First of all: the six-month clock
The deadline to file Inheritance Tax is six months from the date of death. You can request a six-month extension, but only within the first five months and with late-payment interest. Everything else is organised around that date: if step 4 drags, step 8 arrives late.
Municipal capital gains tax, where there are urban properties, has the same six-month deadline extendable to one year, and is filed council by council.
The ten steps
Full death certificate
Civil Registry of the place where the death occurred. It is free and can be requested online. Ask for several copies: the bank, the notary and the tax office will all want one.
Last wills and insurance contracts certificates
Two certificates from the Ministry of Justice, using form 790. They cannot be requested until 15 working days after the death. They tell you whether there is a will and before which notary, and whether there were life insurance policies nobody remembers.
Certified copy of the will
From the notary holding it. If there is no will, a different route opens here: the notarial declaration of heirship, which takes at least 20 working days more.
Inventory of assets and debts
Deeds, land registry extracts, bank certificates of balances and holdings as at the date of death, vehicles, shareholdings, insurance, loans and guarantees. This is the slowest step and the one that decides whether you meet the deadline.
Valuation of the assets
Property is generally declared at the cadastral reference value. Declaring below it is the most common cause of a valuation review and of supplementary assessments years later.
Decide: accept, accept under benefit of inventory, or renounce
The point at which it pays to stop and think. Accepting outright makes you liable for the debts with your own assets. Accepting under benefit of inventory limits that liability to what you inherit, but it has strict form and deadlines.
Deed of acceptance and division
Before a notary, with all the heirs. It distributes specific assets and allocates them. If there is no agreement, the route is a division schedule drawn up by an appointed arbitrator, or straight to judicial division of the estate.
Pay the taxes
Inheritance Tax form 650 in the region where the deceased was resident, and municipal capital gains tax in each council where there are urban properties. Nothing can be registered without this.
Registration at the Land Registry
With the deed and the tax paid. Until it is registered, the properties remain in the deceased's name on the register and cannot be sold or mortgaged.
Transfers of ownership
Banks, vehicles at the traffic authority, utilities, insurance, the building association and the cadastre. Unglamorous, and where most people leave things half-done for years.
The three most expensive mistakes
- Accepting before the inventory is finished. People sign out of momentum and then a loan or a guarantee turns up. Once you have accepted outright, there is no going back.
- Letting the six months pass without requesting an extension. The extension can only be requested in the first five months. After that, only surcharges remain.
- Declaring property below the reference value "to pay less". The tax office cross-checks data automatically. The saving lasts until the review.
What if the heirs cannot agree?
It is more common than it looks and does not always end in court. Before judicial division there is room to manoeuvre: allocations with cash compensation, selling the asset and splitting the proceeds, ending the co-ownership, or appointing an arbitrator. What almost never works is waiting to see whether it sorts itself out.
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