proportionately.

The value of the estate for that purpose is the value of the estate assets less the debts in artikel 4:7 lid 1 sub a, b, c and f BW. So a heavily indebted estate produces a small forced share or none at all, whatever the will provided.

Computing the half

Artikel 4:64 lid 1 BW sets a child's legitieme portie at half the value on which the legitieme porties are computed, divided by the number of people named in artikel 4:10 lid 1 sub a BW whom the deceased left behind. That group is the spouse together with the children.

The division is by heads left behind, not by heads claiming. A surviving spouse counts in the denominator even though the spouse has no forced share, which is why a forced share shrinks when a parent survives.

Lid 2 handles a predeceased child. The descendants of a child who no longer exists when the estate falls open are counted together as one child left behind, and each of them can come forward only for their own portion of that.

Artikel 4:65 BW then fixes the base. The legitieme porties are computed over the value of the estate assets, increased by the gifts that count under the following provisions and reduced by the debts in artikel 4:7 lid 1 sub a to c and sub f BW. Its second sentence takes one category out again: gifts out of which debts as referred to in artikel 4:7 lid 1 sub i BW have arisen are left out of account.

That deduction list is narrower than the list of estate debts. Erfbelasting, which is artikel 4:7 lid 1 sub e BW, is not deducted, so the forced share is computed before the tax that the acquirers will separately owe.

A worked example. A person dies leaving a spouse and two children, with estate assets of EUR 400,000, no gifts and no deductible debts, and a will leaving everything to a third party.

The base is EUR 400,000, half of which is EUR 200,000. The people left behind under artikel 4:10 lid 1 sub a BW number three, the spouse and the two children, so each child's legitieme portie is EUR 66,666.67.

Neither child acquires anything under the will, so nothing is deducted under artikel 4:71 BW. Each child's claim, once invoked, is for EUR 66,666.67 in money against the heirs under artikel 4:80 lid 1 BW.

Gifts that are added back

Artikel 4:67 BW lists the gifts brought into the computation, and the list is wider than most people expect:

• gifts apparently made and accepted with a view to prejudicing legitimarissen (sub a)
• gifts the deceased could revoke at any time during life, or declared open to reduction (inkorting) (sub b)
• gifts of a benefit meant to be enjoyed in full only after the death (sub c)
• gifts to a descendant, provided that person or a descendant of theirs is a legitimaris of the deceased (sub d)
• any other gift, so far as it was performed within five years before the death (sub e)

Sub d has no time limit at all. A gift made to a child thirty years before the death still enters the computation, while a gift to a friend or a charity only counts if it falls inside the five-year window in sub e.

Artikel 4:66 lid 1 BW values gifts as at the moment of performance, ignoring any power the deceased had to revoke them. Lid 2 values differently the gifts where the deceased kept the enjoyment during life, or where the benefit was to be enjoyed fully only after death, taking the value immediately after the death.

Artikel 4:68 BW leaves out gifts to the deceased's spouse so far as no enrichment at the giver's expense occurred because of a community of property or a verrekenbeding then in force between them.

Artikel 4:69 lid 1 BW excludes two further categories: gifts to people the deceased was morally obliged to help support, so far as they flowed from that obligation and matched the deceased's income and assets, and customary gifts that were not excessive.

What is deducted from a legitimaris's own share

Artikel 4:70 lid 1 BW deducts the value of gifts the deceased made to a legitimaris from that legitimaris's own forced share. Lid 2 attributes gifts made to a descendant who would have been a legitimaris to the legitimarissen descending from them, in proportion to their forced shares.

Artikel 4:71 BW deducts the value of everything a legitimaris acquires under the law of succession. A child left a quarter of the estate by will therefore claims only the difference, if any, between that quarter and the forced share.

Artikel 4:72 BW extends the deduction to what a legitimaris could have acquired as an heir but rejected, subject to narrow exceptions where the assets were left under a condition, a charge or a bewind, or where the legitimaris was burdened with legacies requiring something other than a payment of money or a transfer of estate assets, and the rejection happened within three months of the death.

Artikel 4:73 BW does the same for a rejected legacy of a specified sum of money or of estate assets that are not claims, again with exceptions, including where the legacy falls due later than six months after the death.

A second worked example. Estate assets of EUR 350,000; a gift of EUR 50,000 made to one of two children four years before the death, which counts under artikel 4:67 sub d BW; deductible debts under artikel 4:7 lid 1 sub a to c and sub f BW of EUR 20,000; a surviving spouse and those two children.

The base is EUR 350,000 plus EUR 50,000 minus EUR 20,000, so EUR 380,000. Half is EUR 190,000, divided by the three people left behind, giving a forced share of EUR 63,333.33 for each child.

The child who received the gift then has EUR 50,000 deducted under artikel 4:70 lid 1 BW, leaving a claim of EUR 13,333.33. The other child's claim stays at EUR 63,333.33, less whatever that child acquires under the will.

When the claim can actually be collected

Artikel 4:81 lid 1 BW imposes a floor on every case: the claim is not claimable until six months have passed since the death. That period exists so the estate can be surveyed before anyone has to pay.

Lid 2 is the provision that matters most in practice. Where the estate was divided under artikel 4:13 BW, the claim becomes claimable only where the spouse is declared bankrupt, the schuldsaneringsregeling natuurlijke personen is declared applicable to them, or the spouse has died.

The same lid closes with a limit that runs the claimant's way. So far as the claim falls on a legacy to someone other than the spouse, the closing sentence of artikel 4:81 lid 2 BW provides that the first sentence does not produce a later moment of claimability than lid 1 already gives, so that part of the claim is collectable six months after the death rather than on the spouse's death.

So a child disinherited by a first parent, in an estate governed by the statutory division, commonly cannot collect anything until the surviving parent dies, so far as the claim falls on the spouse. The claim exists, and is fixed in amount, but sits unpaid in the meantime.

Leden 3 and 4 are two different suspensions rather than one. Lid 3 makes the claim non-claimable for as long as estate assets can still be burdened with a vruchtgebruik under artikel 4:29 or artikel 4:30 BW. Lid 4 applies once such a vruchtgebruik exists, and then only so far as the spouse is bound for the claim, and it makes the claim claimable again where the spouse is declared bankrupt or the schuldsaneringsregeling natuurlijke personen is declared applicable to the spouse.

Artikel 4:82 BW lets the deceased build the deferral into the will. A disposition in favour of a spouse not separated from bed and board may carry the condition that a legitimaris's claim falling on the spouse is claimable only after the spouse's death. The same condition can be attached to a disposition in favour of another life partner (levensgezel), but only where that person runs a joint household (gemeenschappelijke huishouding) with the deceased and a notarially executed samenlevingsovereenkomst has been entered into.

Artikel 4:83 BW goes further, allowing the will to tie claimability to circumstances other than those in artikelen 4:81 lid 2 and 4:82 BW. Artikel 4:84 BW then compensates for the wait: the claim is increased by the part of the wettelijke rente exceeding six percent, per year from the day the forced share was claimed, computed on the principal alone.

The five-year deadline

Artikel 4:85 lid 1 BW is the hard stop, and missing it ends the right rather than merely making it harder to enforce. The possibility of claiming the legitieme portie lapses where the legitimaris has not declared that they wish to receive it within a reasonable period set by an interested party, and at the latest five years after the death of the deceased.

There are two limbs in that sentence and both bite. The five years run from the death, not from the reading of the will, not from the moment the claim becomes collectable and not from the moment the legitimaris learns they were disinherited.

The other limb is easy to overlook. An interested party, typically an heir or the executeur, can set a reasonable period that expires well inside the five years, and letting that shorter period pass ends the right just as effectively.

Lid 2 adds a nine-month deadline for one specific part of the claim. Where nine months after the death it is still not settled whether the spouse will claim a vruchtgebruik under artikel 4:30 BW, the part of the claim that would fall on the spouse lapses unless the legitimaris declared to the spouse within that period that they wish to receive their legitieme portie.

Artikel 4:86 BW shifts the starting point in one case: where a missing-person regime under afdeling 2 or 3 of titel 18 van Boek 1 BW applied to the deceased, the periods in artikelen 4:81 lid 1 and 4:85 leden 1 and 2 BW run from the day the relevant court decision became final.

Invoking it, and what happens to an heir who rejects

The act required is a declaration that the legitimaris wishes to receive their legitieme portie, made inside the artikel 4:85 BW periods. Nothing in the statute requires the declaration to be litigated, and a written statement to the heirs or the executeur is the ordinary route.

Artikel 4:87 lid 1 BW then decides where the money comes from. The debts to legitimarissen are met first out of the part of the estate the deceased did not dispose of by appointment of heirs or by legacy, before the dispositions the will did make are reduced.

A legitimaris who is also an heir has a choice to make about the estate as a whole. Artikel 4:63 lid 3 BW provides that a legitimaris who rejects the estate loses the right to the legitieme portie, unless when making the declaration under artikel 4:191 BW they also state that they wish to receive it.

That combination is what artikel 4:63 lid 3 BW exists for where the estate is or may be insolvent, because it separates the forced share from the liability that comes with being an heir. The choice to accept or reject, and the effect of each, is covered on the Dutch inheritance page.

A forced share is acquired under the law of succession, so erfbelasting is levied from the legitimaris as the acquirer under artikel 36 Successiewet 1956; the Dutch inheritance tax page sets out the rates and exemptions that apply.

The formal requirements a will has to satisfy before any of this arises are on the Dutch wills page, and the wider structure of Dutch succession on the Netherlands wills and estates section page and the Netherlands law overview.