Prenuptial Agreements in Brazil for Foreigners: the Law That Governs, the Deed the Notary Signs, and the Registry That Makes It Count

Published September 10, 2026. Also available in Portuguese.

A prenuptial agreement in Brazil is valid for a foreigner when it meets the law that governs the couple's property regime — and Brazil picks that law by the couple's domicile when they married — or, where their domiciles differed, by their first marital home — not by nationality and not by where the ceremony took place. Domiciled abroad, with the first home together abroad: your foreign prenup governs, and the work in Brazil is documentary. Domiciled in Brazil: the prenup must be a public deed signed at a notary before the wedding, or the regime the Code imposes applies — partial community as a rule, mandatory separation in the cases of article 1,641. The rest of this article is the proof of those three sentences, provision by provision.

The message usually arrives with two links pasted into it. One page says a prenuptial agreement in Brazil is confirmed by “Article 256 (II) of the Brazilian Civil Code”. Another says a foreign prenup should be “registered at the Real Estate Registry where your Brazilian property is located”. The couple writing to me wants to know which to follow. The honest answer is neither. The article the first page cites belongs to the Civil Code of 1916, repealed in 2003; the registry the second page names is the right building for the wrong document. And before either page could be right, both would have had to ask a question they skipped: which law governs your marriage in the first place?

That question has a printed answer in Brazil, and it is not nationality and not the place of the wedding. It is domicile — where the two of you lived when you married or, if you lived in different countries, where you first set up home together. Abroad, the Brazilian work is documentary: an apostille, a sworn translation, a registration and — since 2024 — a way of writing your regime into the Brazilian marriage record, where one of you is Brazilian, under its own name. In Brazil, the form is the whole question: a prenuptial agreement in Brazil has one form only, a public deed signed at a notary before the wedding, and without it you are married under partial community of property whether you meant to be or not.

This article walks both paths with the Portuguese text of every provision beside a working translation and a link to the official source — for the foreigner marrying a Brazilian, the foreigner who lives in Brazil and is marrying anyone, and the couple who married abroad years ago and now own, or are about to own, something here. It does not read your own country's law for you, quotes no fees and names no other firm. It puts the provision next to the claim.

Which law governs your marriage: the question that comes before any prenuptial agreement in Brazil

Brazil's conflict-of-laws statute is the Law of Introduction to the Norms of Brazilian Law — Decree-Law 4,657 of 1942, the LINDB of the Brazilian sources — and its article 7 is where every cross-border marriage starts. The head paragraph sends family rights to the law of the person's domicile: “A lei do país em que domiciliada a pessoa determina as regras sobre o começo e o fim da personalidade, o nome, a capacidade e os direitos de família” — the law of the country in which the person is domiciled determines the rules on the beginning and end of personality, the name, capacity and family rights. Paragraph 4 answers the property question directly:

§ 4º O regime de bens, legal ou convencional, obedece à lei do país em que tiverem os nubentes domicílio, e, se este for diverso, a do primeiro domicílio conjugal.

§ 4. The property regime, whether legal or contractual, follows the law of the country in which the spouses-to-be are domiciled and, if their domiciles differ, the law of the first marital domicile.

Read it twice, because everything else hangs from it. The regime is the set of rules that decides what belongs to whom during the marriage and how it is divided when the marriage ends, by divorce or by death. The provision says the regime, “legal or contractual”, follows domicile: the default a couple gets without a prenup and the regime a couple chooses in one are governed by the same law. It fixes the moment — the wedding day, or the first home together. Nothing in it mentions citizenship, and nothing in it mentions where the ceremony took place.

Two neighboring paragraphs complete the picture. Paragraph 1 governs the wedding itself:

§ 1º Realizando-se o casamento no Brasil, será aplicada a lei brasileira quanto aos impedimentos dirimentes e às formalidades da celebração.

§ 1. Where the marriage takes place in Brazil, Brazilian law shall apply as to the absolute impediments and the formalities of the celebration.

That is why a foreigner marrying at a Brazilian registry office goes through the Brazilian pre-marriage file, the habilitação, whatever their nationality — and why that file does not by itself decide the regime. Paragraph 3 uses the same anchor for another subject: “Tendo os nubentes domicílio diverso, regerá os casos de invalidade do matrimônio a lei do primeiro domicílio conjugal” — where the spouses-to-be have different domiciles, the law of the first marital domicile governs the cases of invalidity of the marriage.

Here is the decision tree, and its two branches are the spine of everything that follows. (A) You were domiciled abroad when you married — both in the same country, or in different countries with your first home together outside Brazil. That foreign law governs your regime, your foreign prenup governs with it, and the Brazilian work is to bring the document and the regime into the Brazilian record. (B) You were domiciled in Brazil when you married — a foreigner living in São Paulo who marries a Brazilian, or a foreign couple living in Florianópolis who marry each other, here or abroad. Brazilian law governs: the default of the Civil Code, unless you signed the one instrument the Code accepts, in the one form it accepts, before the wedding. Most of the confusion I see in English comes from applying branch (A) answers to branch (B) couples, and the reverse.

Domiciled abroad when you married: your foreign prenup governs

Start with the branch most readers of this article are on. You and your spouse lived outside Brazil when you married, and you signed a marital agreement under that law. Under article 7, § 4, that law governs your regime, and your agreement is part of it. That is the sense in which a foreign prenup is recognized in Brazil, and enforceable within the limits that follow: it governs because the law it belongs to governs — subject to the filter of the next paragraph, and to the Brazilian courts' exclusive jurisdiction over assets located here. Brazilian courts and registries do not re-decide the substance — my reading of the rule, and the practice I see: they apply the regime your law gives you, as your law and your agreement define it, once that law is proven to them.

Two things deserve precision, because “valid in Brazil” promises more than the statute does. The first is that the LINDB has a single general filter for foreign law and foreign acts, article 17: laws, acts and judgments of another country, and any declarations of will, “não terão eficácia no Brasil, quando ofenderem a soberania nacional, a ordem pública e os bons costumes” — shall have no effect in Brazil when they offend national sovereignty, public policy and good morals. A narrow gate, not a review of your clauses; but the reason no honest text can say that Brazil “always” gives effect to a foreign prenup. The second is that whether your agreement is valid under your own law is a question for a lawyer in that country.

One boundary, stated once. Which law governs the regime is one question; which court divides the assets is another. In a divorce, the division of assets located in Brazil belongs to the Brazilian courts to the exclusion of any other, whatever the spouses' nationality or domicile — a rule of the Code of Civil Procedure that our article on Brazilian residency after divorce quotes, and whose consequences for a foreign decree our article on enforcing foreign judgments in Brazil works through. This article stays on the regime — which, for branch (A), already governs you. The task is to make the Brazilian system see it.

How a foreign prenup enters Brazil: apostille, sworn translation and the Registry of Titles and Documents

The apostille. The Hague Apostille Convention of October 5, 1961 — the Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents — was promulgated in Brazil by Decree 8,660 of 2016, whose recitals record that the Convention “entrará em vigor para a República Federativa do Brasil, no plano jurídico externo, em 14 de agosto de 2016” — enters into force for Brazil, on the external legal plane, on August 14, 2016. Article 2 of the Convention is the operative sentence: “Cada Estado Contratante dispensará a legalização dos documentos aos quais se aplica a presente Convenção e que devam produzir efeitos em seu território” — each Contracting State shall dispense with the legalization of the documents to which the Convention applies and which are to produce effects in its territory. Where the country of execution is a party, the apostille replaces consular legalization. Either way the document is not yet usable: it is in a foreign language.

The sworn translation, registered. The Public Records Act, Law 6,015 of 1973, says in article 148 what a foreign-language document needs in order to work here:

Art. 148. Os títulos, documentos e papéis escritos em língua estrangeira, uma vez adotados os caracteres comuns, poderão ser registrados no original, para o efeito da sua conservação ou perpetuidade. 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. Instruments, documents and papers written in a foreign language, once in common characters, may be registered in the original, for the purpose of their conservation or perpetuity. In order to produce legal effects in the Country and to be effective against third parties, however, they must be translated into the vernacular and the translation registered, which shall also be observed with respect to powers of attorney executed in a foreign language.

Two features decide real files. The translation is a sworn one — the National Justice Council's 2024 rule, described in the next section, requires of the proof of the foreign law a text “traduzida na forma juramentada por tradutor registrado na Junta Comercial”, translated in sworn form by a translator registered with the Board of Trade, and of the two-lawyer certification a document “traduzida na forma juramentada” as well — and the translation itself is registered. And the last clause applies the same rule to powers of attorney executed in a foreign language.

The Registry of Titles and Documents. Article 129 of the same Act lists the documents subject to registration at the Registro de Títulos e Documentos, the RTD, “para surtir efeitos em relação a terceiros” — to produce effects against third parties — and item 6 is written for this exact situation: “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” — all documents of foreign origin, accompanied by their translations, in order to produce effects before federal, state, Federal District, territorial and municipal bodies, or before any court or tribunal. The RTD is a registry of documents; it does not examine your regime. It makes the apostilled prenup and its sworn translation an instrument the Brazilian system can act on. One thing the road does not include, whatever you may read: a foreign prenup is a private instrument, not a court decision, and it does not go through the homologation the Superior Court of Justice applies to foreign decisions — a procedure written for decisions, judicial or non-judicial with jurisdictional nature under Brazilian law (Code of Civil Procedure, article 961 and its § 1), and it is the subject of our article on enforcing foreign judgments in Brazil. Where an agreement was incorporated into a foreign court decision, it is that decision — not the agreement — that the homologation rules reach.

One prerequisite is a marriage question rather than a prenup question. If one of you is Brazilian, your marriage abroad reaches the Brazilian civil registry through the traslado, the transcription of the foreign record into the Brazilian books at the first registry office of the registrant's domicile — article 32, § 1, of the same Act, under National Justice Council Resolution 155 of 2012 and article 462 of the Council's consolidated rules. That transcription is the record onto which the regime is written in the next section; its documents are set out in our article on residency after divorce.

Resolution 583/2024: recording the foreign regime by its own name

Here is the provision none of the English-language pages I reviewed mentions. On September 26, 2024, the National Justice Council — the body that regulates Brazil's notaries and registrars — issued Resolution 583, published in its official gazette on October 1, 2024, amending article 13 of Resolution 155/2012, the rule on the transcription of marriages celebrated abroad. The new paragraph 3 creates a procedure at the civil registry for entering, on the transcribed marriage record, the regime a foreign law gives the couple:

§ 3º Faculta-se a averbação do regime de bens posteriormente, sem a necessidade de autorização judicial, mediante apresentação de documentação comprobatória. Para fins de referida averbação complementar, o regime de bens deverá indicar o país cuja legislação se aplica, sendo adotado o respectivo nomen juris de origem, o qual será comprovado pela apresentação de documento comprobatório do domicílio dos nubentes, no momento da celebração do casamento, quando domiciliados no mesmo estado, ou do primeiro domicílio conjugal […]

§ 3. The property regime may be annotated at a later time, without the need for judicial authorization, upon presentation of supporting documentation. For the purposes of that complementary annotation, the property regime shall indicate the country whose legislation applies, adopting the respective nomen juris of origin, which shall be proven by presenting a document evidencing the domicile of the spouses-to-be at the time of the celebration of the marriage, where domiciled in the same State, or the first marital domicile […]

Three things in that paragraph reorganize the subject. It is an annotation, not a choice. The verb is averbação, the marginal annotation of a fact on an existing record; the record is the transcribed marriage; the fact is the regime that already governs the couple under article 7, § 4. The Resolution does not let a couple pick a regime after the wedding — it lets the registry write down the one the law gave them. It names the regime by its own name, the nomen juris of origin, with the country indicated, rather than translating it into the nearest Brazilian label. And it needs no judge.

The proof comes in two layers: a document evidencing the couple's domicile at the time of the marriage, or the first marital domicile — the Resolution's word is estado, State in the sense of country, the unit whose law article 7, § 4, points to; and at least one of four ways of proving what the foreign law says, items “a” to “d”. (a) A certification by two lawyers in practice in the country whose law applies — “certificação de 2 (dois) advogados em exercício no país cuja lei seja aplicável, sobre sua vigência e sentido”, on its being in force and its meaning — under article 409 of the Bustamante Code, legalized or apostilled, sworn-translated and registered at the RTD. (b) A declaration by the consular representation of the country whose law applies, indicating the regime or the rules. (c) The applicable law itself — the law that article 7, § 4, of the LINDB points to — in a sworn translation, proven as article 376 of the Code of Civil Procedure allows. (d) A declaration by the Brazilian consulate in the country of origin specifying the regime or the rules. The two-lawyer certification is the route that depends on nobody but your own counsel.

Three further paragraphs cover the couple with no prenup and a certificate silent on the regime. Paragraph 3-A is branch (B) — the marriage celebrated abroad but governed by Brazilian law: the omission “poderá ser suprida mediante apresentação de requerimento dirigido ao Oficial de Registro Civil de Pessoas Naturais competente”, may be supplied by an application to the competent civil registrar, who annotates in the margin of the transcription either partial community, where article 1,640 of the Civil Code applies, or mandatory separation, where article 1,641 applies — with certified copies of the spouses' identity documents and the Brazilian spouse's updated civil-registry certificate from before the marriage, so that the suspensive causes of article 1,523 can be checked. Paragraph 3-B requires, where the couple declares there is no prenup, that at least one spouse sign a declaration “sob pena de responsabilidade, quanto a inexistência de excepcionalidade ao regime de bens aplicável” — under penalty of liability, that there is no exception to the applicable regime. Paragraph 3-C sends the couple to the Brazilian default “quando a legislação estrangeira remeter a solução do regime de bens à legislação brasileira ou não estabelecer o regime de bens” — when the foreign legislation refers the regime question to Brazilian law or establishes no regime. Read the destination it names: “aplica-se o disposto nos arts. 1.640, caput, e 1.641, do Código Civil” — partial community as a rule, and mandatory separation where one of the cases of article 1,641 applies.

Notice what the Resolution does not do. It does not turn a foreign prenup into a Brazilian one, it does not register the document — that is the RTD's job, done first — and it does not touch the Real Estate Registry. It writes the regime onto the marriage record. For branch (A), then, the order is: apostille, sworn translation, RTD and, where one of you is Brazilian, transcription of the marriage if not yet done and annotation of the regime by its own name on that record.

The annotation presupposes a Brazilian marriage record, and that is the one limit to keep in view. Resolution 155/2012 governs the transcription of the marriages of Brazilians celebrated abroad — its articles 1 and 13 are both written for the record of a Brazilian — and the new paragraph sits inside it: where one spouse is Brazilian, the marriage is transcribed and the regime annotated. A couple of two foreigners married abroad has no Brazilian marriage entry to annotate. Their regime is shown act by act — to the notary who drafts a purchase, to the registry that records it — with the apostilled, translated prenup registered at the RTD and proof of the foreign law; the four proofs the Resolution lists are the sensible ones to carry, even where no registrar is bound to ask for them.

Domiciled in Brazil when you marry: a prenuptial agreement in Brazil is a public deed, signed before the wedding

Now the other branch, where an agreement in the wrong form is worth nothing at all. If your domicile — or your first marital domicile — is Brazil, article 7, § 4, hands your regime to the Brazilian Civil Code, Law 10,406 of 2002, and the Code answers in two provisions. The first sets the default and the form:

Art. 1.640. Não havendo convenção, ou sendo ela nula ou ineficaz, vigorará, quanto aos bens entre os cônjuges, o regime da comunhão parcial. Parágrafo único. Poderão os nubentes, no processo de habilitação, optar por qualquer dos regimes que este código regula. Quanto à forma, reduzir-se-á a termo a opção pela comunhão parcial, fazendo-se o pacto antenupcial por escritura pública, nas demais escolhas.

Article 1,640. Where there is no agreement, or where it is null or ineffective, the regime of partial community shall govern as to the property between the spouses. Sole paragraph. The spouses-to-be may, in the pre-marriage proceeding, opt for any of the regimes regulated by this Code. As to form, the option for partial community shall be recorded in a written term, the prenuptial agreement being made by public deed for the other choices.

The second says what happens to a prenup that does not meet that form — and it is the modern descendant of the 1916 article that circulates online:

Art. 1.653. É nulo o pacto antenupcial se não for feito por escritura pública, e ineficaz se não lhe seguir o casamento.

Article 1,653. The prenuptial agreement is null if not made by public deed, and ineffective if the marriage does not follow it.

Put the two together and a prenuptial agreement in Brazil has exactly one form. It is a pacto antenupcial drawn up as an escritura pública — a public deed, executed before a notary public, the tabelião de notas — and signed before the wedding. A private contract, however carefully drafted, is null: not voidable, not curable, null. And a couple whose agreement is null is, by article 1,640, married under partial community — the regime the Superior Court of Justice's own published summary of the subject describes as the one that applies “aplicando-se automaticamente a comunhão parcial”, automatically, when a required prenup is missing. The Code adds one limit on content, article 1,655: “É nula a convenção ou cláusula dela que contravenha disposição absoluta de lei” — a clause that contravenes an absolute provision of law is null — of which the inheritance rules below are the most important example.

Within those limits the freedom is wide. Article 1,639 opens the chapter with it: “É lícito aos nubentes, antes de celebrado o casamento, estipular, quanto aos seus bens, o que lhes aprouver” — the spouses-to-be may, before the marriage is celebrated, stipulate as to their property whatever they please. The court's summary reads that freedom as including a mixed regime — the deed is required for conventional separation, universal community, participation in acquisitions, “ou ainda por um regime misto”, or a mixed regime. What a couple cannot do is choose outside the deed.

Two consequences for foreigners follow. The first: a foreigner domiciled in Brazil who marries abroad is still on this branch. Article 7, § 4, looks at domicile, not at the place of the ceremony; a couple living in Rio who fly home for the wedding come back married under Brazilian law as to their property. Whether an instrument signed before a notary in that country satisfies article 1,653 when Brazilian law governs is a question I will not answer in the abstract; the safe course is a Brazilian public deed before the wedding, wherever the wedding is held. The second: the deed can be signed through a representative. Article 1,525 lets the pre-marriage application itself be signed by the couple “de próprio punho, ou, a seu pedido, por procurador” — in their own hand or, at their request, by an attorney-in-fact — and, as a matter of notarial practice that I flag as practice rather than as a sentence of the Code, a public deed may be executed by an attorney-in-fact holding a power of attorney with specific powers for that act. A power of attorney granted abroad travels the same road as the prenup — apostille, sworn translation and registration, the last clause of article 148 saying so in terms — and how it is drawn up from abroad is the subject of our article on hiring a Brazilian lawyer from abroad.

The four regimes, the one you get by default — and the couple who married in Nevada

The Code regulates four marital property regimes — the regime de bens of the Brazilian sources — each in a provision that states its principle in one sentence. The table puts them side by side; the exceptions each article announces are the detail a deed is drafted around, too long to summarize safely here.

The default is the row that matters most, because it is the one most foreigners are on without knowing it. Readers who come from a community-property system should not map their own term onto it: comunhão parcial is what article 1,658 and the articles that follow it define, and nothing else. A foreigner domiciled in Brazil who marries without a deed is in partial community; so is the foreign couple whose own law refers the question back to Brazilian law; and so, from the wedding, is anyone whose deed turns out to be null.

The default has a history, and the history explains a decision that surprises people. The Superior Court of Justice decided, in a case reported in its official case-law bulletin — REsp 134,246-SP, Third Panel, 2004 — the regime of a couple who had married in Nevada in 1975, without a prenup, having lived in different countries before the wedding, and who then set up their first marital home in Brazil. Article 7, § 4, sent the regime to Brazilian law, and the court applied the legal regime Brazil had on the day of that wedding. The Civil Code of 1916 provided in article 258 that “Não havendo convenção, ou sendo nula, vigorará, quanto aos bens, entre os cônjuges, o regime da comunhão universal” — where there is no agreement, or it is null, universal community governs; only in 1977 did Law 6,515 rewrite the provision to read “o regime de comunhão parcial”. The Nevada couple, married two years before that change, were held to be in universal community.

The current Code keeps that photograph from developing further. Article 2,039 provides that the property regime in marriages celebrated under the previous Code, “Lei nº 3.071, de 1º de janeiro de 1916, é o por ele estabelecido” — is the one that Code established. A regime governed by Brazilian law is fixed by the default in force on the wedding day, and it does not update when the law does. If you married abroad decades ago, moved to Brazil right after and never signed anything, the question is not what the Civil Code says today; it is what it said then.

Two registries, two acts: the habilitação and the Real Estate Registry

A prenuptial agreement in Brazil passes through two registries, and the pages that name only one — or the wrong one — produce most of the practical errors I see. They are different buildings doing different jobs.

The civil registry, through the habilitação. A foreigner who wants to get married in Brazil goes through the same pre-marriage file as anyone else — the requirements are the same documents, with the added step of apostille and sworn translation for those issued abroad — and the marriage is prepared at the Registro Civil das Pessoas Naturais, the civil registry of natural persons, in the pre-marriage proceeding the Code calls habilitação. Article 1,525 lists what the application must carry — among them: a birth certificate or equivalent; a declaration by two adult witnesses “que atestem conhecê-los e afirmem não existir impedimento que os iniba de casar” — attesting that they know the couple and that no impediment prevents them from marrying; a declaration of civil status, domicile and residence; and, where a previous marriage existed, the death certificate, the annulment judgment or the registration of the divorce judgment. A foreigner's documents enter the file by the route described above. Notice that the two witnesses belong to the habilitação: the Code attaches no witness requirement to the deed itself. And it is in this proceeding, by article 1,640's sole paragraph, that the option for a regime is exercised — partial community by a written term; any other choice by the public deed, which the couple brings from the notary and the civil registry records in the marriage entry — and, where the regime is not the legal one, the entry itself states it, with the date and the notary at whose office the deed was taken (Law 6,015, article 70, item 7).

The Real Estate Registry, for effect against third parties. The deed binds the spouses from the wedding. Its effect against everyone else depends on a second act, in a different registry:

Art. 1.657. As convenções antenupciais não terão efeito perante terceiros senão depois de registradas, em livro especial, pelo oficial do Registro de Imóveis do domicílio dos cônjuges.

Article 1,657. Antenuptial agreements shall have no effect against third parties until registered, in a special book, by the officer of the Real Estate Registry of the spouses' domicile.

The Public Records Act names the book and the place. Article 178 lists what is registered in “Livro nº 3 - Registro Auxiliar”, Book 3, the Auxiliary Register, and item V is “as convenções antenupciais”, antenuptial agreements. Article 244 puts the two levels together: “As escrituras antenupciais serão registradas no livro nº 3 do cartório do domicílio conjugal, sem prejuízo de sua averbação obrigatória no lugar da situação dos imóveis de propriedade do casal, ou dos que forem sendo adquiridos e sujeitos a regime de bens diverso do comum, com a declaração das respectivas cláusulas, para ciência de terceiros” — antenuptial deeds shall be registered in Book 3 of the registry of the marital domicile, without prejudice to their mandatory annotation at the place where the couple's real property is located, or where property later acquired and subject to a regime other than the common one is located, with a statement of the clauses, for the knowledge of third parties.

Read that against the claim that a prenup is “registered at the Real Estate Registry where the property is”. The registration — the act that gives the deed effect against third parties under article 1,657 — is made in Book 3 of the Real Estate Registry of the marital domicile, whether or not the couple owns anything there. What happens where a property is located is a second, derivative act: an averbação, an annotation on that property's own record, so that anyone consulting the property's file sees the clauses. A creditor, a buyer or a bank that checks the marital domicile's Book 3 and finds nothing may treat the couple as if the deed did not exist.

One reading, stated as a reading. Articles 1,657 and 244 speak of convenções antenupciais and escrituras antenupciais — instruments of Brazilian law, registered at the marital domicile, which for a couple on branch (A) may not be in Brazil at all. Brazilian family-law scholarship reads Book 3 as the registry for regimes governed by Brazilian law, and the route for a foreign regime as the one above: the RTD for the document, the marriage record for the regime. Registrars are not bound by scholarship, though: where the couple later acquires Brazilian property, ask the Real Estate Registry of that property what it will annotate, with the RTD registration and the marriage record in hand. Brazilian notaries will in any case — as a matter of practice, not statute — ask a foreign-married buyer for proof of the marriage and its regime — the point our article on buying property in Brazil as a foreigner makes from the buyer's side, and the reason this work is best done before the first purchase.

There is no postnup in Brazil

The question arrives in many forms, and the Code answers in a single paragraph. Article 1,639, § 1, fixes the starting point: “O regime de bens entre os cônjuges começa a vigorar desde a data do casamento” — the property regime between the spouses takes effect from the date of the marriage. Paragraph 2 is the only door the Civil Code leaves after that date:

§ 2º É admissível alteração do regime de bens, mediante autorização judicial em pedido motivado de ambos os cônjuges, apurada a procedência das razões invocadas e ressalvados os direitos de terceiros.

§ 2. A change of the property regime is admissible, by judicial authorization, on a reasoned application by both spouses, the merits of the reasons invoked having been verified and the rights of third parties being preserved.

There is no post-nuptial agreement in the Brazilian Civil Code. The instrument the Code knows is antenuptial; after the wedding, the regime is changed by a judge, on an application that both spouses sign and justify, with third parties' rights preserved. The Superior Court of Justice states the rule from the other side: a conventional separation regime established in a prenup “é imutável, a não ser que haja manifestação expressa de ambos os cônjuges” — is immutable unless there is an express manifestation by both spouses (REsp 1,706,812). So the answer to “can we sign a postnup?” is no as to the form and yes as to the possibility of change — through the court, together, and prospectively. The LINDB adds one route written for the foreigner who naturalizes, and it is judicial too. Article 7, § 5, provides that “O estrangeiro casado, que se naturalizar brasileiro, pode, mediante expressa anuência de seu cônjuge, requerer ao juiz, no ato de entrega do decreto de naturalização, se apostile ao mesmo a adoção do regime de comunhão parcial de bens, respeitados os direitos de terceiros e dada esta adoção ao competente registro” — the married foreigner who becomes a Brazilian citizen may, with the spouse's express consent, ask the judge, at the delivery of the naturalization decree, to have the adoption of partial community endorsed on it, third parties' rights preserved and the adoption entered in the competent registry. A judicial act on the naturalizing spouse's request, with the other's express consent, not a postnup — and the “se apostile ao mesmo” of that text means to endorse a note on the decree, not the Hague apostille of the earlier sections. What your own country's law does with a post-nuptial agreement signed there is that law's question; if such an instrument ever has to produce effects in Brazil for a couple whose regime that foreign law governs, article 17 of the LINDB is the filter Brazil applies; for a couple whose regime Brazilian law governs, no foreign postnup replaces the court.

Over seventy: mandatory separation, and how the Supreme Court changed the deed

The Code takes the choice of regime away from three groups of people, and the second is defined by age:

Art. 1.641. É obrigatório o regime da separação de bens no casamento: I - das pessoas que o contraírem com inobservância das causas suspensivas da celebração do casamento; II – da pessoa maior de 70 (setenta) anos; […] III - de todos os que dependerem, para casar, de suprimento judicial.

Article 1,641. The regime of separation of property is mandatory in the marriage: I - of persons who contract it in disregard of the suspensive causes of the celebration of marriage; II - of a person over 70 (seventy) years of age; […] III - of all who depend, in order to marry, on judicial supply of consent.

Item II is the one the English-language pages notice, usually as “commonly required over 70”. Item I deserves a sentence for a divorced person marrying here: the suspensive causes of article 1,523 include “o divorciado, enquanto não houver sido homologada ou decidida a partilha dos bens do casal” — the divorced person, until the division of the former couple's property has been approved or decided — and a marriage celebrated in disregard of that cause is placed under mandatory separation by force of law.

Now the change. On February 1, 2024, the Supreme Federal Court decided the case registered as Tema 1,236 of general repercussion, and fixed this thesis:

Nos casamentos e uniões estáveis envolvendo pessoa maior de 70 anos, o regime de separação de bens previsto no artigo 1.641, II, do Código Civil, pode ser afastado por expressa manifestação de vontade das partes mediante escritura pública

In marriages and stable unions involving a person over 70 years of age, the regime of separation of property provided for in article 1,641, II, of the Civil Code may be set aside by the express manifestation of the parties' will by public deed

For the couple already married, the court's news release adds — “já estejam casadas ou em união estável podem alterar o regime de bens, mas para isso é necessário autorização judicial (no caso do casamento) ou manifestação em escritura pública (no caso da união estável). Nesses casos, a alteração produzirá efeitos patrimoniais apenas para o futuro” — that those already married or in a stable union may change the property regime, but for that judicial authorization is necessary (in the case of marriage) or a manifestation by public deed (in the case of a stable union); in those cases, the change produces property effects only for the future.

Three separate statements are packed into the thesis and the release. Before the wedding, a couple in which one or both are over seventy may set aside mandatory separation by public deed — the same instrument as any other prenuptial agreement in Brazil. After the wedding, a couple already married under mandatory separation does not sign a deed; the change goes through the court — in practice the route of article 1,639, § 2 — while a couple in a stable union changes it by public deed. And in either case the change is prospective: what was acquired under mandatory separation before the change stays under it. A page that says “commonly required over 70” is describing the rule the court reshaped in 2024 without the reshaping.

Mandatory separation also has a feature a foreigner would not guess from its name. The Supreme Federal Court's Súmula 377, one of the court's summary statements of settled law, reads:

No regime de separação legal de bens, comunicam-se os adquiridos na constância do casamento.

Under the regime of legal separation of property, the assets acquired during the marriage communicate.

So the separation the law imposes is not the separation of article 1,687 that a couple chooses: under it, what is acquired during the marriage is shared. The Superior Court of Justice has attached a condition, in a decision of its Second Section reported in its official bulletin — EREsp 1,623,858-MG, 2018 — that the communication requires proof of the spouses' common effort in the acquisition; and it has held, in REsp 1,922,347, that a couple under mandatory separation may sign a deed making the separation total, “afastando, assim, a aplicação da Súmula 377 do Supremo Tribunal Federal” — setting aside the application of Súmula 377. Two deeds, then, for a couple with a spouse over seventy: one that sets the mandatory regime aside under Tema 1,236, and one that keeps it and closes the door the Súmula leaves open. One caveat: whether article 1,641, II, reaches a couple whose regime is governed by a foreign law under article 7, § 4, is not decided here. This section is written for a regime governed by Brazilian law.

Stable union (união estável): the prenup you signed still works

Many foreign couples live in Brazil for years before — or instead of — marrying, and the Code recognizes that life as a união estável, a stable union, with property consequences of its own. None of the English-language pages I reviewed mentions it:

Art. 1.725. Na união estável, salvo contrato escrito entre os companheiros, aplica-se às relações patrimoniais, no que couber, o regime da comunhão parcial de bens.

Article 1,725. In a stable union, unless there is a written contract between the partners, the regime of partial community of property applies to the property relations, insofar as applicable.

Three points follow. First, the default is the same as for marriage: partial community, from the moment the union exists, with no ceremony and no registry entry needed. Second, the instrument that displaces it is a written contract between the partners — the Code does not require a public deed here, though the deed is the usual and safer form. Third, a prenup signed for a wedding that never happened is not wasted. The Superior Court of Justice's Fourth Panel, in AREsp 2,064,895, refused to treat as ineffective a prenup of total separation whose marriage never took place, holding that “o pacto antenupcial detém validade no âmbito da união estável, para fins de definição do regime de bens no período da convivência” — the prenup holds validity within the stable union, for the purpose of defining the property regime during cohabitation. And in REsp 1,483,863 the same panel held that a prenup governs immediately the acts that follow it, “devendo reger, desde a sua celebração, a união estável pré-matrimonial” — governing, from its execution, the pre-marital stable union. A couple who sign the deed months before the wedding are, as to their property, already under the regime they chose.

Two provisions of the National Justice Council's consolidated rules for registries — Provision 149 of 2023, the Código Nacional de Normas — complete the picture. Article 537 provides that the registration of a stable union is optional, “É facultativo o registro da união estável”, and that the registration “confere efeitos jurídicos à união estável perante terceiros” — gives the union legal effects against third parties. Article 550 governs the conversion of the union into marriage: the conversion “implica a manutenção, para todos os efeitos, do regime de bens que existia no momento dessa conversão, salvo pacto antenupcial em sentido contrário” — keeps, for all purposes, the regime that existed at the moment of conversion, unless a prenuptial agreement provides otherwise (§ 1); and adopting a new regime on conversion requires a prenup, “salvo se o novo regime for o da comunhão parcial de bens, hipótese em que se exigirá declaração expressa e específica dos companheiros nesse sentido” — unless the new regime is partial community, which an express and specific declaration by the partners suffices for (§ 2). Tema 1,236 is written for stable unions too.

What the prenup cannot do: inheritance

The most expensive misunderstanding about a prenuptial agreement in Brazil is the belief that a separation-of-property deed settles what happens when one spouse dies. It does not. The regime decides what is yours and what is the couple's during the marriage — on death, it fixes the surviving spouse's own share of the common property, the meação. Succession law decides who inherits the deceased's share, and it has a protected core the deed cannot reach:

Art. 1.845. São herdeiros necessários os descendentes, os ascendentes e o cônjuge.

Article 1,845. The necessary heirs are the descendants, the ascendants and the spouse.

The spouse is a necessary heir, and the necessary heirs as a class have half of the estate by law — article 1,846: “Pertence aos herdeiros necessários, de pleno direito, a metade dos bens da herança, constituindo a legítima”, half of the estate belongs to the necessary heirs as of right, constituting the reserved portion — the forced heirship of the English-language sources; and a clause that tried to remove the spouse from the succession would contravene an absolute provision of law under article 1,655. The Superior Court of Justice has said precisely that, in REsp 1,294,404: a prenup establishing total separation “somente pode dispor sobre a incomunicabilidade de bens durante o casamento, não podendo invadir a seara do direito sucessório” — may only provide for the non-communication of property during the marriage, and may not invade the field of succession law — because “não existe no ordenamento jurídico brasileiro previsão de ultratividade do regime patrimonial”, there is no provision in Brazilian law for the property regime to outlive the marriage. The deed stops at death.

Where the regime does reach the succession is narrow. Article 1,829, I, gives the estate first to the descendants “em concorrência com o cônjuge sobrevivente, salvo se casado este com o falecido no regime da comunhão universal, ou no da separação obrigatória de bens” — in concurrence with the surviving spouse, unless the spouse was married to the deceased under universal community or under mandatory separation — or, under partial community, where the deceased left no separate property. The regime decides whether the spouse shares the deceased's estate alongside the children, not whether the spouse is an heir at all. Which law governs the succession of a foreigner with assets in Brazil is the subject of our article on inheritance in Brazil for foreign heirs; this article's point is only that the deed is not the instrument for any of it.

“Article 256” and the other things you will read online — and how I handle a cross-border prenup

Here is the provision two of the pages I reviewed cite as confirming the validity of a prenuptial agreement in Brazil, quoted from the text in which it actually exists — Law 3,071 of January 1, 1916, the Civil Code of 1916, which the Planalto publishes with the notice that it was repealed by Law 10,406 of 2002:

Art. 256. É lícito aos nubentes, antes de celebrado o casamento, estipular, quanto aos seus bens, o que lhes aprouver (arts. 261, 273, 277, 283, 287 e 312). Parágrafo único. Serão nulas tais convenções: I. Não se fazendo por escritura pública. II. Não se lhes seguindo o casamento.

Article 256. The spouses-to-be may, before the marriage is celebrated, stipulate as to their property whatever they please (articles 261, 273, 277, 283, 287 and 312). Sole paragraph. Such agreements shall be null: I. If not made by public deed. II. If the marriage does not follow them.

The provision is real, it says something true about form, and it has been out of force for more than two decades. Its successors are articles 1,639 and 1,653 of the current Code. Citing the 1916 text is not a harmless slip, because that Code also had a different default — universal community, article 258, as the Nevada case shows — and a different age rule, imposing separation on men over sixty and women over fifty (article 258, sole paragraph, II). A reader who takes “Article 256” as current law is one search away from taking article 258 as current law too.

The rest of what circulates is answered above by the provision rather than by its author: nationality and the place of the wedding do not decide (article 7, § 4); the foreign prenup enters through the RTD and the marriage record, not the property's registry; the civil registry and the Real Estate Registry do two different jobs; the over-70 rule was reshaped in 2024; the postnup that does not exist has a judicial substitute; the stable union is governed by the deed too; and a separation deed protects nothing after death.

How I handle a cross-border prenup. The order never changes. First, domicile — where each of you lived on the wedding day, or where you first lived together, with the documents that prove it, because Resolution 583 will ask for them and everything else depends on the answer. Second, the law — foreign or Brazilian, by article 7, § 4; and if foreign, which of the four proofs of that law your country can produce. Third, the form — for Brazilian law, a public deed before the wedding, and nothing else. Fourth, the registries — for a foreign prenup: apostille, sworn translation, RTD, the marriage transcription if one of you is Brazilian, the annotation of the regime by its own name; for a Brazilian deed: the habilitação, Book 3 at the marital domicile, then the annotation on any property. Fifth, what the deed cannot do — the reserved portion, the stable union that may already exist, the age of seventy — checked against the clauses before anyone signs. The whole sequence can be run from outside Brazil through a representative with specific powers.

Five mistakes we keep seeing.

1. Signing a private agreement and calling it a Brazilian prenup. A couple domiciled in Brazil drafts a careful contract, signs it before witnesses, and marries. Article 1,653: null. Article 1,640: partial community. The care went into the wrong instrument.

2. Treating the foreign prenup as done once it is apostilled. The apostille removes legalization; it does not translate the document, register it or write the regime anywhere in Brazil. The sworn translation, the RTD and — where one of you is Brazilian — the annotation under Resolution 583 are the remaining steps.

3. Taking the deed to the property's registry and skipping the marital domicile. Article 1,657 makes the effect against third parties depend on registration in Book 3 at the spouses' domicile. An annotation on a property without that registration is a second act without a first.

4. Assuming a wedding abroad takes a Brazil-domiciled couple out of Brazilian law. Article 7, § 4, reads domicile, not the place of the ceremony. The couple flies home married under the Brazilian default.

5. Expecting a separation deed to settle the succession. The regime ends with the marriage; the spouse is a necessary heir with a reserved portion, and the Superior Court of Justice has refused the deed any effect after death. Estate planning is another instrument, under another law.

The three facts that organize a prenuptial agreement in Brazil

Strip the subject to its skeleton and three facts carry everything else in this article about a prenuptial agreement in Brazil:

• Domicile decides which law governs your regime — not nationality, not the place of the wedding. Article 7, § 4, of the LINDB sends the regime, legal or contractual, to the law of the country where the spouses-to-be were domiciled when they married or, where their domiciles differed, to the law of the first marital domicile. A foreign prenup governs a couple domiciled abroad; Brazilian law governs a couple domiciled in Brazil, wherever the ceremony took place; the only filter Brazil applies to a foreign regime is article 17 — national sovereignty, public policy and good morals.
• A foreign prenup enters Brazil by documents and, where one spouse is Brazilian, the foreign regime is written into the transcribed marriage record by its own name. Apostille (Decree 8,660/2016); sworn translation and document registered at the Registry of Titles and Documents (Law 6,015/1973, articles 148 and 129, item 6); and, since Resolution 583/2024, for the couple with a Brazilian spouse, the annotation of the regime on the transcribed marriage record, by the nomen juris of origin, on proof of domicile and one of four proofs of the foreign law, without judicial authorization — an annotation of the regime that already governs, not a choice made after the wedding.
• Under Brazilian law the prenup is a public deed signed before the wedding, the default is partial community, and the deed ends where the marriage ends. Without a public deed, partial community; an agreement in any other form is null (Civil Code, articles 1,640 and 1,653). Effect against third parties comes only with registration in Book 3 of the Real Estate Registry of the marital domicile (article 1,657; Law 6,015, article 244). After the wedding there is no postnup, only a judicial change on both spouses' application (article 1,639, § 2). The deed also governs a stable union (article 1,725; AREsp 2,064,895), can set aside the mandatory separation of the over-seventies when signed before the wedding (Tema 1,236), and cannot touch the reserved portion of the necessary heirs (articles 1,845 and 1,846; REsp 1,294,404).

Carvalho Barros Advocacia Internacional handles these files from both ends — a Brazilian practice serving clients in more than 30 countries, with cross-border family representation that runs the sequence this article described: the domicile analysis, the choice of law, the deed or the foreign instrument's entry into the Brazilian record, the registrations, and the check of the clauses against the rules the deed cannot displace. The firm's Portuguese-language article on the subject is written for the Brazilian who marries abroad. 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 Brazilian bar registration yourself, by the method described in hiring a Brazilian lawyer from abroad — and no promise of outcome is made or implied anywhere in this article.

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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, and it makes no promise as to the outcome of any registration, proceeding or dispute (Brazilian Bar Provision OAB No. 205/2021). The provisions supporting it — the Law of Introduction to the Norms of Brazilian Law, Decree-Law No. 4,657/1942 (article 7, head paragraph and §§ 1, 3, 4 and 5, and article 17); the Civil Code, Law No. 10,406/2002 (articles 1,523; 1,525; 1,639 and §§ 1 and 2; 1,640 and sole paragraph; 1,641; 1,653; 1,655; 1,657; 1,658; 1,667; 1,672; 1,687; 1,725; 1,829, I; 1,845; 1,846; and 2,039); the Civil Code of 1916, Law No. 3,071/1916, repealed by Law No. 10,406/2002 (articles 256 and 258, in its original wording and in the wording given by Law No. 6,515/1977); the Public Records Act, Law No. 6,015/1973 (articles 32, § 1; 70, item 7; 129, item 6; 148; 178, V; and 244); the Code of Civil Procedure, Law No. 13,105/2015 (articles 376 and 961 and its § 1); the Bustamante Code, Decree No. 18,871/1929 (article 409); Decree No. 8,660/2016 (recitals, and article 2 of the Convention it promulgates); CNJ Resolution No. 583/2024, amending article 13 of CNJ Resolution No. 155/2012 (articles 1 and 13, and §§ 3, 3-A, 3-B and 3-C of that article 13); CNJ Provision No. 149/2023 (articles 462, 537 and 550); the Supreme Federal Court’s thesis in Tema 1,236 of general repercussion (ARE 1,309,642, decided February 1, 2024) and its Súmula 377; and the decisions of the Superior Court of Justice named in the text — were checked against official sources on September 9, 2026, with the provisions the argument rests on named in the text itself. Portuguese passages, whether in blocks or inline, are reproduced from the official texts; English passages shown in quotation marks are the author’s working translation. The Portuguese is the only authoritative version, and any emphasis within the quotations is the author’s. This is an original article, not an adaptation: the firm’s Portuguese-language article on binational marriage is written for the Brazilian who marries abroad, and every provision cited here was verified for this article. Method caveats and declared limits. (i) The decisions of the Superior Court of Justice cited as REsp 1,706,812, AREsp 2,064,895, REsp 1,483,863, REsp 1,922,347 and REsp 1,294,404 were read in the court’s official special report of November 10, 2024, on the pacto antenupcial, where the case numbers were verified; the judgments themselves were not read, and the passages quoted are the court’s own summaries. (ii) REsp 134,246-SP (Third Panel, 2004) and EREsp 1,623,858-MG (Second Section, 2018) were read in the court’s official case-law bulletins (Informativos 206 and 628) for the firm’s Portuguese article on binational marriage, and are cited here on that basis; the full judgments were not read. (iii) The thesis of Tema 1,236 and the statements on couples already married or in a stable union are quoted from the Supreme Federal Court’s official news release of February 1, 2024; the full judgment was not read, and the date of Súmula 377 is not stated. (iv) Whether article 1,641, II, of the Civil Code reaches a couple whose property regime is governed by a foreign law under article 7, § 4, of the LINDB is not decided in this article. (v) The statement that Book 3 of the Real Estate Registry is the registry for regimes governed by Brazilian law is a reading of articles 1,657 of the Civil Code and 244 of Law 6,015/1973 shared with Brazilian family-law scholarship, not a printed rule, and registry practice varies. (vi) Whether an instrument executed before a foreign notary satisfies the public-deed requirement of article 1,653 when Brazilian law governs the regime is not answered here. (vii) That a public deed may be executed by an attorney-in-fact with specific powers is stated as notarial practice. (viii) Nothing in this article states what any foreign law provides on the validity, form or effect of a marital agreement, and no view is offered on the reader’s own law. (ix) The descriptions of what circulates in English-language material on this subject reflect the firm’s own documented review of the leading results for the relevant searches, conducted in September 2026; no source is named, and each claim is answered by the provision rather than by its author. Emoluments of Brazilian notaries and registries and translation costs are set at state level and no figure is stated. To review your specific case, contact attorney Luiz Barros — Brazilian Bar, OAB/AL 7.530.