An English solicitor’s guide to the Italian estate on your desk

What your English grant does — and does not — do in Italy

An English grant proves title over the English estate; Italy gives it no direct effect and has no resealing procedure. Where the grant helps at all, it is as supporting evidence — with a certified Italian translation and, in practice, an apostille — but Italian title to Italian assets comes from the Italian process below, never from the grant. And before your client’s English will can operate on Italian property at all, it must first be deposited and published before an Italian notary (the pubblicazione) — a formality English practitioners rarely expect, and one we deal with as a matter of course.

One structural difference matters even more: Italian law has no executor in the English sense as its working assumption — the estate passes to the heirs themselves, who must accept the inheritance. And acceptance can be tacit, by conduct: an heir who starts dealing with the Italian assets may be treated as having accepted — estate debts included — without signing anything, and an heir already in possession of estate property has only three months to complete an inventory if their liability is to stay limited. Where a minor inherits, acceptance must be with benefit of inventory, with the court’s authorisation. So the one warning for day one: tell the family to touch nothing in Italy until the acceptance strategy is settled. Nothing in Italy waits for your grant; the two legs can run in parallel.

The Italian sequence, in one paragraph each

Proving the heirs. Italy’s everyday instrument is the atto di notorietà — a declaration establishing who the heirs are, sworn before a notary or court clerk on the evidence of two independent witnesses (not the heirs themselves), prepared from the death certificate, the civil-status documents and the will (yours, translated and published, if it governs). Some banks accept a lighter self-certification signed by the heirs instead — but they are entitled to insist on the full atto, so we prepare to the stricter standard from the start. All of it is executed through powers of attorney with special powers — and here is the one step that happens at your end, not ours: the heirs sign before a notary public in England, with the FCDO apostille, on a bilingual power we draft and send ready to sign — in the form the act requires (Italian law makes the power follow the form of the act it supports), with a sworn Italian translation, and agreed with the notaio in advance so everyone signs once. Your office (or the family’s local notary) oversees the signing. In practice no heir needs to travel to Italy, and each heir’s Italian tax code (codice fiscale) is obtained for them wherever in the world they live.

The succession return (dichiarazione di successione). The estate must be declared to the Agenzia delle Entrate within twelve months of the death — and, for deaths since 1 January 2025, the tax is self-assessed in the return and paid within ninety days of that filing deadline: no one sends the heirs a bill. Italy, unlike Portugal, has a true inheritance tax — but a gentle one by European standards: spouse and children pay 4% only above a €1,000,000 tax-free allowance each; siblings 6% above €100,000; more distant and unrelated beneficiaries 6% or 8% with little or no allowance. On Italian real estate, cadastral and mortgage taxes (2% + 1%, with minimums) apply in addition — though where at least one inheriting heir takes the property as their prima casa (committing to Italian residence there), both drop to fixed charges of €200 each, a relief worth checking on every family file. The return is required even where no tax is due — the only exemption is the modest estate passing entirely to the spouse or children, worth no more than €100,000, with no real estate in it. And where the estate also pays UK inheritance tax, the 1966 UK–Italy double-taxation convention gives credit relief — the two taxes do not simply stack. If you take one date from this page, take the twelve months — kinder than Iberia’s clocks, but with the payment deadline now riding just behind it.

Transcription and voltura. With the return filed, the property is transcribed to the heirs at the land registry and the cadastral records updated (the voltura — nowadays usually requested within the telematic return itself); the banks release the accounts once proof of the succession filing is produced — the money moves from the bank to the heirs directly. (We never hold client or estate money.) Only then can the family sell — and a kind Italian surprise worth flagging early: a later sale of inherited property is generally outside Italian capital-gains tax (inherited immovables sit outside the five-year gain rule), though the position always depends on the facts and is confirmed at sale time.

Where the law of succession itself crosses the border

Start with why any of this reaches your British client at all: the assets do it. An Italian immovable moves only through the Italian machinery above — no English grant or order touches an Italian register — and an Italian account opens only to the Italian process. Once an Italian authority is involved, the EU Succession Regulation (650/2012, “Brussels IV”) tells it whose law governs — and the Regulation binds Italy, not the deceased: Italy applies it to every succession before its authorities, whatever the nationality — Brexit changed nothing on the Italian side. The default is the law of the deceased’s habitual residence; a will may elect the law of nationality.

The retiree who died resident in Italy. Italian law governs the whole succession by default — including the legittima, Italy’s forced-heirship reserve for the spouse and children, and the surviving spouse’s right to stay in the family home — regardless of what the English will says. Check the will for a choice-of-law clause before advising the family on shares.

The Manchester client with a Ligurian flat. English law is the starting point — but because the UK is a third state, the Regulation’s renvoi rule (Article 34, Reg. 650/2012) lets English conflict rules speak, and they refer immovables to the law of the place they stand — the settled common-law lex situs rule (Nelson v Bridport (1846) 8 Beav 547; Philipson-Stow v IRC [1961] AC 727), no statute required, which art. 34(1)(a) accepts as a referral back to a Member State’s law: the flat can be sent back to Italian succession law — a split estate: Italian law for the flat, English law for the movables. A choice-of-law election in the will excludes renvoi (art. 34(2)) and restores certainty. None of this is a novelty to the English lawyer: in Re Ross [1930] 1 Ch 377 an English court decided an Italian legittima claim precisely by following where the two systems’ conflict rules finally landed. And on a full intestacy there is nothing to elect — the referral runs unopposed, and the flat passes under Italian intestacy rules. (An owner resident in Ireland, the United States, Canada or Australia raises the same analysis — the lex situs rule is common to the common law.) One drafting point: make the election name the law of England and Wales — the Regulation treats the UK as a state of several legal systems, and “British law” names none of them. And one thing the election never does: it moves no Italian formality — the pubblicazione, the acceptance strategy, the dichiarazione di successione and the registrations run in full whichever law governs; the election only settles who takes, and hands the notaio an English law he will want formally proven — which is exactly the certificate we produce in-house.

And one reassurance worth passing to your will-drafting colleagues: a valid election of English law does not merely settle which law applies — it displaces the legittima. Italian courts do not treat their forced-heirship reserve as a matter of international public policy, so an English testator with Italian property can, with the right clause, dispose freely. (There is no shortcut through the European Certificate of Succession, either — the UK never joined the Regulation’s certificate system, so for a UK estate the Italian route above is the route.)

What this costs, and who does what

You stay lead: the English estate, the will, the family relationship, your fees — untouched. The Italian leg runs at published fixed prices — transferring an Italian property after a death is €5,000 + VAT; a cross-border estate €8,500–€10,500 + VAT — agreed in writing before work begins, with third-party costs shown to your client up front. (A structural note for an English eye: there is no client account and no undertakings culture here — we never hold client or estate money; every third-party cost is paid by your client directly to the official body, on a payment instruction we prepare.) Where the notaio or registry needs formal proof of English law (or, on the English side, the Probate Registry needs proof of Italian law under NCPR r.19 — where, since November 2020, a witness statement suffices in place of a sworn affidavit), we produce the certificate in-house, from €1,200 — because the same lawyer is admitted — and practising — on both sides of the question. How instructing us works is on our page for solicitors and professional advisers.

What to send us on day one

The death certificate; any wills the family knows of (no translation needed — we handle it, publication included); a note of the Italian assets as best the family knows them — and whether anyone is living in, or looking after, the Italian property, because possession starts the short clock; the heirs’ names, ages and where they live; and whether anyone plans to sell. That is enough for a written fixed quote. The twelve-month clock is generous — but Italian institutions are not fast, so start it early.

What we organise together

Two pieces of the file sit naturally between your office and ours. First, the power of attorney: we draft it, bilingual and to Italian standards; your end oversees the family’s signing before a notary public and the FCDO apostille — then it travels here, and everything else (the codice fiscale for each heir included) follows without anyone boarding a plane. Second, money: prepare your client for a system without a client account — our fees are invoiced in instalments at the milestones, and every third-party cost is paid by the client directly to the official body on a payment instruction we prepare; the estate itself moves bank-to-heir. Set those two expectations early and the file feels orderly rather than foreign.

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