Who inherits without a will in Italy?

With one child, the spouse and the child take half each. With two or more children, the spouse takes a third and the children share two thirds.

With parents or siblings, the spouse takes two thirds and they share one third. With no other relatives, the spouse takes everything. The spouse also has a right to stay in the family home and use its furniture.

Children share equally. Without children, the parents, with the siblings, then other relatives up to the sixth degree. After that, the state.

Civil-union partners are treated like spouses. An unmarried cohabiting partner has no right to inherit, and can be provided for only by a will, within the limits of the family's reserved share.

The spouse, the children and the parents (if there are no children) have a reserved portion. A will that ignores it stays valid unless an heir contests it.

In this EU country the Succession Regulation applies to people who die after 16 August 2015: the whole estate is generally governed by the law of the country where the person had their habitual residence at death, unless they chose the law of their nationality in a will. A foreigner living here, or a citizen living abroad, can therefore be governed by a different law than the one described on this page.

• The official e-Justice page for Italy gives no fractions, so the shares above come from the Civil Code.

Italy belongs to the Civil law family. Succession law grows out of the legal tradition, so it helps to know how the system works.

Read the Italy legal-system profile in the Legal Families Atlas →
Who owns what in a marriage in Italy? →

• European e-Justice Portal: succession in Italy
• Normattiva: the Italian Civil Code