Who inherits without a will in Malta?

The surviving spouse shares the estate with the children. The Civil Code protects the spouse with a reserved quarter in ownership where the person leaves children.

The spouse inherits alongside the ascendants where there are no children. The exact fractions are in the Civil Code.

Without a will the estate passes to the descendants, then the ascendants, then collateral relatives, with closeness set by the number of generations. If no one qualifies, the inheritance passes to the Government of Malta.

The official fact sheet does not describe rights for unmarried partners. Treat an unmarried partner as having no automatic right and take advice.

Children have a reserved portion: a third of the estate where there are up to four children, and a half where there are five or more.

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 e-Justice page for Malta gives no intestate fractions for the spouse, and published sources disagree on them. The entry therefore states only what is certain. Check the Civil Code or a Maltese notary for the shares.

Malta belongs to the Mixed: civil and common law family. Succession law grows out of the legal tradition, so it helps to know how the system works.

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

• European e-Justice Portal: succession in Malta
• Laws of Malta: the Civil Code (Cap. 16)