Inheritance Lawyer
Inheritance Law
After a death, heirs can obtain a certificate of inheritance and divide the estate, and can bring an action for reduction (tenkis) against transactions that infringe their reserved shares. Renunciation of the inheritance is subject to a preclusive period of 3 months from learning of the death.
Inheritance law arises at the moments when family relationships are most sensitive, and its technical rules are strict. Once the 3-month period for renouncing the inheritance or the preclusive deadlines for an action for reduction are missed, there is no way back. Our office provides services across all inheritance matters: obtaining the certificate of inheritance, determining and administering the estate, dividing estate assets, actions for the decedent's collusive (sham) transfers (muris muvazaası — concealing assets from heirs), drafting and contesting wills and inheritance contracts, and renunciation of inheritance.
How is a certificate of inheritance obtained?
Under Article 598 of the Turkish Civil Code (TMK), persons established to be legal heirs are, upon application, issued a document evidencing their status as heirs by the civil court of peace or a notary. For claims based on the appointment of an heir or on a will, the certificate is issued if the interested parties do not object within one month of notification. The invalidity of a certificate of inheritance can be asserted at any time, and the right to bring an action for the annulment of a testamentary disposition is reserved; the heirship situation should therefore not be considered legally settled even after the certificate has been obtained.
The reserved share and the action for reduction (tenkis)
TMK Art. 506 provides that certain close heirs have a minimum share that the decedent cannot take away even by will: the reserved share is half of the statutory share for descendants (children, grandchildren), one quarter of the statutory share for the parents, and, for the surviving spouse, the entire statutory share where the spouse inherits together with the descendants or the parental line, and three quarters of the statutory share in other cases. If these reserved shares have been infringed by the decedent's gifts or will, the affected heir may bring an action for reduction (tenkis) to have the infringement remedied.
Renunciation of inheritance (reddi miras)
Under TMK Art. 606, the inheritance may be renounced within three months; for legal heirs, this period runs from the date they learn of the decedent's death, and for appointed heirs, from the date the disposition is officially notified to them. If the decedent's debts exceed the assets, failing to declare renunciation within this period can result in the heir being liable with their personal assets as well; early determination of the estate's debts is therefore critically important.
Dissolution of co-ownership (partition/sale)
Under TMK Art. 642, each heir may at any time demand the partition of the inheritance, unless obliged to maintain the community by contract or by law. If the parties cannot agree, the civil court of peace may be asked to distribute the estate assets in kind or by way of sale; it is also possible for one heir to take a given property with the value difference equalized in money. If immediate partition would significantly reduce the value of the asset, the court may decide to postpone the partition.
Decedent's collusive transfer (muris muvazaası)
Where the decedent disguised what was in reality a gift as a sale in order to divert assets away from reserved-share heirs, the aggrieved heirs may bring a muris muvazaası action seeking a declaration that the transaction was collusive and the cancellation of the title deed record. This type of action is an established practice accepted by settled Court of Cassation (Yargıtay) case law, and the transfer of registered real property at a price markedly below its true value, or for no consideration, is treated as strong circumstantial evidence in the case.
Types of wills and the annulment of a will
Under Turkish law, a will can be made in three forms: an official will executed before a notary or a judge of the civil court of peace in the presence of two witnesses (TMK Art. 532 et seq.), a holographic will written from beginning to end in the testator's own hand, dated, and signed (TMK Art. 538), and an oral will available only in extraordinary circumstances (TMK Art. 539). The smallest defect in the formal requirements — for example, a missing date in a holographic will — can be a ground for annulment. A will can also be annulled for lack of capacity, mistake, deception, duress, or because its content is contrary to law or morality (TMK Art. 557). The annulment action must be filed within 1 year of the date the claimant learns of the disposition, the ground for annulment, and their own entitlement; in any event, upper limits apply, running from the opening of the will and extending to 20 years against defendants not acting in good faith (TMK Art. 559).
Deadlines in reduction and hotchpot (equalization)
The action for reduction is subject to time limits: the right to sue lapses 1 year from the date the heirs learn that their reserved shares have been infringed and, in any event, 10 years from the opening of the will (for wills) or from the opening of the succession (for other dispositions) (TMK Art. 571). Early identification of the gifts and transfers in the estate is therefore decisive for protecting the right. Hotchpot (equalization, TMK Art. 669), a separate institution from reduction, ensures that gratuitous advancements the decedent made to descendants during their lifetime — dowry, start-up capital, debt forgiveness, and the like — are brought into account in the partition unless the decedent expressly provided otherwise. The two institutions are frequently confused in practice: equalization only establishes the balance among legal heirs, while reduction targets the cutting back of dispositions that infringe the reserved share; which action to bring — or whether to bring both — is planned according to the estate picture.
Heirs living abroad and estates with a foreign element
Files in which some of the heirs live abroad are quite common in our region. An heir abroad can, without coming to Turkey, conduct the entire process — obtaining the certificate of inheritance, dividing the estate, and litigation — through counsel, using a power of attorney issued at the Turkish consulate in their country of residence. Documents issued by foreign authorities require an apostille and a sworn translation to be used in Turkey. Where the decedent is a foreign national or the estate contains a foreign element, it may not be possible to obtain the certificate of inheritance from a notary; in that case, the certificate is requested from the civil court of peace. For decisions on inheritance rendered by foreign courts to take effect in Turkey, a separate recognition and enforcement process is required. Since service of process and document traffic take a long time in these files, drawing up a complete document checklist at the very start prevents lost time.
The course of inheritance files at the Büyükçekmece Courthouse
A significant share of the inheritance disputes from Büyükçekmece, Beylikdüzü, and Esenyurt are heard by the civil courts of peace and the civil courts of first instance at the Büyükçekmece Courthouse: certificate of inheritance and dissolution of co-ownership requests fall to the civil court of peace, while actions such as reduction and muris muvazaası fall to the civil court of first instance. Because of the region's rapid zoning history, a common feature of estate files is that the same property is entangled in both inheritance shares and zoning/urban transformation processes; in a dissolution by sale, the property's current zoning status directly affects its value. An uncontested certificate of inheritance can be obtained from a notary the same day if there is no foreign element; in contested files, since site inspections and expert stages can prolong the process, submitting the evidence (title records, bank statements, medical reports) completely from the start is the most concrete factor in reducing the number of hearings.
The most common mistakes in the inheritance process
The mistakes we encounter most often in practice are these: missing the 3-month renunciation period in an over-indebted estate and becoming liable for the debts with one's personal assets; disposing of estate assets before renouncing (for example, selling the car or collecting the rent) and thereby engaging in conduct that forfeits the right to renounce; preparing a holographic will without attention to the formal requirements; filing a muris muvazaası action without first gathering the title deed and bank records of the lifetime transfers; and signing estate division agreements rushed through under family pressure. Another widespread misconception is that obtaining the certificate of inheritance automatically completes the division; the certificate only evidences heirship — the division is a separate legal process. What these mistakes share is that all of them could have been completely avoided with a short legal assessment at the start of the process.
Example scenario — renunciation in an over-indebted estate
(The following example is fictional, constructed to illustrate a common case type; it does not refer to any actual client or case.) The surviving spouse and two children of a deceased small-business owner realize, shortly after the funeral, from letters arriving from banks and enforcement offices, that the estate may be insolvent. In such a file, the first task is to map the estate's assets and liabilities quickly: banks, the land registry, vehicle registration, and enforcement records are queried. If the debts are found to exceed the assets, a declaration of actual renunciation is made to the civil court of peace within the 3-month period; where the estate's insolvency is plainly evident, a declaratory finding of the presumption of renunciation may also come into play. This scenario shows how the deadline, the document gathering, and the choice of renunciation type merge into a single timetable.
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Services We Provide in This Area
- Obtaining a certificate of inheritance
- Determination and administration of the estate
- Actions for the dissolution of co-ownership (partition/sale)
- Actions for reduction (tenkis) and hotchpot (equalization)
- Decedent's collusive transfer (muris muvazaası) actions
- Drafting wills and actions for their annulment
- Renunciation of inheritance procedures
- Waiver-of-inheritance and estate division agreements
Frequently Asked Questions
Inheritance Law: Frequently Asked Questions
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