Inheritance from abroad: how to accept it without missing the 6-month deadline

The acceptance deadline is 6 months

You have 6 months from the date of death to accept an inheritance (art. 1270 of the Civil Code). The deadline is not extended because you live in another country, and it does not wait for a slot in the consular queue. Of all the "from abroad" legal questions this is the most time-critical.

There is one exception: if you permanently lived together with the deceased at the time of death, you are deemed to have accepted the inheritance without filing anything. For people abroad that is almost never the case.

The main trap: you cannot file by proxy

The most common plan — "I'll give my sister a power of attorney and she'll handle it" — does not work at the first step:

• the application to accept an inheritance is filed by the heir in person (art. 1269 of the Civil Code);
• filing it through a representative under a power of attorney is not allowed (para. 3.3 of chapter 10, section II of the Procedure for Notarial Acts by Notaries of Ukraine, Ministry of Justice Order No. 296/5).

A power of attorney does become useful, but later — see below.

How to file without travelling

The law allows you to send the application by post, provided your signature on it is certified. Hence two workable routes:

1. A Ukrainian consular office — the best one: the application is drawn up in Ukrainian, the consul certifies your signature, and no apostille or translation is needed. Appointments go through e-Consul; this is exactly where time is lost, so book as soon as you learn of the death.
2. A foreign notary — if there is no consulate nearby. The application may be in a foreign language, with the signature certified by the local notary. You then need an apostille (Hague Convention states) or consular legalisation — except in countries with a legal-assistance treaty such as Poland and the Czech Republic, where a translation suffices — plus a notarized Ukrainian translation.

The application goes to the notary at the place the inheritance opened — the last residence of the deceased. Send it so that the date of dispatch is provable, and allow time for the post: what matters is that you met the 6 months.

After filing, a power of attorney works

Once the application has arrived and the inheritance file is open, a representative in Ukraine can do the rest. The power of attorney is issued the same way — at a consulate (in Ukrainian, no legalisation, entered in the Unified Register of Powers of Attorney) or before a foreign notary (with apostille/legalisation and translation; that one is not entered in the register, so the original must be sent to Ukraine).

Spell out in the text the right to file and receive all documents for the inheritance and to obtain the certificate of the right to inheritance — without that wording the notary will not hand the certificate to your representative.

Tax: 0% or 23%

This is the most expensive dividing line for the diaspora:

So a resident son pays nothing, while a non-resident son pays 23% of the value of the estate (art. 174.2.3 of the Tax Code). It must be paid before the notarial formalities: without the receipt the certificate of the right to inheritance will not be issued (art. 174.3). Heirs on the 0% rate need not file a declaration; everyone else must.

Again the key point: non-residency is a tax status, not citizenship and not holding temporary protection in the EU. Fleeing the war does not by itself change your residency. Before accepting the 23%, check your actual status — the criteria are covered in a separate guide below.

If the 6 months have already passed

Two routes (art. 1272 of the Civil Code):

1. Written consent of all the other heirs who have already accepted — the notary may then accept your late application. The fastest option where the family is not in conflict.
2. Court — a claim for an additional period, if the reasons for missing the deadline were valid.

A realistic caveat: courts do not treat living abroad as a valid reason automatically. What persuades them is that you were objectively unable to file — you did not know of the death, you were under occupation or in a combat zone, you were seriously ill, you had no access to consular services. "I lived in Germany and did not get round to it" is unlikely to succeed, since the application could have been posted from any country.

Legal basis

• Civil Code of Ukraine, arts. 1268–1272, 1296–1298;
• Procedure for Notarial Acts by Notaries of Ukraine, approved by Ministry of Justice Order No. 296/5 of 22.02.2012 (chapter 10 of section II);
• Tax Code of Ukraine, art. 174 (in particular 174.2.1–174.2.3 and 174.3), art. 167.1;
• Law of Ukraine "On Notariat".