Parliament Clears a Reform Letting a Single Heir Unblock the Sale of an Undivided Estate
A government bill overhauling Portugal's rules on undivided inheritances (heranças indivisas) cleared committee on 8 July with no votes against, ahead of a final vote on 17 July. It would let a single heir, spouse or executor force the sale of a jointly inherited property and cut the acceptance wind
Anyone who has inherited a share of a house in Portugal alongside several siblings or cousins knows how easily the property can become a prison of paperwork: nothing can be sold, renovated or even properly maintained unless every co-heir agrees. A reform advancing through parliament aims to break that deadlock — and it could unlock hundreds of thousands of empty homes.
On 8 July, the committee stage of a government bill to overhaul the rules on undivided inheritances (heranças indivisas) passed with no votes against. The Chega and Livre parties abstained, and the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party, or PS) abstained on some articles without opposing the measure overall. A final plenary vote is scheduled for 17 July.
The problem the reform targets
When someone dies and leaves property to several heirs, that property enters a state of joint ownership until the estate is formally divided. In theory the division happens quickly; in practice it can drag on for years or decades, especially when heirs are scattered, estranged or simply unresponsive. Under the current law, dating back generations, a single reluctant or unreachable co-owner can block any sale.
The scale is striking. Supporters of the bill cite roughly 485,000 vacant family homes tied up in undivided estates, plus some 3.4 million rural plots with no clearly defined owner — land that often goes untended and, in the dry interior, becomes tinder for wildfires. Paulo Marcelo, a deputy for the Partido Social Democrata (Social Democratic Party, or PSD), said the century-old system “has not worked well in practice,” producing family conflict and heavy bureaucracy.
What changes
The central shift is that a single heir, a surviving spouse or an appointed executor would be able to trigger the sale of a property from an undivided estate, rather than needing unanimity. Day-to-day administration of the estate could be decided by a simple majority of heirs, and the window for formally accepting an inheritance would shrink from ten years to two — forcing decisions that currently drift indefinitely.
The bill also extends to unmarried partners the same protection over the shared family home that surviving spouses already enjoy, and tightens the rules on who can hold executor powers. Taken together, the measures are designed to get stalled properties back onto the market, into rental use or under active management.
The objections
Not everyone is reassured. Chega deputy Vanessa Barata warned that the shortened two-year acceptance window could “leave emigrant communities unprotected,” a pointed concern in a country where millions of citizens and their descendants live abroad and may inherit property they rarely visit. Compressing the timetable helps clear the backlog, but it also raises the risk that a distant heir misses a deadline and loses out.
For Portugal's large foreign-resident community, the reform is worth watching closely. Many expatriates own homes jointly, and inheritance here is governed by Portuguese rules on forced heirship that already surprise newcomers. If the bill clears its final vote on 17 July, disposing of an inherited share — or forcing a sale when co-heirs will not cooperate — should become markedly easier than it has been for a hundred years.
