Usufruct in Portugal in 2026: A Practical Guide to the Usufruto and the Nua Propriedade, the Thirty-Year Company Cap, the Twenty Years of Non-Use, and Who Pays the IMI

Most foreign residents meet the Portuguese usufruto in one of three ways. A parent or an in-law dies and the surviving spouse ends up with the right to live in a house that legally belongs to the children. A property listing looks 30 percent below the market and the small print says nua propriedade, bare ownership, with an elderly seller staying put. Or a Portuguese lawyer suggests, as part of estate planning, that you give the house to your children now and keep the usufruct for yourself.

All three are the same legal object, and it is a much older and more precisely defined one than the English word "life interest" suggests. The Civil Code devotes 45 articles to it. This guide walks through what those articles actually say, who pays which tax, and the three places where people get caught.

What a usufruct is

Article 1439 of the Código Civil (Civil Code) defines it in one sentence: usufruct is the right to enjoy, temporarily and fully, a thing or a right belonging to someone else, without altering its form or substance.

Three words in that sentence carry the whole regime. Temporarily, because it always ends. Fully, because within its term the usufructuary has effectively everything an owner has: possession, use, income, the ability to let it out. And without altering its form or substance, because the thing has to come back recognisable.

What is left with the owner is called the raiz or the nua propriedade: bare ownership, ownership stripped of enjoyment. The bare owner cannot live in the house, cannot let it, and collects nothing from it. What they own is the certainty that the property becomes fully theirs when the usufruct ends, and the right to stop the usufructuary destroying it in the meantime.

How one is created

Article 1440 gives four routes: contract, will, usucapião (acquisitive prescription, the Portuguese form of adverse possession) or operation of law.

In practice the two that matter are contract and will. The contractual version usually takes one of two shapes. In a reserva de usufruto, an owner sells or gives away the bare ownership and keeps the usufruct, which is the classic parent-to-child arrangement. In the other direction, someone buys or is given the usufruct alone, most often a surviving spouse being provided for.

Article 1441 allows a usufruct in favour of one person or several, at the same time or one after another, provided that everyone named exists at the moment the first usufructuary's right takes effect. You cannot create a usufruct for a grandchild who has not been born when it starts.

Article 1442 sets the default for joint usufructs, and it is the opposite of what many people assume. Unless the deed or will says otherwise, a usufruct created for several people jointly consolidates with the ownership only on the death of the last survivor. If a couple hold a joint usufruct and one of them dies, the survivor takes the whole thing. The children wait.

How long it lasts

Article 1443 is short and absolute. A usufruct can never outlast the usufructuary's life. If it is created in favour of a legal person, public or private, the maximum duration is thirty years.

That thirty-year cap is the single most useful thing to know if anyone proposes routing a usufruct through a company. It cannot be a perpetual arrangement, however the structure is drawn.

A usufruct can also be created for a fixed term shorter than a life, and it then ends on the earlier of the term and the death.

What the usufructuary may do

Article 1445 sets the hierarchy: the rights and duties of the usufructuary are governed by the constitutive title, and only where the title is silent or incomplete do the Code's default rules apply. Read the deed first. Almost everything below can be varied by it.

Where the deed is silent, article 1446 lets the usufructuary use, enjoy and administer the property as a prudent owner would, respecting its economic destination. That last phrase does real work: a usufructuary of a farm cannot turn it into a car park, and a usufructuary of a family home is on shakier ground turning it into a hostel than they would be simply letting it.

Article 1444 is the one that surprises people. The usufructuary may transfer the usufruct to a third party, permanently or temporarily, and may encumber it, unless the constitutive title or the law restricts that. A usufruct is a saleable asset. It remains tied to the original usufructuary's life, so what a buyer acquires is the right to enjoy the property until that person dies. The usufructuary also stays liable for damage caused by whoever they hand it to.

Article 1449 extends the usufruct to accretions and to all rights inherent to the property. Article 1450 lets the usufructuary make useful and voluptuary improvements, provided the form, substance and economic destination are unchanged, and treats them as a good-faith possessor for the purposes of claiming for those works.

For company shares, article 1467 splits the rights precisely. The usufructuary takes the distributed profits for the period, votes at general meetings, and takes the liquidation proceeds attributable to the holding. But on resolutions that change the articles or dissolve the company, the vote belongs jointly to the usufructuary and the bare owner.

What the usufructuary must do

Article 1468 sets two duties before taking possession. First, inventory the assets, with the owner cited or present, recording their condition and the value of any movables. Second, provide security, a caução, if the owner requires it.

Article 1469 removes that second duty in the case everyone actually encounters: no caução can be required from a seller who reserves the usufruct, and the constitutive title may waive it in any case. A parent who gives the house to the children and keeps the right to live in it does not have to post security.

If a caução is required and not given, article 1470 lets the owner ask that the property be let or placed under administration, that movables be sold or handed over, that capital be placed at interest, and so on. If the usufructuary does not agree, the court decides.

The cost split is in articles 1472 and 1473, and it is the most practically important part of the whole chapter.

• Ordinary repairs and administration costs fall on the usufructuary. These are the repairs indispensable to conserving the property.
• The line between ordinary and extraordinary is a number. Article 1472(2) says a repair is not ordinary if, in the year it becomes necessary, it exceeds two thirds of that year's net income from the property. A roof that costs more than two thirds of a year's rent is the owner's problem, not the usufructuary's.
• A usufructuary can walk away from the bill. Article 1472(3) lets them escape the repairs and costs they owe by renouncing the usufruct outright.
• For extraordinary repairs the usufructuary owes only a warning. Article 1473 requires them to tell the owner in good time so the owner can decide whether to act. If the owner does nothing and the works are of real usefulness, the usufructuary may carry them out and claim back what was spent, or the value at the end of the usufruct if that is lower.
• Bad administration flips the burden. If extraordinary repairs became necessary because the usufructuary managed the property badly, article 1473(1) treats them as ordinary and puts them back on the usufructuary.

Article 1474 handles running taxes with a rule that is easy to apply and easy to forget: annual taxes and other annual charges on the income of the property fall on whoever holds the usufruct when they fall due. Article 1471 requires the usufructuary to allow the owner's own works and improvements so long as the usufruct's value is not reduced by them, and gives the usufructuary the benefit of them without paying interest, except that any increase in net income belongs to the owner. Article 1475 obliges the usufructuary to warn the owner of any third-party act they learn of that could harm the owner's rights, and makes them liable for the loss if they stay silent.

How it ends

Article 1476 lists five causes, and one of them catches people out.

• Death of the usufructuary, or the end of the agreed term where the usufruct is not for life.
• Consolidation, meaning the usufruct and the ownership come into the same hands.
• Twenty years of non-exercise, for whatever reason. This is the one people miss. A usufructuary who simply never uses the property loses the right after twenty years, and the motive is expressly irrelevant.
• Total loss of the property.
• Renunciation, which under article 1476(2) does not require the owner's acceptance.

If a building is destroyed, article 1479 gives the usufructuary the land and the remaining materials to enjoy, while allowing the owner to rebuild and occupy them provided they pay the usufructuary interest on the value of the land and materials for the rest of the usufruct. Article 1480 shifts the usufruct onto any compensation the owner is entitled to, including compensation for expropriation. Article 1481 does the same for an insurance payout, but only where the usufructuary took out the policy or paid the premiums; if the owner paid them, the whole payout is the owner's. That is a good reason to be explicit in the deed about who insures.

Misuse does not end a usufruct. Article 1482 says so directly, but if the abuse becomes considerably harmful to the owner, the owner may demand the property be handed over or that the article 1470 measures be applied, and must then pay the usufructuary the annual net product less expenses and an administration premium.

Article 1483 closes the chapter: when the usufruct ends, the property goes back to the owner, subject to the special rules for consumable things and to any right of retention the usufructuary can invoke.

Registering it

A usufruct over property is not an informal family understanding. Article 2(1)(a) of the Código do Registo Predial (Property Registration Code) makes the legal facts that create, recognise, acquire or modify a usufruct subject to registration, alongside ownership, use and habitation, superficies and easements.

Article 5(1) then supplies the consequence: facts subject to registration only produce effects against third parties from the date of registration. An unregistered usufruct binds the person who granted it and nobody else. Article 8-A makes the registration compulsory rather than optional, article 8-B(1) puts the duty to lodge it on whoever executed the deed, authenticated the private document or certified the signatures, and article 8-C(1) gives a general deadline of two months from the date the facts were documented.

Before you buy anything with a usufruct attached, or agree to one, pull the certidão permanente de registo predial and read what is actually registered against the property. That document, not the seller's account, is where a reserved usufruct shows up.

The tax layer

This is where the money is, and where the three usual traps sit.

IMI: the usufructuary pays

Article 8 of the Código do IMI (Municipal Property Tax Code) makes the tax payable by whoever owns the property on 31 December of the year concerned. Paragraph 2 then carves out the usufruct: where there is a usufruct or a surface right, the tax is due by the usufructuary or the surface-right holder. Paragraph 4 presumes, for tax purposes, that the owner or usufructuary is whoever appears or should appear in the matriz on that date.

For a buyer of bare ownership this is a real benefit. You own the asset and you receive no IMI bill until the usufruct ends. For a usufructuary it is the corresponding cost, and it is separate from the Civil Code rule in article 1474 about annual charges on income: the IMI liability comes from the tax code directly.

IMT: both halves are taxable, and there is a table

Article 2(1) of the Código do IMT (Property Transfer Tax Code) applies the tax to onerous transmissions of the right of ownership "or of partial figures of that right" over property in Portugal. Buying a usufruct is taxable. So is buying bare ownership.

Article 13 then says how much of the property's value each half represents. For a lifetime usufruct, the value of the ownership separated from it is the full-ownership value minus a percentage set by the age of the person on whose life the right depends. Where several lives are involved, you take the oldest or the youngest depending on whether the right ends on the death of any of them or of the last survivor.

Article 13(b) then defines the usufruct as the remainder: full-ownership value less the ownership value calculated from the table.

Take a flat with a full value of 250,000 euros and a usufructuary aged 72. The deduction is 25 percent, so the bare ownership is worth 187,500 euros and the usufruct 62,500 euros. Move the usufructuary to 58 and the deduction becomes 40 percent: bare ownership 150,000 euros, usufruct 100,000 euros. The younger the usufructuary, the less the bare ownership is worth, which is exactly why the discounted nua propriedade listings you see advertised usually involve someone in their eighties.

For a temporary rather than a lifetime usufruct, article 13(a) deducts 10 percent for each indivisible five-year period the right still has to run, capped at whatever the deduction would have been if it were for life. A usufruct with fifteen years left is therefore three five-year periods, or a 30 percent deduction.

Article 13(b) also covers the smaller cousin of the usufruct, uso e habitação, the right of use and habitation set out in Civil Code articles 1484 to 1490. Its value equals the usufruct value where the right is being renounced, and that value less 30 percent in every other case. The discount reflects how much narrower the right is. Article 1484 confines it to using the thing and taking its fruits to the extent of the needs of the holder and their family, and calls it a right of habitation when it concerns a dwelling. Article 1486 measures those needs by the holder's social condition, and article 1487 defines the family narrowly: a spouse not judicially separated, unmarried children, other relatives owed maintenance, and people living with the holder in their service. Article 1488 is the hard limit: the holder may neither transfer nor let the right, nor encumber it in any way. Article 1489 still loads them with the ordinary repairs, administration costs and annual taxes as though they were a usufructuary where they take all the fruits or occupy the whole building, and proportionally where they do not. Article 1490 applies the usufruct rules to whatever those provisions leave open.

Stamp duty: 0.8 percent, 10 percent, and the sting at the end

Two entries of the Tabela Geral do Imposto do Selo (General Stamp Duty Table) matter. Entry 1.1 charges 0.8 percent on the onerous acquisition or the acquisition by donation of ownership or of partial figures of that right over property. Entry 1.2 charges 10 percent on gratuitous acquisitions, including by usucapião, on top of entry 1.1 where that also applies.

Article 6(1)(e) of the Código do Imposto do Selo (Stamp Duty Code) exempts the spouse or de facto partner, descendants and ascendants from stamp duty on the gratuitous transfers under entry 1.2 of which they are the beneficiaries. The 10 percent therefore does not apply inside the direct family line. The 0.8 percent under entry 1.1 is a separate charge and is not covered by that exemption, so a donation to a child still attracts it.

The sting is article 13(6) of the same code. Where ownership was transferred separately from the usufruct, the tax the acquirer owes when the two consolidate is charged on the difference between the property's valor patrimonial tributário in the matriz and the value of the bare ownership taken into account in the earlier assessment. In other words, the value that was carved out at the start is picked up at the end.

Whether anything is actually paid then depends on who the bare owner is. A spouse, de facto partner, descendant or ascendant is exempt under article 6(1)(e). Anyone else, a sibling, a nephew, a friend or an unrelated buyer of the bare ownership, is not. Article 21 of the Stamp Duty Code confirms that the CIMT valuation rules in its articles 13 and 15 apply to gratuitous transfers too, so the same age table drives both calculations.

IRS: the usufructuary declares the rent

Article 8(1) of the Código do IRS (Personal Income Tax Code) treats as rental income the rents from rustic, urban and mixed properties paid or made available to their respective holders. The holder of the income is the usufructuary, so it is the usufructuary who declares Category F, not the bare owner.

Article 8(2)(f) adds a point that catches people selling a usufruct to raise money in retirement. The amounts received for constituting, for consideration, a temporary right in rem of enjoyment over property, expressly including a lifetime one, are themselves treated as rents. Selling the usufruct in your own home is not a capital transaction that falls outside income tax; the price is rental income in the year you receive it. If the ordinary rules on declaring rental income already look demanding, this variant deserves a conversation with a contabilista certificado before anything is signed.

The three traps

Trap one: buying bare ownership without doing the arithmetic on a life. The discount on a nua propriedade is not a bargain, it is a price for waiting an unknown length of time. The CIMT table gives you the state's own actuarial view of that wait. If a seller aged 68 wants more of a discount than the 35 percent the table implies, ask why. If they want less, you are paying above the tax valuation for the privilege.

Trap two: assuming the surviving spouse's usufruct is the children's problem to manage. Under article 1442 a joint usufruct runs to the last survivor, and under articles 1472 and 1474 the ordinary repairs, administration costs and annual charges on income belong to the usufructuary. Children who inherit bare ownership do not get a maintenance obligation, but they also do not get a say in day-to-day management.

Trap three: forgetting that the usufruct is an asset the holder can sell. Article 1444 permits a transfer to a third party unless the deed restricts it. If you are giving away the bare ownership and keeping the usufruct, and you would not want a stranger living in the house, that restriction has to be written into the constitutive title. There is no default protection.

What this means for you

• If you have inherited bare ownership: you owe no IMI while the usufruct runs and you receive nothing from the property. Check the registry entry, keep the inventory made under article 1468 if one exists, and note that the twenty-year non-exercise rule in article 1476(1)(c) is the one circumstance in which an absent usufructuary's right can lapse.
• If you are buying a discounted nua propriedade: get the CIMT article 13 valuation before you negotiate, budget for stamp duty at consolidation if you are not a spouse, descendant or ascendant of the usufructuary, and read the deed for whether the usufruct can be transferred.
• If you are a retiree considering selling your usufruct: the price is treated as rental income under CIRS article 8(2)(f) in the year you receive it, not as a capital gain, and that has consequences for your marginal rate and for any means-tested entitlement.
• If you are doing estate planning: the reserved usufruct is the standard Portuguese structure and it works, but the two things that make it safe are a caução waiver you do not need under article 1469 and a transfer restriction you probably do. Portugal’s forced heirship rules and the legítima apply to the underlying property regardless.
• If a company is involved: thirty years is the ceiling under article 1443, and no drafting gets around it.

None of this substitutes for a lawyer on a specific deed, and the tax interaction between the CIMT table, the two stamp duty entries and the consolidation charge is one of the places where a Portuguese advogado or contabilista certificado pays for themselves. What the Code does give you is a set of defaults that apply whenever the deed is silent, and the single most useful habit is the one article 1445 points at: read the constitutive title first, because almost every rule in this guide can be written out of it.

Sources

This guide is written from official Portuguese and EU sources.

• Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa, Código Civil (Decreto-Lei n.º 47344/66), consolidated text, articles 1439 to 1483 (Portuguese only)
• Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa, Código Civil, consolidated text, articles 1484 to 1490 on uso e habitação (Portuguese only)
• Procuradoria-Geral Distrital de Lisboa, Código do Registo Predial (Decreto-Lei n.º 224/84), consolidated text, articles 2, 5 and 8-A to 8-C (Portuguese only)
• Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, Código do IMI, artigo 8.º (sujeito passivo) (Portuguese only)
• Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, Código do IMT, artigo 2.º (incidência objectiva e territorial) (Portuguese only)
• Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, Código do IMT, artigo 13.º (regras especiais e tabela de idades) (Portuguese only)
• Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, Código do Imposto do Selo, consolidated text, articles 6, 13, 19 and 21 and the Tabela Geral (PDF, Portuguese only)
• Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, Código do IRS, consolidated text, artigo 8.º (rendimentos da categoria F) (PDF, Portuguese only)