Inheritance in Chile when you live somewhere else

Why nothing has moved in fifteen years

Heirs acquire rights on death. What they do not acquire is the ability to do anything with Chilean real estate.

Under article 688 of the Civil Code, an heir cannot dispose of inherited real property until the grant of the estate has been registered and the property entered in the heirs' names. Before those registrations exist, the property is still registered to a dead person. No notary will draft the deed, no registry will accept it, and no buyer's lawyer will let their client proceed.

Which country's law decides

The starting point is article 955 of the Civil Code: an estate is opened at the deceased's last domicile, and it is governed by the law of that place. Someone who lived in Santiago leaves an estate governed by Chilean law, wherever the heirs now live. Someone who emigrated forty years ago and died in Toronto leaves an estate governed, as a rule, by the law of where they lived.

Two rules then pull Chilean property back towards Chile. Where there is no will, article 998 gives Chilean relatives the same rights over the estate of a foreigner that they would have over the estate of a Chilean, and lets them ask to be paid out of the assets located in Chile; the same applies, where necessary, to a Chilean who leaves property abroad. And whatever law governs the estate, article 27 of Law 16.271 requires the grant of the estate for property located in Chile to be obtained in Chile, for tax purposes.

In practice an estate opened abroad with a house in Chile has two lives: one under the law of the country where the deceased lived, and another in Chile for the Chilean property.

Who inherits when there is no will

Chilean intestate succession works in orders, and each order excludes the ones after it:

• Children and the surviving spouse. Children exclude everyone else except the spouse, who inherits alongside them. The spouse receives twice the share of each child, the same share if there is only one child, and never less than a quarter (article 988).
• The spouse and the ascendants. With no descendants, the estate is split in three: two thirds to the spouse, one third to the closest ascendants. If either is missing, the other takes everything (article 989).
• Brothers and sisters. With no descendants, ascendants or spouse, the siblings inherit; a half-sibling receives half the share of a full sibling (article 990).
• Other relatives. After the siblings, the closest collateral relatives up to the sixth degree, with half-blood relatives again taking half (article 992).
• The State. Only when there is nobody else (article 995).

A surviving partner under a Chilean civil union agreement stands exactly where a spouse would: the same order and the same rights (article 16 of Law 20.830).

The rule that surprises families from common-law countries most is the first one. When there are children, the surviving spouse does not inherit everything: the spouse and the children share.

Forced heirship: what a will cannot do

A will does not give a free hand in Chile. With narrow exceptions, the children, the ascendants and the surviving spouse are legitimarios — forced heirs (article 1182) — and so is a surviving civil partner (article 16 of Law 20.830).

When the deceased leaves any of them, the estate is divided into four quarters (article 1184):

• Two quarters — half the estate — are the legítimas, shared among the forced heirs under the intestate rules above. A will cannot take them away.
• One quarter is the cuarta de mejoras, which the deceased can use to favour the spouse or civil partner, or one or more descendants or ascendants, whether or not they are forced heirs themselves.
• One quarter is freely disposable, and can go to anyone.

This matters most when Chilean law governs the estate and the will was written with another legal system in mind. A will that leaves everything to a second spouse, ordinary in many common-law countries, runs straight into the half that Chilean law reserves for the children.

Wills made outside Chile

A will does not have to be made in Chile to work here. Under article 1027 of the Civil Code, a written will made abroad is valid in Chile if it followed the formalities of the country where it was signed and its authenticity is proven. In practice that means putting the document into a form a Chilean court will accept: an apostille under Law 20.711 where the country is party to the Hague Convention, and a translation where the will is not in Spanish.

There is also a Chilean route from abroad. Under article 1028, a Chilean, or a foreigner domiciled in Chile, can make a will before a Chilean consul or diplomatic agent, following the formalities of a Chilean will. A vice-consul cannot authorise it.

Whatever its form, a will changes the procedure in Chile: a testate estate is granted by a court, not by the Civil Registry.

Posesión efectiva: administrative or judicial

The grant of the estate is called posesión efectiva, and which route it takes depends on two things: whether there was a will, and where the estate was opened.

Administrative route. Where the deceased left no will and the estate is opened in Chile, the grant is obtained through the Servicio de Registro Civil e Identificación under Law 19.903. The regional director resolves the application by reasoned administrative decision and orders its entry in the National Registry of Effective Possessions.

Judicial route. Where there is a will, or where the estate was opened outside Chile, the matter goes before the courts. Cross-border estates land here more often than families expect: someone who emigrated decades ago, died abroad, and left an apartment in Valparaíso is a judicial file, not an administrative one. For an estate opened abroad, article 27 of Law 16.271 also says where: in the place of the deceased's last domicile in Chile or, if they never had one, in the domicile of the person applying.

Each heir needs a Chilean tax number before any of this can proceed — including heirs who have never set foot in the country. See our guide on the RUT.

The inheritance tax

Chile taxes inheritances under Law 16.271. Each heir is taxed separately on the net value of their own share, at progressive rates that run from 1% to 25%. For a spouse, civil partner, descendant or ascendant, the first 50 annual tax units (UTA) of each share are exempt. Brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, uncles, aunts and cousins get a much smaller allowance and pay the scale with a 20% surcharge; more distant relatives, and people with no family relationship, pay it with a 40% surcharge.

The tax is declared and paid within two years of the death, ordinarily, or it starts accruing penal interest (article 50). For heirs abroad, tax paid in another country on assets that also enter the Chilean inventory can be credited against the Chilean tax (article 1). The full scale, a worked example and the deadline rules are in our guide to inheritance tax in Chile.

The base is the value of the estate, and how the property is valued for that purpose is not a clerical matter — it is a decision with consequences, both for the tax payable now and for the capital gain calculated if the property is later sold. Those two effects pull in opposite directions, and the right answer depends on what the family intends to do with the property.

The registrations that actually unlock the property

Obtaining the grant is not the end. The grant and the estate inventory must then be registered, and the property entered in the heirs' names at the Conservador de Bienes Raíces for the district where it sits. Only when those entries exist does article 688 stop blocking a sale.

Files stall here more often than anywhere else, because the grant feels like the finish line and the registrations feel like paperwork. They are not paperwork. They are the step that converts a decision on a piece of paper into a property somebody owns.

What waiting costs

Three costs compound, and none of them is obvious at the start.

The file grows. Every heir who dies before the estate is resolved replaces themselves with their own heirs. Consent that needed three signatures needs eleven. Any one of them can hold the whole thing up.

The property deteriorates. An empty house nobody is responsible for loses value in ways that are expensive to reverse, and occupation by a third party — whether a relative, a caretaker or a stranger — creates its own legal problem on top of the inheritance one.

Documents get harder to obtain. Records from other countries, needed to prove relationships, are easier to get at twenty years than at fifty.

Keeping, dividing or selling

Once the property is registered in the heirs' names, they own it jointly. Joint ownership between people living in different countries, with different financial positions and different views about a house their grandmother lived in, is a structure that ends badly with some regularity.

If the plan is to sell, it is worth saying so at the start, because it changes decisions made much earlier — the valuation adopted in the estate, how the tax position is handled, whether the sale happens before or after division. The sale itself can be handled under power of attorney without anyone travelling; see our guide on selling from abroad.

By Felipe Andrés Solar Rojas, partner · Published 21 September 2026 · Last reviewed 2 October 2026

Sources: Chilean Civil Code, articles 688, 955, 956, 988 to 995, 998, 1027, 1028, 1182 and 1184, at Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional · LeyChile. Law 19.903 on the procedure for granting posesión efectiva, at Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional · LeyChile. Law 16.271 on inheritance, assignment and donation tax, articles 1, 2, 27 and 50, at Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional · LeyChile. Law 20.830 creating the civil union agreement, article 16, at Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional · LeyChile. Law 20.711 implementing the Hague Apostille Convention, at Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional · LeyChile.

This guide states the general rule in force at the date of last review. It is not legal advice for a specific matter, and it is not a substitute for advice on your own documents. Amounts expressed in UF move daily. Every transaction has features that can change the conclusions set out here.