Inheriting Spanish Property as a Non-Resident: the Complete Guide

Somebody has died, there is a house in Spain, and none of the family lives here. That is the situation this page is written for, and if you are reading it in the first weeks, I am sorry. It is a bad time to have to learn a foreign legal system.

My name is Daniel Bertomeu and I work alongside my father Juan Bertomeu, a lawyer with offices in Moraira and Dénia, here on the Costa Blanca, since 1991. We are independent lawyers and tax advisors, and we deal almost only with international clients. Juan is the lawyer of the family, ICALI number 4643. My side is the tax and the paperwork.

So this page walks you through the process, from the death certificate to the moment the property is registered in your name, and it explains the rights most foreign heirs do not know they have. What it does not do is calculate your bill, because that one is worked out with the file open.

And one thing before anything else. There are two completely separate questions here, and almost every family I sit down with has them tangled together. One is which law decides who inherits. The other is which tax rules apply to what they inherit. They have different answers, they come from different places, and getting one right does not get you the other.

Does a non-resident heir pay more inheritance tax in Spain than a resident?

No, they should not, and this is the part I want you to understand properly, because it is not a courtesy anybody is doing you. It is European law, and Spain had to be taken to court before it applied it.

In September 2014 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled against Spain on exactly this. It held that inheritance, the transfer of a deceased person's estate to one or more people, falls inside the Treaty provisions on the movement of capital. And it held this too. A national rule that makes a reduction in the taxable base depend on where the deceased or the heir lived, or on where the property sits, is a restriction on the free movement of capital when the effect is that inheritances between non-residents carry a heavier tax burden than those where only residents are involved.

And that describes exactly what Spain used to do. Regional governments gave generous reliefs, and non-residents could not reach them. The Supreme Court itself records what happened next: that ruling forced Spain to change the law through Ley 26/2014, which added a second additional provision to the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act, with the stated purpose of removing any form of discrimination regardless of where the taxpayer lives.

So if somebody tells you that as a foreigner you are outside the regional reliefs, that has not been true for a decade. What is left is working out which region's rules apply to your case, and I deal with that further down.

Now, if you are British or American, there is one more link in that chain. The 2014 ruling was about the European Union and the European Economic Area, and the text Spain enacted in 2014 was written for residents of those states. Two things closed the gap after that.

The first is case law. In November 2020 the Supreme Court set binding doctrine that the European court's reasoning also reaches people resident outside the EU and the EEA, because the Treaty article on free movement of capital covers inheritance and, unlike the other freedoms, applies between member states and third countries as well.

The second is the statute itself. Since July 2021 that provision has been redrafted, and it now speaks simply of the taxpayers, with no condition attached about where they live. So for a British heir the right sits in the law, not only in the case law reading it.

Why the law treats a house in Moraira the same whoever inherits it

Because inheritance counts as a movement of capital, and the Treaty prohibits all restrictions on the movement of capital between member states and between member states and third countries. That single sentence carries more weight for you than anything a regional government has ever written.

The Supreme Court puts the test in a way I find genuinely useful. The fact that exercising the free movement of capital becomes less attractive because a national tax rule treats a domestic situation differently from a cross border one is enough, on its own, to establish that a restriction exists. Different treatment plus a cross border element is the whole test.

There is an exception in the Treaty, and Spain leans on it whenever it can. The court reads it narrowly: it cannot mean that every tax rule distinguishing taxpayers by residence is automatically compatible, and differences are only allowed where the situations are not objectively comparable, or where there is an overriding reason in the public interest. In the case I keep quoting from, the court noted plainly that no such reason had been established at all.

And here is the honest limit, which I would rather tell you myself than have you discover later. The court accepts that the situation of residents and non-residents can be considered different where there are no means of obtaining the appropriate information about the owners of property. So the shield leans on information exchange between tax administrations, and inside the European Union there is a directive for exactly that. Against a jurisdiction with no exchange mechanism at all, the argument is weaker. That caveat almost never bites a British, Irish, Dutch, German or American family, but it is part of the reasoning.

The same argument reached a second Spanish tax in October 2025

It did. The same reasoning that protects a non-resident heir has just been applied again, by the Supreme Court, to a completely different tax.

On the 29th of October 2025 the Supreme Court ruled on whether the cap that limits wealth tax when combined with income tax applies to non-residents. The wording of the doctrine it laid down is short and I am going to give it to you as it reads. Habitual residence, whether in Spain or outside it, does not justify the different treatment given to residents and non-residents, consisting of the fact that the latter cannot apply the limit on the tax quota provided for in the Wealth Tax Act. That difference in treatment is discriminatory and is not justified.

Now, why does a wealth tax case matter on an inheritance page? Because of where the court took the reasoning from. The Supreme Court says openly that it had already analysed the effect of the 2014 European ruling on the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act. It points to its own judgment 1546/2020 of the 19th of November 2020, which set binding doctrine while dismissing an appeal by the State lawyer. That judgment held that the European court's reasoning applies to people who are not resident in the European Union or the European Economic Area. Its reason is the Treaty article on free movement of capital, which covers inheritance and prohibits differences of tax treatment in inheritances and gifts, particularly of property located in Spain, based on the residence of the deceased or of the heirs.

So the thread runs from inheritance tax outwards, not the other way round. Your position as a foreign heir is not a niche exception somebody granted. It is the settled line, and in late 2025 the same court applied it again to another tax on the same reasoning.

And I want to be precise about what changed. The law did not change. The article in the official gazette still says what it always said. What changed is the interpretation of it. That distinction matters, because doctrine is applied case by case with the file in front of you, and a headline is not a file.

Which country's law decides who inherits, and why that is not a tax question

The default is the law of the country where the deceased was habitually resident at the time of death, and that is set by a European regulation from 2012 that most people know as Brussels IV. Not their nationality. Not where the house is. Where they actually lived.

The same regulation lets a person choose, in their will, that the law of their nationality should govern their whole succession instead. That is the professio iuris, and it is why a properly drafted Spanish will for a foreign owner is worth so much more than a cheap one. It also applies universally, which means the law chosen can be that of a country outside the European Union.

For a British family there is a complication I will not let anybody skate over. English law refers questions about immovable property back to the law of the place where the property is. So choosing English law does not necessarily produce the clean result people expect over the Spanish house. It is not that the choice is worthless. It is that the effect has to be worked out before you sign, not assumed. I have watched families discover this at the worst possible moment.

This is the whole reason we push clients to make a Spanish will while they are alive, from 225 euros plus VAT and the notary's own fee, rather than leaving their heirs to unpick two legal systems at once. We set out what that involves on our Spanish wills page, and there is a longer answer in do I need a Spanish will. If you already have a will somewhere and want to see whether it does what you think it does for the Spanish part, run it through the Spanish will checker.

Which region's rules apply to the estate, and why the flat in Moraira may not decide it

If the deceased was not resident in Spain, the applicable regional rules are those of the region where the greatest value of the Spanish estate is located. Not where the family holiday home is. Not where the funeral was. Where the biggest slice of the Spanish assets sits.

That is the connecting point, and it is written into the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act. The wording is that where the deceased was non-resident in Spain, the taxpayers are entitled to apply the rules approved by the region in which the greatest value of the assets and rights of the estate located in Spain is found.

Let me make it concrete, because this is the most expensive misunderstanding in the whole area. Say the Spanish estate is an apartment in Dénia worth 300,000 euros and a villa near Marbella worth 900,000 euros. The Spanish total is 1,200,000 euros. The greatest value is the 900,000 in Andalusia, which is 75 percent of the estate. So Andalusian rules govern the whole Spanish inheritance, even though the family thinks of themselves as a Dénia family and the Dénia apartment is the one they care about. Flip the two figures and the answer flips with them.

The second half of this trips people up in the other direction. Which region's rules apply and where you file are different questions. A non-resident heir applies the regional rules through the national tax agency, not the regional one. I have seen returns sent to the wrong administration by people who had read only half the story.

If you want to see which of these answers actually moves your case, we built a short inheritance and gift calculator. It takes about five minutes, it gives you an orientative range rather than a quote, and honestly the useful part is not the number at the end. It is watching which answers change it.

What the Valencian 99 percent relief really requires

It requires three things: who inherits, when the death happened, and what got declared. Here on this coast, in the Comunitat Valenciana, there is a 99 percent reduction on the inheritance and gift tax quota for close family, and it is real. It is also conditional, and the conditions are where cases go wrong.

First, who. On the inheritance side it covers the groups the national law calls I and II, which in plain English means spouse, children, grandchildren, parents and grandparents. Unmarried couples are treated as spouses under Valencian law, but only where the partnership is formally registered, and that registration is the detail foreign couples most often assume they do not need. Siblings, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces are not in that circle at all.

Second, when. This relief in its current form was not created by the 2025 reform, and it was not always there either. The 99 percent for those two groups came from a law of the 22nd of November 2023, applying to deaths from the 28th of May 2023 onwards, and it is carried through unchanged into the later redrafts. Between 2013 and 2023 there was a long window when it was not 99 percent at all, so if the death was some years ago and somebody is quoting you today's figure, check the date first.

Third, and this is the one that costs families money, it applies to the assets declared by the taxpayer. Only the declared ones, and only where they went into a return filed in time, or filed late but before the tax office asked for it. Which is a long way of saying that a sloppy inventory is not a small administrative sin here. It is the difference between one percent and one hundred percent of the tax on whatever was left out.

And here a precision, because it is an easy one to get backwards. You do not need a Spanish notarial deed to obtain this relief on an inheritance. That requirement of a public document exists for lifetime gifts, not for inheritances. There are excellent practical reasons to sign the acceptance of the inheritance before a notary anyway, starting with the fact that you cannot register the property in your name without it. But the relief itself does not depend on it.

The arithmetic of any particular estate is done with the file open, not from a page like this one, because it moves with the connecting point, the inventory and the dates. The inheritance and gift calculator is the fastest way to see the shape of it before we ever speak.

What actually happens, step by step, after the death

The order almost never changes, and it starts with documents from three different places before anybody signs anything.

You begin with the death certificate. Then the certificate from the Registro General de Actos de Última Voluntad, the central registry of last wills, which tells you whether the deceased made a Spanish will and, if so, before which notary and on what date. This is the step foreign families skip, and it is the one that decides everything after it. Without it you are guessing.

If there is a Spanish will, a copy is obtained from that notary. If there is only a foreign will, it has to be produced in a form Spanish authorities will accept, which in practice means legalisation or apostille and a sworn translation, and depending on the country a further document explaining who inherits under that law. That is slower than people expect, and it is the most common reason a Spanish inheritance drags on for months.

Then the heirs, or somebody holding a power of attorney for them, sign the escritura de aceptación y adjudicación de herencia before a Spanish notary. This deed inventories the estate, values each asset, states who takes what, and it is the document the Land Registry needs. You do not have to fly over for it. We do these routinely with a power of attorney signed in the heirs' own country, which for a family spread across three countries is usually the only way it happens at all.

Watch the calendar while all that is going on. The filing period is six months counted from the day of the death. An extension can be granted, but it has to be requested within the first five months, and it runs for a period equal to the original one. Miss the window to ask and there is nothing left to ask for.

So the request is the thing to think about in month two, when the foreign documents are clearly not going to arrive in time, and it is exactly the thing nobody thinks to do because they are still dealing with the death. It is not free extra time either, so ask what an extension costs in your case before you request one.

After the tax is settled the deed goes to the Registro de la Propiedad so the property is legally in the heirs' names, and only then do the boring pieces get done: the local property tax bill, the community fees, the utilities and the direct debits moved across. That last stretch is how you avoid handing the next generation a house with arrears attached to it, so we do not treat it as optional.

The plusvalía on an inherited property, briefly

There is a municipal tax on the increase in urban land value, and in an inheritance the person liable is the person who acquires, so the heir, with no substitution of the kind that exists in a sale. The filing period for an inheritance is six months from the death, extendable up to one year if the heirs ask the town hall for it.

That is genuinely all I want to say here, because the calculation depends on the town hall's own bylaw and on figures that move, and it has to be run against the actual property. What matters legally is knowing it exists, that it is separate from the inheritance tax, and that it has its own clock.

What we check before anybody signs anything

This is the list, and it is in this order for a reason.

Whether there is a Spanish will, from the central registry, before anyone theorises about who inherits. What the deceased's habitual residence actually was, because that decides the applicable succession law before any choice of law in a will is even looked at. Whether that will contains a choice of national law, and if it does, whether the chosen law refers immovable property back to Spain.

Then the estate itself. Every Spanish asset, not just the obvious one, because the connecting point that decides which region's rules apply is measured on the greatest value across the whole Spanish estate. The Land Registry position on each property, including whether the deceased's own title was ever properly registered, which is not as rare a problem as it should be. And charges, mortgages, community debts and unpaid local taxes, because those come with the house.

And then the calendar, with its two separate clocks. In our experience the families who get hurt are not the ones with complicated estates. They are the ones who spent four months waiting for a document from abroad without telling anybody they were waiting.

If you want to see how we handle the whole thing, it is set out on our inheritance, gifts and family transfers page. And if you are on the other side of this, thinking about buying here and wondering what your family will one day face, the buying property in Spain guide covers the purchase. The cheapest hour you will ever spend on Spanish inheritance is the one you spend before you own anything.

How we work, if you want us

We do this from Moraira and Dénia, and most of our clients are not in Spain when we do it. In person if you are here, or fully remotely with a power of attorney if flying over for every signature is not realistic, which for most families it is not.

An initial consultation is from 150 euros plus VAT, and inheritance work is quoted per case once we know what the estate contains, because a single apartment and a cross border estate with three heirs in two countries are not the same job.

If your question is really about one particular town, we have local sites with the detail that only matters there, for Moraira, for Dénia and for Jávea.

A quick legal note before you go

One last thing, and Juan makes me say it, because this is a law firm and a law firm has to say it. This article is general information, current as of July 2026. Spanish tax and succession rules change, sometimes in the middle of a year, and court doctrine moves faster than the text of the law does, as a good deal of what you just read shows.

It is not legal or tax advice for your specific inheritance, and reading it does not make you our client. The deceased's residence, your own residence, where the assets sit and what the will actually says will each change the answer. So before you sign a deed or file anything, get advice on your own case.