Whether you have inherited something in Italy or are administering an estate that includes an Italian asset, start with the gap: the procedure you are looking for does not exist. No court appoints anyone, no grant issues, and nobody collects the estate, pays the creditors and distributes the balance. In its place is a sequence of filings, notarial acts and registry entries that the heirs must set in motion themselves, and the clock on the main filing starts on the day of death. Two consequences catch families abroad: the estate's debts follow the heirs, each for their share, unless the inheritance is accepted in the one form that limits liability; and a person can become an heir without signing anything, simply by behaving like one. We act as Italian counsel for heirs, executors and personal representatives in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada and Australia, alongside the solicitor or attorney at home.
Probate: the procedure you are looking for does not exist
At home an estate waits on a document: a grant of probate or letters of administration in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, confirmation in Scotland, a grant from the Probate Office in Ireland, a personal representative appointed by a US probate court, a certificate of appointment in Ontario. Somebody holds the estate, pays the creditors and hands over the rest.
Italy issues none of them. Succession opens at the moment of death, and those entitled become heirs by accepting — expressly or by conduct — with the acceptance backdated to that day. They take the assets and the liabilities together, in proportion to their shares. A will can name an esecutore testamentario, an executor, but the office is narrower than an English or Irish personal representative's: the estate neither vests in him nor waits for him.
The consequence shows the day after the funeral: the land registry still carries the deceased's name until someone acts, and the bank, once notified, freezes the account and releases it only against the succession filing and instructions from every heir. So when the question is how long probate takes in Italy, the answer is that there is no probate to take time. One date is fixed by law; the rest depends on the documents and on whether the heirs agree.
The first decision: accept, refuse, or accept with an inventory
Take this decision before anything else is touched. Nobody pays the creditors first, so an heir who accepts in the ordinary way answers for the estate's debts, in proportion to their share, with their own money and not only with what they received.
Acceptance with benefit of inventory (beneficio d'inventario) keeps the estate's liabilities separate from the heir's own: a declaration before a notary or a court clerk, recorded in the register of successions, followed by an inventory on a statutory timetable measured in months. Miss it and the protection is lost; where an heir is a minor, Italian law allows no other form of acceptance. Renunciation is equally formal, and all or nothing.
Between the two lies tacit acceptance: conduct only an owner would engage in, such as letting the flat or collecting the rent. Whether a particular administrative step crosses that line is drawn by case law, not by statute — the succession filing is generally treated as a tax obligation, the cadastral transfer far more likely as the act of an owner. An heir already in possession of estate assets has a short statutory period to take an inventory before the estate counts as accepted outright; an heir not in possession has up to ten years from the death to accept at all.
Which law governs the estate — a technical question, with a technical answer
For deaths on or after 17 August 2015, an Italian authority decides which law governs a succession by applying EU Regulation 650/2012. The default is the deceased's habitual residence at death: a question of fact, genuinely arguable for someone who split the year between Manchester and Liguria. In the alternative, a person may choose in the will the law of a country of their nationality.
The Regulation applies universally: the United Kingdom never took part in it and Ireland did not opt in — an opt-out, not a consequence of Brexit — yet an Italian notary or court still uses it to find the governing law, and can land on English, Scottish or Irish law, or that of a US state, over an estate in Italy. And where it points to a common-law system, that system's own conflict rules count too: most send immovable property back to the law of the place where it sits, so the reference can travel out to English law and come back to Italian law for the Italian house while foreign law governs the rest. One death, two regimes. An express choice of national law in the will closes that loop, which is the strongest reason to make it while there is time.
Forced heirship: what a will cannot do, and what is genuinely unsettled
Where Italian law governs, it reserves shares — legittima — for a protected class: the spouse, the children, and, failing children, the parents or other ascendants. How large each share is depends on who survives; what is left is the disponibile, the only part a will disposes of freely. Lifetime gifts are notionally brought back into the calculation, which is how a gift made twenty years ago still unsettles a will.
How much of a surprise that is depends on where you are reading: England, Wales and Northern Ireland have testamentary freedom, softened only by a discretionary family provision claim; Scotland knows legal rights over the moveable estate but not over land; Ireland gives a spouse a legal right share; most US states protect only a spouse, through an elective share; Australian states and several Canadian provinces work through family provision.
Settled: where Italian law governs, the reserved shares bind, and a forced heir who was cut out can bring the action to reduce the will or the gift that did it. Not settled: whether Italian reserved shares can still be asserted where the deceased validly chose a foreign law that does not know them — Italian courts and commentators are divided, and no family should plan on either answer.
The documents, and where each one comes from
Almost every delay in a cross-border estate is a document delay. An Italian office will not take a foreign public document as it stands: it has to be legalised where it was issued, then translated by someone who swears the translation here. Legalisation depends on the country of origin — the FCDO Legalisation Office in the United Kingdom, the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ireland, the Secretary of State of the issuing state in the United States — the US Department of State for federal documents — DFAT in Australia, and in Canada, a party to the Apostille Convention only since January 2024, Global Affairs Canada or a provincial authority. The apostille never comes from the Italian consulate. Ireland saves time in another way: between EU member states a death certificate needs no legalisation, and a multilingual standard form can remove the translation too.
- Death certificate, apostilled where required, with a sworn Italian translation
- A search of the General Register of Wills in Rome, and of the equivalent register abroad
- Deposit and publication of a foreign will before an Italian notary — a grant of probate will not stand in for it
- An Italian tax code (codice fiscale) for every heir, wherever they live
The filing with a real deadline, and getting the title into your name
The dichiarazione di successione is filed with the Italian revenue agency within twelve months of the death. It is a tax filing, not a court step, and it is owed whether or not you intend to keep anything: late filing carries penalties, and not filing keeps the accounts frozen and blocks any sale. On real property the mortgage and cadastral taxes are self-assessed and paid when the declaration goes in, computed on cadastral value rather than market value. Succession tax itself is charged on each heir's share, at a rate depending on how closely that heir was related to the deceased and after allowances for the closest family. That is how it is calculated; what it comes to depends on the asset list.
Then the registry steps, including the one most often left out: the cadastral transfer (voltura) puts the heirs' names on the record, and the transcription of the acceptance gives the title an unbroken chain of registrations. Without it, a buyer's notary or a lender stops the sale years later, when nobody remembers why.
- Cadastral transfer into the heirs' names, and the separate land-book entry used in north-eastern Italy
- Transcription of the acceptance, so the title can later be sold or mortgaged
- Release of Italian bank and postal accounts
Co-heirs, an undivided house, and selling what you inherited
Until the estate is divided the heirs hold it together in comunione ereditaria — often five cousins in three countries who have not spoken since the funeral. The whole cannot be sold unless they all concur, nobody wants to carry the taxes, and one of them is usually living in the house. A division can be agreed by notarial deed, with every heir signing or represented. Where agreement fails, mediation must be attempted in succession and division matters before a court will hear the claim; then comes divisione giudiziale: partition in kind where the assets allow, a court-supervised sale where a flat cannot be split. A co-heir may sell his own undivided share, but the others have a right of pre-emption and, where they are bypassed, can take the share back from the buyer.
Selling has its own order: declaration filed and taxes paid, cadastral transfer done, acceptance transcribed, every co-heir signing or represented. Two things commonly block it, both fixable when found early — an earlier succession that was never filed, a grandfather who died in 1974 whose name is still on the record; and a gift in the chain of title, which lenders and notaries treat as a problem for as long as a reserved heir's claim remains possible. On tax, the Italian rule charging the gain on a resale within five years of purchase does not apply to property that came by succession — the Italian half only, so tell your adviser at home when the succession opens, not the following spring.
Wills, trusts and planning while there is still time
If you own something in Italy, the work that saves your family years is done now. A coordinated pair of wills — one for each jurisdiction, drafted so that neither revokes the other — is the foundation, and where a choice of your national law is available and suits the family, making it expressly also closes the renvoi loop described above.
Italy has no trust of its own but recognises trusts created under a foreign law, having ratified the 1985 Hague Convention; holding Italian real estate through a trust raises registration and tax questions whose treatment has moved in recent years, and a trust cannot be assumed to defeat reserved shares where Italian law governs. For a family business the patto di famiglia offers a route ordinary lifetime gifts do not. Plan the home side in the same conversation: Canada and Australia levy no inheritance tax, though Canada taxes a deemed disposition at death; the United States taxes its citizens' worldwide estates and requires foreign inheritances to be reported; the United Kingdom charges inheritance tax on a basis recently changed.
Working with the solicitor or attorney who already holds the file
A good share of the people who find this page are not the family. They are solicitors in London, Dublin, Edinburgh and Belfast, attorneys in the United States, estate practitioners in Toronto or Sydney, looking for Italian counsel to take the Italian part of an estate they are already administering. A file like this is normally run by two sets of specialists: whoever holds the family's papers at home, and Italian counsel for the Italian assets.
The work sits in the Civil Code, in the filings with the revenue agency, in the acts before a notary and in the entries in the registries. We take that side of it — the declaration and the taxes on it, the tax codes, the publication of the will, the cadastral transfer, the transcription of the acceptance, the release of the accounts — report to whoever is running the estate at home, and act under a power of attorney. We can begin with the death certificate, the will and a list of the Italian assets.
Read further
- How probate works in Italy — and what replaces it
- A guide to cross-border succession
- How to claim an inheritance in Italy
- Who pays the debts after an inheritance
- An Italian will, or a trust?
- A revocable trust against Italian succession
- How to contest a will in Italy
- Can a foreigner inherit Italian property?
- Transferring inherited property
- When the heirs do not agree
- An Italian inheritance lawyer, for heirs abroad
Questions we are asked about this
Is there an Italian equivalent of probate, or of a grant of representation?
No. Italy has no probate registry, issues no grant and appoints no administrator. The estate passes to those entitled, who become heirs by accepting, and what unlocks a bank or the land registry is the succession declaration filed with the revenue agency — an administrative filing, not a court order. A file at home waiting for an Italian grant is waiting for something that will not arrive.
How long does an Italian succession take?
There is no probate to wait out, so the timetable is made of tasks rather than court lists. One date is fixed: the succession declaration is due within twelve months of the death. The pace around it is set by how long foreign certificates, apostilles and sworn translations take to assemble, and by whether the heirs agree. A contested division is measured in years.
I am the executor or personal representative at home. What standing do I have over the Italian assets?
Usually less than you expect. Italian law does not know a representative in whom the estate vests, and an appointment made at home does not by itself give you authority over an Italian bank account or an Italian house: the Italian steps are taken by the heirs or for them. A foreign will, once deposited and published by an Italian notary, is given effect on its terms, but the powers it confers are read against Italian law.
Can I be made to pay the deceased’s debts out of my own money?
It is possible, and it is why the decision on how to accept comes first. An heir who accepted in the ordinary way answers for the estate’s debts, in proportion to their share, with their own assets. Acceptance with benefit of inventory limits the exposure to what was received, but it is a formal procedure on a short timetable, and the protection is lost if the timetable is missed.
Can I simply refuse an Italian inheritance?
Yes, by formal renunciation before a notary or a court clerk, recorded in the register of successions. It cannot be partial or conditional: you cannot keep the apartment and decline the debts. Watch where the share goes next, because in many families it moves to the renouncer’s own children, minors included.
Does my English, Irish, Canadian or American will cover the house in Italy?
Sometimes, and rarely in the way the will assumes. Formal validity is usually the easy part: a will valid in form where it was made is generally accepted here. What the will can actually do is decided by the governing law, determined under EU Regulation 650/2012, which may not be the law it was drafted under. Wills that hand everything to an executor or trustees travel badly, because Italian succession does not work through an administrator.
Nobody has registered the property since my grandfather died. Can that be fixed?
Usually, yes. The chain of successions is reconstructed generation by generation, the missing declarations are filed late, with penalties, and the registry is brought up to date. The obstacles are practical rather than legal: documents to be found abroad, heirs who have themselves died, and occasionally a relative in sole occupation whose position has to be resolved first.
Do I have to travel to Italy?
No. Almost every step can be taken under a power of attorney signed before a notary at home, apostilled and sworn-translated for use here. What that does not replace is a look at your own papers: every estate turns on its own family, its own will and its own registry history, and the Italian position should be assessed on those before anything is signed or sold. That is what a first conversation is for.