Will inheritances can remain undivided for five years if heirs agree

Heirs can agree, if they want to, that an inherited estate shall remain undivided for a period not exceeding five years.

This period, however, may be renewed “one or more times” by a new agreement. This mechanism, which already exists in law, will remain and, moreover, can now be carried out through an authenticated private document, according to a bill submitted by Portugal’s government to Parliament.

The proposal, which is still awaiting an initial general debate, and will have to pass the scrutiny of opposition parties, comes in the form of a request for legislative authorisation, since this matter falls under Parliament’s competence, but the Government has already attached what should later become the authorised decree-law.

The mechanism that allows unrestricted non-partition agreements – which initially requires all parties to agree – will then prevent one of the heirs from demanding the judicial sale of inherited real estate from the others, one of the new features of the new legislation, but which will only be possible precisely if the aforementioned non-partition agreements are not in effect.

The Government did not want to move forward with the possibility of having professional administrators for inheritances – as is the case, for example, with insolvency administrators – but opted to broaden the powers of the head of the estate, the person who acts as a kind of administrator of the inheritance, but currently with relatively limited powers.

Therefore, it is foreseen, in particular, that after five years from the opening of the succession, the head of the estate has the duty to promote the division by agreement or, if there is no agreement, to request the opening of the inventory process, thus forcing the division. But this can only be done if no non-division agreement has been made. And, if there was one that has not been renewed, the head of the estate can only proceed two years after the expiry of the indivision agreement.

Source: Negócios; Credits: Pexels – Pavel Danyluk.