Renouncing A Greek Estate After The Four - Month Deadline

Renouncing A Greek Estate After The Four - Month Deadline By Christos ILIOPOULOS* Athens, 6 January 2023 Greek law states that the heir of an estate (inheritance) has the option to renounce in writing his/her right to the estate, within a period of four months from the day the heir learned of his/her right on the estate, meaning from the time the heir learned that he/she is inheriting a share on the estate of the specific deceased. If the heir lives outside of Greece or the deceased died outside of Greece, the 4 – month deadline is extended to twelve months. Any heir who wants to renounce an estate can do it by signing a simple document at the Justice of the Peace court in Greece. This is usually done in person. However, it is possible to renounce via a proxy. In that case, the heir signs a power of attorney, often at the Consulate of Greece in another country, giving power to an attorney / proxy in Greece to sign the document on the heir’s behalf, without the heir travelling to Greece. Practically, Greek jurists, the tax authority, notaries and the administration in the vast majority of cases consider the date of the passing of the deceased as the starting point of the 4 or 12 - month deadline. If there is a Will probated, the law states that the deadline starts not from the passing, but from the date of the probation of the Will at the court. If the heir does not renounce the estate within the deadline, it is considered by law that the heir has legally accepted the estate, irrespective of whether the heir has signed any document to accept and even if the heir never realized that he/she is inheriting. In most cases, foreign residents who inherit an estate in Greece are not aware of the law, and they do not know that if they do not renounce in writing the estate within twelve months, it is considered that they have accepted it, even without having signed any document to this effect. Usually, this does not have significant consequences. The only legal result is that the sibling who may have wanted to renounce in favour of another sibling, having now missed the deadline to renounce, will inherit the share on the estate and then will transfer/gift it to the sibling or to any other person the heir wishes. This happens when the estate involves real estate / immovable property, where the heir first inherits the share and then with another notarial deed transfers it to the relative or whoever else the heir wants to give it. There are, however, cases where the estate has debts and no assets, something which may bring unwanted legal consequences for the heir who neither knew about the estate, nor about it having debts. In those cases, where the deceased owed money to third parties (banks, the state, the tax office, private persons or companies etc.), the heir who has legally accepted the estate by merely letting the deadline to renounce pass, may face the obligation to pay the debt of the estate himself. This is not pleasant and can become a nightmare for the heir who may find that he/she owes money out of nowhere. In exceptional cases, the heir who finds out that, after the deadline to renounce has ended, has unwillingly inherited an estate with debt, can go to court and prove that he did not know of the estate and of his inheritance share and that he did not know of the rule that after four or twelve months of the passing or of the probation of the Will, one is considered that he has accepted the estate. If he can prove to the court that he has filed the lawsuit action to cancel his acceptance of the estate within six months of his learning of his inheritance right, the court may quash the acceptance of inheritance and allow the heir to renounce the estate even after the deadline of the four or twelve months has passed. This can happen in exceptional cases and one cannot rely on such an option. Under normal circumstances, anyone living outside of Greece who knows that he has close relatives in Greece, should keep an eye on events in Greece with regards to close family in order to be informed of the passing of relatives and possibly of the existence of an indebted estate, which everyone has started renouncing. *Christos ILIOPOULOS, attorney at the Supreme Court of Greece , LL.M. www.greekadvocate.eu e-mail: bm-bioxoi@otenet.gr