ITI Spanish Network Understanding Spanish Inheritance Law and Translating Spanish Probate Documents workshop – 17 May 2024

Andrew Leigh recently delivered an excellent presentation to the Spanish Network and shared his knowledge on understanding Spanish inheritance law and translating Spanish probate documents.

He began by explaining the probate procedure in Spain, from obtaining the death certificate and registering the death, to obtaining a copy of the will, or in the absence of this, signing the declaration of heirs and the deed of acceptance and distribution of estate.

Next, we learned about the structure and different types of Spanish wills – the open will, executed in front of a notary, and the more private, closed will written by the testator in advance before giving a copy to the notary, and even the holographic will, where there is no notary involvement at all.

Andrew carefully went through some of the key terminology in these documents, explaining their meaning and suggestions on the best way to translate them, for example the difference between “heredero” (heir) and “legatario” (legatee), and “sucesión intestada”, “sucesión legítima” and “sucesión abintestado”, which are all used to describe an intestate succession.

The presentation was dotted with breakout rooms where there was a chance to work on translating an inheritance document and finding ways to deal with the challenges arising in the text.  To demonstrate the specific laws involved, Andrew also presented us with a scenario where we had to work out who in a family would inherit in the event of a death, and how much they would inherit each, taking into account the forced heirship rules and the “legítima” (reserved portion of an estate) and the order of inheritance where there are a number of children and grandchildren involved.

The final part of the workshop was dealing with the acceptance or rejection of the estate, once the heirs have been identified, how the legacy is distributed and the notarial deed reflecting this.

Andrew rounded off the session by recommending some useful resources for translating these documents, followed by a question-and-answer session.

As always, Andrew gave a highly informative presentation, and we learned a lot about a fascinating topic.  Looking forward to putting it all into practice!