Inheritance in Brazil as a Foreign Heir: the Law That Governs, the State That Taxes, and the Documents That Actually Work

Published August 25, 2026.

Someone in your family died, there is an apartment in Rio, a bank account in São Paulo or a set of company shares in Brazil, and you are reading this from another country. An inheritance in Brazil runs on Brazilian rules that do not travel, and the English-language internet gets the first of them right: the estate has to be settled in Brazil. That is true, and the better pages now say so. What almost none of them tell you is what comes immediately after that sentence — which Brazilian state gets to charge the inheritance tax when nobody involved lives in Brazil, how much of the "fast, out-of-court" route is still a court case when there is a will, and what turns the documents you sign at home into documents a Brazilian registry will accept. Of the eleven English-language pages we read on this subject in August 2026, not one answered those three questions by naming the provision that governs them.

The short version. An inheritance in Brazil is settled through a proceeding called the inventário (you will also see it written inventario, without the accent), and it happens in Brazil whoever you are and wherever you live. The law that governs the succession is the law of the country where the deceased was domiciled — but the authority that settles Brazilian assets is Brazilian, exclusively, and those are two different things. Your first document is a death certificate, and which route it takes depends on the deceased's nationality, not on yours. Every foreign document you use has to travel a four-link chain before it is worth anything here. The inheritance tax is charged by a state, and since January 2026 a federal statute finally says which one — including the case where the deceased and the heir were both abroad. And there is a second, federal tax that most guides never mention, whose real cost is not paid at the estate at all: it is paid years later, by you, when you sell.

One boundary before we start. This article is about inheritance in Brazil from the position of a person who is outside it — a foreign heir, or a national of any country living abroad, taking assets situated in Brazil. It is not about a Brazilian resident inheriting assets abroad — that is a different set of rules with a different answer, and most of the English pages on this topic are in fact written for that reader. Nor does it cover the sale of the property once it is yours: we wrote that separately, in selling property in Brazil as a non-resident, and this article deliberately stops where that one begins. If you are still choosing who will act for you in Brazil, start with how to hire a Brazilian lawyer from abroad.

The question that decides everything: where the deceased was domiciled

Brazilian private international law does not ask where the assets are in order to choose the law. It asks where the deceased lived. The rule is in article 10 of the Law of Introduction to the Rules of Brazilian Law (Decree-Law 4,657/1942, known as the LINDB), and it is written in unusually absolute terms:

Art. 10. A sucessão por morte ou por ausência obedece à lei do país em que domiciliado o defunto ou o desaparecido, qualquer que seja a natureza e a situação dos bens.

Article 10. Succession on death or absence is governed by the law of the country in which the deceased or the absent person was domiciled, whatever the nature and the situs of the assets.

"Whatever the nature and the situs of the assets" is the operative phrase. If your father died domiciled in Florida, Brazilian law points to Florida law to decide who his heirs are and in what shares — even for the apartment in Copacabana. If he died domiciled in Brazil, Brazilian succession law governs, including its forced-heirship rules, even for assets he held abroad.

There are two qualifications, and both matter to this reader. The first is in paragraph 1 of the same article: where the assets of a foreigner are situated in Brazil, Brazilian law applies in favour of a Brazilian spouse or Brazilian children, whenever the deceased's personal law is not more favourable to them. It is a one-way ratchet — it can only improve the position of the Brazilian spouse or children, never worsen it — and it is mirrored in article 5, item XXXI of the Brazilian Constitution. If the deceased was a foreigner and there is a Brazilian spouse or Brazilian-national child in the picture, the two laws are compared and the better one for them wins. The second qualification is in paragraph 2: the capacity to inherit is governed by the law of the heir's domicile, not the deceased's — a detail that occasionally decides whether a particular person can take at all.

Now the part that trips everyone. Choosing the applicable law is not the same as choosing the authority. Article 23 of the Brazilian Code of Civil Procedure (Law 13,105/2015) gives Brazilian authorities exclusive jurisdiction over the estate proceeding for assets situated in Brazil:

Art. 23. Compete à autoridade judiciária brasileira, com exclusão de qualquer outra: […] II - em matéria de sucessão hereditária, proceder à confirmação de testamento particular e ao inventário e à partilha de bens situados no Brasil, ainda que o autor da herança seja de nacionalidade estrangeira ou tenha domicílio fora do território nacional;

Article 23. Brazilian judicial authority has jurisdiction, to the exclusion of any other: […] II – in matters of succession, to confirm a private will and to conduct the inventory and partition of assets situated in Brazil, even if the deceased was of foreign nationality or was domiciled outside the national territory;

So a grant of probate from London, letters testamentary from a New York surrogate's court or a Portuguese habilitação de herdeiros does not transfer the Copacabana apartment. It may be excellent evidence of who the heirs are. It is not a conveyance. The registry will not move the property on the strength of it, and the bank will not release the account. The proceeding happens in Brazil — the only real questions are which route it takes and how much of it you can do without getting on a plane. Nor is this a gap the recognition route can bridge: article 964 of the same Code bars the homologation of a foreign judgment where Brazilian jurisdiction is exclusive — how that recognition process works, and where its limits run, is the subject of our article on enforcing foreign judgments in Brazil.

Hold the two rules side by side and the structure of your case appears: a foreign law may decide who inherits, while a Brazilian authority decides how the assets actually move. Both can be true at once, and in cross-border estates they usually are.

Your first document is the death certificate — and the rule depends on the deceased's nationality

Nothing starts until the death is documented in a form Brazil accepts, and this is where we found the clearest error in the English-language material. One of the eleven pages we read states, as a universal rule, that the foreign death certificate must be transcribed into a Brazilian civil registry under article 32 of Law 6,015/1973, and that without that transcription the estate cannot proceed. It presents this as the step foreign families miss. Read the provision:

Art. 32. Os assentos de nascimento, óbito e de casamento de brasileiros em país estrangeiro serão considerados autênticos, nos termos da lei do lugar em que forem feitos, legalizadas as certidões pelos cônsules ou quando por estes tomados, nos termos do regulamento consular.

Article 32. Records of birth, death and marriage of Brazilians in a foreign country shall be deemed authentic under the law of the place where they were made, the certificates being legalised by the consuls or, where taken by them, under the consular regulations.

Of Brazilians. Article 32 is the rule for a Brazilian who died abroad, and its paragraph 1 is what requires the translado — the transcription of the foreign record into the 1st Registry Office of the person's Brazilian domicile, or the 1st Registry Office of the Federal District if there is no known domicile — when the record has to produce effects in Brazil. If your mother was a Brazilian national who died in Portugal, this is your route, and it is a real step with its own timeline.

If the deceased was not Brazilian, article 32 is not your provision. A German who died in Munich owning a flat in Florianópolis does not get transcribed into a Brazilian civil registry; his death certificate travels the ordinary route for foreign documents, which is the subject of the next section. Getting this wrong costs weeks: families are sent to a registry office that correctly tells them the case is not theirs, and nobody explains why.

Two practical notes. Where the deceased held dual nationality including Brazilian, article 32 is engaged for the simple reason that the provision speaks of Brazilians and a dual national is one — the transcription route applies. And where a Brazilian death was recorded by a Brazilian consulate rather than under local law, paragraph 1 of the same article puts the consulate itself under a duty to forward a second copy through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is the smoother of the two paths when it is available.

How a foreign document becomes a document Brazil will accept: four links

This is the section that determines whether your file moves or stalls, and it is the one the English-language material leaves half-told: apostille and sworn translation get mentioned, the fourth link below appears in none of the eleven pages we read. A document signed, issued or notarised abroad is not usable in Brazil because it is genuine. It becomes usable because it completed a chain. The chain has four links, and skipping any one of them sends the file back.

1. Origin. The document is issued or executed abroad in the form its own law requires — a certificate from a foreign registry, a notarised signature, a court record.
2. Apostille. Brazil has been a party to the Hague Apostille Convention since 2016, promulgated by Decree 8,660/2016. Documents from other member states carry an apostille instead of consular legalisation. Documents from non-member states still need legalisation at a Brazilian consulate — a distinction worth checking before you pay for the wrong one.
3. Sworn translation. The translation must be made by a tradutor e intérprete público, a public translator enrolled in Brazil. This is where most reference material is quietly out of date: the regime is no longer the 1943 decree that governed the profession for nearly eighty years, and which was expressly revoked in 2021. Public translators are now governed by Law 14,195/2021, whose article 22 sets the requirements for the profession — including a university degree in any field, approval in an aptitude examination and enrolment with a commercial registry. Two provisions of that statute matter directly to you. Article 24 provides that meeting those requirements qualifies the translator to act in any state and in the Federal District, while keeping a single enrolment where they live or most often work — so you are not restricted to a translator in the state where the asset sits. And article 26, item I, makes it an exclusive activity of the public translator to translate any document that has to be presented before a Brazilian public body or before notarial and registry services, expressly including the registry of titles and deeds — which is the next link.
4. Registration at the Registry of Titles and Deeds. The step nobody abroad has heard of. Law 6,015/1973 makes registration at the Registro de Títulos e Documentos the act that gives foreign documents effect before Brazilian authorities.

The fourth link is worth reading in the original, because the statute says exactly what it does:

Art. 129. Estão sujeitos a registro, no Registro de Títulos e Documentos, para surtir efeitos em relação a terceiros: […] 6º) todos os documentos de procedência estrangeira, acompanhados das respectivas traduções, para produzirem efeitos em repartições da União, dos Estados, do Distrito Federal, dos Territórios e dos Municípios ou em qualquer instância, juízo ou tribunal;

Article 129. The following are subject to registration at the Registry of Titles and Deeds, in order to produce effects as to third parties: […] 6) all documents of foreign origin, accompanied by their respective translations, in order to produce effects before agencies of the Union, the States, the Federal District, the Territories and the Municipalities, or before any instance, court or tribunal;

And article 148 of the same statute closes the loop, naming powers of attorney specifically:

Art. 148. […] Para produzirem efeitos legais no País e para valerem contra terceiros, deverão, entretanto, ser vertidos em vernáculo e registrada a tradução, o que, também, se observará em relação às procurações lavradas em língua estrangeira.

Article 148. […] In order to produce legal effects in the country and to be effective against third parties, they must, however, be rendered into the vernacular and the translation registered, which shall likewise be observed as to powers of attorney drawn up in a foreign language.

Read those two together and the practical rule falls out: apostille proves the document is genuine; the sworn translation makes it legible; the Registry of Titles and Deeds is what makes it effective. A perfectly apostilled, beautifully translated power of attorney that was never registered is a document a bank or a land registry can decline — and some do, without explaining which link is missing.

Signing from abroad: the power of attorney, and the route most guides never mention

You will not be able to do this personally from another country, and you should not try to. Someone in Brazil has to be able to sign for you — to accept the appointment of the estate administrator, to agree the partition, to sign the deed, to deal with the tax authority. That means a power of attorney, and the form it takes depends on what it is for.

For litigation and for the judicial estate proceeding, the instrument is the procuração ad judicia, and article 105 of the Code of Civil Procedure allows it to be a private instrument — it does not require a notary. For anything that will be registered against real property, and for the out-of-court estate deed itself, you need a public deed with express, specific powers. A general "manage my affairs" power will be refused: Brazilian notaries and registries require the powers to name the act.

There are three routes to a public deed from abroad, and which of them is open to you depends on your nationality — a point the English-language material we read does not make.

Route 1 — the Brazilian consulate, if you qualify. Brazilian consular officers exercise notarial functions, so a power of attorney drawn up at a Brazilian consulate is a Brazilian public deed from birth: no apostille, no translation, because it was never a foreign document. But the route is not open to everyone, and this is where many foreign heirs lose weeks. Brazil's Consular and Legal Service Manual restricts consular notarial services to Brazilian nationals and to foreign nationals holding a valid Brazilian migration registration card — the CRNM, formerly the RNE — and it says expressly that the restriction reaches even a foreign national who is the spouse of a Brazilian (items 4.1.5 and 4.10.5 to 4.10.7). Individual posts publish the same rule in plainer words.

Read that against your own situation, because it is the fork in this section. If you are a Brazilian national living abroad, the consulate is available to you. If you are a foreign national who has never held Brazilian residency, it is not — even if the deceased was Brazilian, even if you hold a Brazilian taxpayer number, and even if you are married to a Brazilian. That single rule redirects a large share of the readers of this article to one of the next two routes, and it is better to learn it here than after booking an appointment. We set out the same three routes, with the consular provisions named, in our article on hiring a Brazilian lawyer from abroad.

Route 2 — e-Notariado, by videoconference. Brazil's notarial system runs a national electronic platform on which a Brazilian notary draws up a public deed with the parties appearing by videoconference, under the National Council of Justice's National Code of Norms. For an heir who cannot use the consulate, this is the route that most changes the experience, because the document is born Brazilian without anyone travelling. Two details decide whether it works. The notary issues the grantor a notarised digital certificate for use on the platform. And competence is fixed by rule: the electronic power of attorney belongs to the notary of the grantor's domicile or of the place of the property — and where the grantor cannot prove a Brazilian domicile, which is the ordinary case here, only the place of the property is considered. We say this is a route to test rather than assume: nothing we read closes it to a foreign national, and nothing we read confirms it is open to a grantor without a Brazilian taxpayer number in good standing.

Route 3 — a notary where you live. Always available, and the slowest to become useful, because the document is foreign: it needs the full chain from the previous section — apostille or consular legalisation, sworn translation by a Brazilian public translator, and registration at the Registry of Titles and Deeds. It works. It simply costs more steps than the other two, and it is the route where files most often come back for a missing link.

Whichever route you use, three drafting points decide whether the document works on first presentation: the powers must be specific and name the acts; the assets should be identified, ideally by registry number; and the document should anticipate the tax steps, because an attorney-in-fact who can sign the partition but cannot sign the tax return will bring the file to a halt at the worst moment.

Court or notary — and how much of the "out-of-court" route is still a court case

Brazil has two routes for the inventário, and the difference in time and cost is large enough that choosing correctly is most of the value of early advice.

The statutory rule is article 610 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Its head paragraph sends the estate to court where there is a will or an incapable interested party. Its first paragraph opens the notarial route:

Art. 610. […] § 1º Se todos forem capazes e concordes, o inventário e a partilha poderão ser feitos por escritura pública, a qual constituirá documento hábil para qualquer ato de registro, bem como para levantamento de importância depositada em instituições financeiras.

Article 610. […] § 1. If all are legally capable and in agreement, the inventory and partition may be made by public deed, which shall constitute a document sufficient for any act of registration, as well as for the withdrawal of amounts deposited with financial institutions.

That last clause is the one heirs abroad care about most: the deed itself is enough to release bank deposits. No separate court order is needed for the account.

A note on the legal basis, because it is misquoted often enough to matter. The out-of-court estate is regularly attributed to Law 11,441/2007. That statute amended articles 982 and 983 of the 1973 Code of Civil Procedure, and the 1973 Code was revoked by the 2015 Code. The live provision today is article 610 of the 2015 Code. Citing the 2007 statute is not a catastrophe — the rule survived the transition in substance — but if you are checking your adviser's citations, that is the current one.

Now the part that changes timelines. Until 2024, the working national rule was that a will sent the estate to court. Resolution 571 of 26 August 2024 amended Resolution 35/2007 of the National Council of Justice and opened the notarial route to estates with a will and to estates including minor or incapable heirs. English-language pages have picked this up, and describe the notarial route as now available "even with a will". What they do not report is the condition attached, which is the whole point:

Art. 12-B. É autorizado o inventário e a partilha consensuais promovidos extrajudicialmente por escritura pública, ainda que o autor da herança tenha deixando [sic] testamento, desde que obedecidos os seguintes requisitos: […] II – exista expressa autorização do juízo sucessório competente em ação de abertura e cumprimento de testamento válido e eficaz, em sentença transitada em julgado;

Article 12-B. Consensual inventory and partition carried out of court by public deed are authorised, even where the deceased left a will, provided the following requirements are met: […] II – there is express authorisation from the competent succession court, in an action for the opening and execution of a valid and effective will, by a judgment that has become final and unappealable;

So the notarial route with a will is not a way of avoiding the court. It is a way of ending at a notary after a court action has opened the will and become final. For an international family that is a material difference, because the reader most likely to have a will is exactly the reader being told the process now takes weeks.

Two further conditions in the same article are easy to miss and expensive to discover late. Item V requires that where a will was invalidated, revoked, superseded or lapsed, that invalidity or ineffectiveness must itself have been recognised by a final judgment in the same kind of action — so "the will doesn't count anyway" is not a shortcut. And paragraph 1 imposes an absolute bar: if the will contains a provision recognising a child, or any other irrevocable declaration, the public deed is prohibited and the estate must go to court. Where minor or incapable heirs are involved, article 12-A adds its own conditions, including that their share be paid as an undivided fraction of each asset and that the public prosecutor's office give a favourable opinion — on which the deed's effectiveness depends.

One caveat we will state rather than resolve: article 610 of the Code says that where there is a will the inventory "shall be judicial", and the opening created by the Council of Justice's resolution sits in tension with that wording. The tension is real, it is discussed among Brazilian practitioners, and notarial practice on it is not uniform across the states. We flag it because a foreign heir should know that the answer to "can we do this at a notary?" may depend on which state the assets are in.

Which route your estate takes

Situation	Route	Provision
All heirs adult, capable and in agreement; no will	Notary — public deed	CPC art. 610, § 1
There is a will	Court action to open the will, final judgment, then notary	Res. 35/2007, art. 12-B, II
Will recognises a child or contains another irrevocable declaration	Court — no notarial option	Res. 35/2007, art. 12-B, § 1
Minor or incapable heir	Notary possible under conditions, with the public prosecutor's favourable opinion	Res. 35/2007, art. 12-A
Heirs in dispute	Court	CPC art. 610

The clock started at the death, not at the phone call

Article 611 of the Code of Civil Procedure sets the timetable, and it is short:

Art. 611. O processo de inventário e de partilha deve ser instaurado dentro de 2 (dois) meses, a contar da abertura da sucessão, ultimando-se nos 12 (doze) meses subsequentes, podendo o juiz prorrogar esses prazos, de ofício ou a requerimento de parte.

Article 611. The inventory and partition proceeding must be commenced within two months from the opening of the succession, and concluded within the following twelve months, the judge being able to extend those periods on his own motion or at a party's request.

The two months run from the death, not from the moment the family in Brazil reaches you, and not from the moment you finish gathering apostilles. Missing it does not forfeit the inheritance — the succession opened automatically at the death, under article 1,784 of the Civil Code, and the estate belongs to the heirs from that instant. What it costs is money: states attach a surcharge to their inheritance tax for late filing, commonly a percentage of the tax that increases with the delay, and the amounts and thresholds vary from state to state.

The practical consequence for a family abroad is a sequencing one. Document collection across borders takes longer than two months in almost every case we handle. The answer is not to wait until the file is complete — it is to open the proceeding on time and supplement it, which the procedure allows and which stops the surcharge clock.

Which Brazilian state charges the inheritance tax — including when nobody lives in Brazil

There is no federal inheritance tax in Brazil. An inheritance in Brazil is taxed at state level, by the ITCMD — imposto sobre transmissão causa mortis e doação — charged by each of the 26 states and the Federal District. Each sets its own rate, subject to a maximum fixed by the Federal Senate — article 156 of the 2026 complementary statute states both that rates must be progressive according to the value received and that they observe that federally set ceiling. So which state applies is not a detail: it decides the rate you pay, the return you file, the exemptions you may claim and the office that has to clear the transfer before any registry will move anything. Rates, thresholds and late-filing surcharges differ enough between states that we do not publish a single national figure here; the number that matters is your state's, on the date of the death.

For years this question had no clean answer where a foreign element was present. The Supreme Federal Court held that states could not charge the tax in the cross-border situations described in the Constitution without a national complementary statute, and none existed. The 2023 tax reform amendment filled the gap with a transitional rule, and in January 2026 the complementary statute finally arrived: Complementary Law 227 of 13 January 2026. Its articles 158 and 159 are the ones that answer your question, and we have not found them cited by number on any English-language page.

For real property, article 158 is straightforward and settles the most common case:

Art. 158. É competente para instituir o imposto, relativamente a bens imóveis e respectivos direitos: I - situados no Brasil, o Estado, ou o Distrito Federal, da situação do bem, ainda que o de cujus ou o doador tenha domicílio ou residência no exterior;

Article 158. Competent to levy the tax, as to immovable property and the rights relating to it: I – situated in Brazil, the State, or the Federal District, where the asset is located, even if the deceased or the donor was domiciled or resident abroad;

An apartment in Rio is taxed by Rio de Janeiro. Where the deceased lived and where you live are irrelevant to that. If the estate holds properties in three states, each state taxes the property within its own borders — three returns, three rates, one estate.

Movable assets are where it gets interesting — and "movable" here means bank accounts, investments, company quotas, shares, credits and intangible rights, which for many foreign heirs is the whole estate. Article 159 sets three rules, and the third is the one written for this reader:

Art. 159. É competente para instituir o imposto, relativamente a bens móveis, incluindo títulos, créditos e outros direitos e bens incorpóreos: I - na transmissão causa mortis, independentemente da localização dos bens: a) se o de cujus for domiciliado no Brasil, o Estado ou Distrito Federal onde era domiciliado o de cujus; ou b) se o de cujus for domiciliado no exterior, o Estado ou Distrito Federal de domicílio do sucessor; […] III - na transmissão causa mortis ou doação, em caso de transmitente e recebedor domiciliados no exterior, o Estado ou Distrito Federal onde se localizarem os bens, no Brasil.

Article 159. Competent to levy the tax, as to movable property, including securities, credits and other rights and intangible assets: I – on transfer on death, regardless of where the assets are located: a) if the deceased was domiciled in Brazil, the State or Federal District where the deceased was domiciled; or b) if the deceased was domiciled abroad, the State or Federal District of the successor's domicile; […] III – on transfer on death or by gift, where the transferor and the recipient are both domiciled abroad, the State or Federal District where the assets are located, in Brazil.

Item III is new law solving an old gap, and it deserves to be said plainly. The transitional rule it replaced — article 16 of Constitutional Amendment 132/2023, which applied "until a complementary law regulates" the matter — sent the tax on the deceased's assets to the state where the deceased was domiciled, or, if the deceased was abroad, to the state where the successor was domiciled. It simply had no answer for the case where the deceased was abroad and the successor is abroad too: there was no Brazilian state of anyone's domicile to point to. That is the ordinary situation of a foreign family with a Brazilian bank account, and Complementary Law 227 now answers it — the tax belongs to the state where the assets are in Brazil.

Which state levies the ITCMD on a transfer at death

Asset	Deceased domiciled	Heir domiciled	State that levies	Provision
Real property in Brazil	Anywhere	Anywhere	Where the property is	Art. 158, I
Movable / financial	Brazil	Anywhere	Where the deceased was domiciled	Art. 159, I, a
Movable / financial	Abroad	Brazil	Where the heir is domiciled	Art. 159, I, b
Movable / financial	Abroad	Abroad	Where the assets are, in Brazil	Art. 159, III

Three further points from the same statute, because they are misreported. The tax base is defined in article 152 as the market value of the asset or right transferred — not the municipal assessed value that Brazilian families have traditionally declared. Progressive rates are made mandatory by article 156, so a state that still charges a single flat rate has to move to a banded structure. And on timing, article 182 provides that the statute took effect on publication, postponing to 1 January 2027 only two identified provisions — budget-related paragraphs of the tax's management committee, which follow a trigger of their own — which is not the same as saying that the inheritance tax rules take effect in 2027, as one of the pages we read reports.

That said, the honest picture has two layers, and they should not be collapsed. The complementary law sets the national framework and is in force. Whether a particular state can charge you under a particular one of these rules also depends on that state having its own legislation in place and on Brazilian constitutional limits on when new tax rules may begin to apply. States are moving at different speeds. The right question for your file is not only "what does the complementary law say?" but "what has my state enacted, and from when?"

The federal tax almost no one counts — and the number you will pay for years later

The inheritance tax is not the only tax in a Brazilian estate. There is a federal income tax question at the moment of transfer, and its real significance is not the tax itself — it is that the choice made in the estate sets the acquisition cost you will be taxed against when you eventually sell. Get this wrong and the bill arrives years later, larger, and by then it is unfixable.

The rule is article 23 of Law 9,532/1997, and it opens with a choice:

Art. 23. Na transferência de direito de propriedade por sucessão, nos casos de herança, legado ou por doação em adiantamento da legítima, os bens e direitos poderão ser avaliados a valor de mercado ou pelo valor constante da declaração de bens do de cujus ou do doador.

Article 23. On the transfer of ownership by succession, in cases of inheritance, legacy or gift in advance of the statutory share, the assets and rights may be valued at market value or at the value stated in the assets schedule of the deceased's or the donor's tax return.

If the estate transfers at market value, paragraph 1 subjects the increase over the value in the deceased's return to income tax at 15%, and paragraph 2 makes it payable by the estate administrator by the date set for the estate's final tax return. If the estate transfers at the declared value, no tax is due now. Either way, paragraph 4 fixes the consequence:

§ 4º Para efeito de apuração de ganho de capital relativo aos bens e direitos de que trata este artigo, será considerado como custo de aquisição o valor pelo qual houverem sido transferidos.

§ 4. For the purpose of computing capital gain on the assets and rights dealt with in this article, the acquisition cost shall be the value at which they were transferred.

So the choice is a real one with a long tail. Transferring at the old declared value defers a small tax now and builds in a large capital gain later. Transferring at market value costs 15% on the step-up now and gives you a high cost base for the sale. Which is better depends on how long you will hold, what the asset is worth, and whether you will sell at all — it is arithmetic, and it should be done before the partition is signed, not after.

One important limit that changes the analysis for many readers of this article. Look again at what article 23 measures the step-up against: the value at which the assets appeared in the declaração de bens, the assets schedule of the deceased's Brazilian tax return. Someone who was not a Brazilian tax resident never filed one, so there is no declared value to elect. In that situation the question is not which value to choose but what you can prove. The rule that governs a non-resident's capital gain — Normative Instruction SRF 208/2002, article 26 — requires the acquisition value to be supported by valid documentation in its paragraph 3, and its paragraph 4 is blunt: where proof is impossible, the acquisition cost is zero. On a later sale the tax is then computed on the entire sale price rather than on the gain. We set out that regime, with its rates and reliefs, in selling property in Brazil as a non-resident.

Which is why one sentence covers both situations, and it is the practical heart of this article: the number that goes into the partition today is the cost you will be taxed against when you sell tomorrow — and in the worst case that number is zero. The purchase deeds, the payment records, the currency-exchange documents from the original acquisition: those are worth finding while the estate is open and the family still has access to them.

A note on the 15%: it is what article 23 says. Brazil later adopted progressive capital-gains rates through Law 13,259/2016, but that statute amended a different provision, dealing with gains on disposals rather than transfers on death. We state the rate the article states and flag that the interaction between the two is a point to confirm for your case rather than assume.

What does not need an estate proceeding at all

Not every Brazilian asset requires an inventory, and for small estates this section can be the entire answer. Law 6,858/1980 creates a separate, faster channel for a specific category of amounts:

Art. 1º - Os valores devidos pelos empregadores aos empregados e os montantes das contas individuais do Fundo de Garantia do Tempo de Serviço e do Fundo de Participação PIS-PASEP, não recebidos em vida pelos respectivos titulares, serão pagos, em quotas iguais, aos dependentes habilitados perante a Previdência Social ou na forma da legislação específica dos servidores civis e militares, e, na sua falta, aos sucessores previstos na lei civil, indicados em alvará judicial, independentemente de inventário ou arrolamento.

Article 1. Amounts owed by employers to employees and the balances of the individual accounts of the Guarantee Fund for Length of Service and of the PIS-PASEP Participation Fund, not received in life by their holders, shall be paid in equal shares to dependants registered with the social security authority or under the specific legislation for civil and military public servants, and, failing those, to the successors provided for in civil law, designated by court order, independently of an inventory or summary estate proceeding.

Unpaid wages, the FGTS balance and the PIS-PASEP account go to registered dependants — and failing them, to the heirs under a court order — without an estate proceeding. If the deceased worked in Brazil, these balances exist more often than families expect, and they are frequently the only Brazilian assets. Before commissioning a full inventory, it is worth establishing whether this is the whole case.

What Brazilian forced heirship does to a foreign will

Brazilian succession law reserves half the estate for a protected class. Article 1,845 of the Civil Code names them — descendants, ascendants and the spouse — and article 1,846 fixes the share:

Art. 1.846. Pertence aos herdeiros necessários, de pleno direito, a metade dos bens da herança, constituindo a legítima.

Article 1,846. Half of the assets of the estate belongs, as of right, to the forced heirs, constituting the reserved portion.

Whether that reserve applies to your case takes you back to the first section: it depends on which law governs the succession, which depends on where the deceased was domiciled. A will made in a jurisdiction with full testamentary freedom, by a person domiciled there, is not automatically cut down to Brazilian shares. But if the deceased was domiciled in Brazil, or if the LINDB's protection of a Brazilian spouse or Brazilian children is engaged, the reserve is in play — and a foreign will that disposes of everything to one person meets a rule it cannot override.

This is the question to ask early, because it determines whether the heirs are in agreement, and agreement is what decides whether the estate goes to a notary or to a judge. A family that discovers the reserved portion after filing has usually just converted a consensual estate into a contested one.

Five mistakes that cost foreign heirs the most

1. Assuming the home-country probate did something in Brazil. It did not transfer anything. Article 23 of the Code of Civil Procedure is exclusive. Months are lost waiting for a foreign grant to "come through" before starting in Brazil, when the two proceedings are independent and the Brazilian clock has been running since the death.

2. Sending documents down the wrong chain. A death certificate sent for transcription into a Brazilian civil registry when the deceased was not Brazilian; time lost looking for an apostille on a document issued in a country that is not party to the Convention, where the answer is consular legalisation; a translation by a translator not enrolled in Brazil; a flawless document that was never registered at the Registry of Titles and Deeds. Each of these is a return trip measured in weeks.

3. Signing a power of attorney that is too general. The most common single cause of a stalled file. The powers must name the acts, the assets should be identified, and the tax steps have to be covered — otherwise the attorney-in-fact reaches the tax office and cannot act.

4. Believing the estate can be done "at a notary in a few weeks" when there is a will. With a will, the notarial route requires a court action to open it and a final judgment first. Budget for that, or you will be re-planning at the worst moment.

5. Letting the partition value be chosen by default. The value entered in the partition becomes your acquisition cost. Where nothing is proved, the cost can be zero and a future sale is taxed on the whole price. This is the decision in the estate with the longest financial tail, and it is routinely made by whoever fills in the form.

How the firm handles these files

Carvalho Barros Advocacia Internacional is a Brazilian practice working with clients in more than 30 countries, in matters that combine private international law with Brazilian taxation. In an estate with a foreign element, our sequence is deliberately front-loaded: we establish the deceased's domicile and the resulting applicable law, map the assets by category because the tax rules differ between real property and financial assets, identify the competent state, and only then choose the route and draft the power of attorney that route requires. Written communication with the firm is in English; meetings are conducted with an interpreter at no cost to the client. You can verify the author's registration with the Brazilian bar yourself — the method is described in our article on hiring a Brazilian lawyer from abroad.

None of the above asks you to take our word for anything. Every load-bearing statement in this article names the provision it rests on, and the provisions are linked to the official texts so you can read them yourself — which is also how you should read the next page you find on this subject. Where the substance continues beyond the estate, our companion articles cover selling the property once it is yours, the non-resident bank account you may need to receive the proceeds, and investing in Brazil as a non-resident; the firm's inheritance and probate practice is where these files are handled.

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About the author

Luiz Alberto de Carvalho Barros Filho

Attorney at Law — Brazilian Bar (OAB/AL 7.530)

Brazilian attorney dedicated to private international law and cross-border taxation. Published author in the International Law Deskbook 2.0 (The Florida Bar) and contributor to the International Law Quarterly, also of The Florida Bar.

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Legal note. This article is informational and does not replace individual legal advice on a specific estate. The provisions supporting it — Decree-Law No. 4,657/1942 (LINDB), article 10, head paragraph and §§ 1 and 2; the Federal Constitution, article 5, item XXXI; Law No. 13,105/2015 (Code of Civil Procedure), articles 23, 105, 610, 611 and 1,046; Law No. 10,406/2002 (Civil Code), articles 1,784, 1,785, 1,845 and 1,846; Resolution No. 35/2007 of the National Council of Justice, articles 12-A and 12-B, as introduced by Resolution No. 571 of 26 August 2024; Complementary Law No. 227 of 13 January 2026, articles 152, 156, 158, 159 and 182; Constitutional Amendment No. 132/2023, article 16; Law No. 9,532/1997, article 23, head paragraph and §§ 1, 2 and 4; Law No. 6,015/1973, articles 32, 129, item 6, and 148; Law No. 14,195/2021, articles 22, 24 and 26, which also revoked Decree No. 13,609/1943; CNJ Provision No. 149/2023, the National Code of Norms for notarial and registry services, under which the e-Notariado route described operates; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Consular and Legal Service Manual, items 4.1.5 and 4.10.5 to 4.10.7; Decree No. 8,660/2016 (Hague Apostille Convention); Law No. 6,858/1980, article 1; Normative Instruction SRF No. 208/2002, article 26, §§ 3 and 4, in the wording of Normative Instruction RFB No. 1,662/2016; and Law No. 13,259/2016, article 1 — were verified against the official federal legislation text and the National Council of Justice's own register of acts in August 2026, with the relevant articles indicated throughout the text. The revenue service's normative instruction was verified against specialist mirrors carrying the amendment history, not against the revenue service's own portal, which does not answer automated requests. Passages shown in quotation marks are reproduced in the Portuguese original followed by the author's working translation; the Portuguese text is the only authoritative version. Stated limits of this article. Brazilian inheritance tax is state tax: rates, exemptions, surcharges for late filing and the timing of each state's own implementing legislation are not covered here and must be checked for the state concerned. The rules on enrolment for a Brazilian taxpayer number are set by the federal revenue service's own normative instruction, which its norms portal does not serve to automated requests; for that reason no article of it is cited here. Whether the progressive capital-gains rates introduced by Law No. 13,259/2016 reach the 15% rate stated in article 23 of Law No. 9,532/1997 is a point this article raises without resolving. The tension between article 610 of the Code of Civil Procedure and the out-of-court route opened by Resolution No. 571/2024 is likewise recorded, not resolved, and notarial practice on it is not uniform across the states. The statement about English-language search results reflects the firm's own documented review of eleven leading results on this subject, conducted in August 2026. This is an original article and not an adaptation: the firm's Portuguese-language article on cross-border estates addresses the opposite direction — a Brazilian decedent with assets abroad. No promise of results is made (Brazilian Bar Provision OAB No. 205/2021). To review your specific case, contact attorney Luiz Barros — Brazilian Bar, OAB/AL 7.530.