July 28, 2026

Habilitação de Herdeiros: Proving Who the Heirs Are From Abroad

Before anything in a Portuguese estate can move, Portugal needs a document that states who the heirs are. That document is the habilitação de herdeiros, it is drawn up here before a notary or a registry office, and an American probate order does not replace it, because the Portuguese instrument is built from Portuguese civil records rather than from a foreign court's findings.

Families abroad can obtain it without travelling. What they usually cannot do is obtain it on the records they have, because the American branch of the family is only half present in the Portuguese register.

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In this article:

1. What is a habilitação de herdeiros?
1. Why an American probate order is not enough
1. What the notary builds the deed from
1. Can it be done without travelling to Portugal?
1. The divorce that names the wrong heir
1. Frequently asked questions
1. Conclusion

What is a habilitação de herdeiros?

It is the formal Portuguese statement of who succeeded to a person's estate. It records who died, when, where they last lived, whether they left a will, and who the heirs are, and it is executed either as a public deed before a notary or through a registry office procedure.

Nothing in a Portuguese estate proceeds without it. The property cannot be entered in the land registry in the heirs' names, a bank cannot release an account, a share of a house cannot be sold or mortgaged, and the estate cannot be divided. It is the hinge on which everything else turns.

What makes it difficult for families abroad is what it is made of. The deed is not a narrative and not a declaration of family history: it is assembled from civil records. The death certificate, the marriage record, the birth records of the children, and whatever else establishes the relationships. A relationship that is not on the Portuguese record cannot be recited in a Portuguese public instrument, whatever everybody knows to be true.

Why an American probate order is not enough

Because a decision from a court outside the European Union produces no effects in Portugal by itself, however final and unquestioned it is at home.

A United States probate court can determine the heirs, appoint a personal representative, admit a will and resolve a dispute between siblings, and none of those determinations reaches Portugal on its own. To produce effects here, the decision must first be examined and confirmed by a Portuguese court, in a documentary process set out in articles 978 and following of the Civil Procedure Code. The Portuguese court does not retry the case: it confirms that the decision is authentic and final, that the American court had authority over the matter, that the process was properly conducted, and that the result does not clash with the fundamental principles Portuguese law applies to everyone.

There is a second layer, and it is worth separating from the first. Even a recognized probate order is a court decision about a succession, not a Portuguese civil record of a family. The notary still needs the underlying records, because the deed of heirs describes relationships that Portugal registers, not findings that an American judge made.

So the two questions are different. Which foreign decisions in this estate need to be recognized, and which Portuguese civil records need to be created or corrected, are answered separately, and the answers determine the whole order of the file.

What the notary builds the deed from

Six things, in practice, and the gaps are predictable.

What the deed needs	What it proves	Where the American branch usually fails
Death certificate of the deceased	That the succession has opened, and when	A US certificate without an apostille, or without a certified translation
The deceased's Portuguese civil record	Marital status at death, and the chain behind it	The Portuguese record stopped decades ago and shows a marriage that later ended abroad
Marriage record of the deceased	Who the surviving spouse is, if any	A marriage celebrated in the United States that was never transcribed into the Portuguese record
Birth records of the children	Who the descendants are	Children born in the United States never registered in Portugal, so they do not appear here at all
Evidence of a will, or of its absence	Whether the estate is testate	A will signed in the United States whose effect over Portuguese assets has never been tested
Identification and a Portuguese tax number for each heir	That the heirs can be named and can transact	Heirs abroad without a Portuguese tax number, obtained through a representative

Two further steps sit alongside the deed rather than inside it. Portugal expects the death to be declared to the tax authority within a statutory period; that filing is separate from the deed and belongs with an accountant, and it is not something this firm advises on. And the property itself has to be entered in the land registry in the heirs' names, which is a further act built on the deed once the deed exists.

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Can it be done without travelling to Portugal?

In most cases, yes. Portuguese inheritance procedures can be conducted through a lawyer here under a power of attorney granted in the United States and properly legalized, and the review and confirmation of foreign decisions is a documentary process that does not call the heirs to a hearing.

The practical sequence for a family abroad usually runs like this. The Portuguese civil records are read first, to see what the register actually says about the deceased and the family. The gaps are identified: a marriage never transcribed, a divorce never recognized, births abroad never registered. Each gap is then closed through the right route, which for a foreign court decision means the review process before the Portuguese courts, and for a civil event means a transcription. Only then is the deed of heirs executed, and only after that does anything happen to the property.

Skipping to the notary is the version that wastes a year. A notary presented with an incomplete chain does not improvise around it; the file simply stops, and the family concludes that Portugal is being obstructive when in fact the instrument cannot be written.

The divorce that names the wrong heir

Of every gap we meet in estates with an American branch, the most disruptive is a divorce granted in the United States and never recognized in Portugal.

The consequence is precise. Under Portuguese law a surviving spouse is a protected heir. If a couple divorced in an American court and the divorce was never brought into the Portuguese record, then as far as Portugal is concerned the marriage never ended, and the former spouse still appears as the surviving spouse of the deceased. A deed of heirs built on that record would name a person who has not been part of the family for thirty years, and would omit the person who was. No notary will execute it.

The mirror image is just as common. Where the deceased remarried after an American divorce, the second marriage could never be transcribed while the first one still stood on the record, which means the widow or widower of the last three decades may not appear anywhere in the Portuguese register.

Both versions are resolved the same way, and only that way: the American divorce is reviewed and confirmed by a Portuguese court, the confirmation is registered against the marriage record, and the register finally matches the family. There is no version of this where the situation is explained to the notary and the deed proceeds anyway.

Frequently asked questions

Do all the heirs have to agree before the deed can be executed? The deed of heirs identifies who the heirs are; it does not divide the estate. Some later steps require agreement between the heirs and others do not, and distinguishing them is usually the difference between a stalled estate and a workable one.

One of the heirs has died as well. Does that break everything? No, it adds a generation. Each succession is worked through in order, with its own deed and its own records. It is longer, but it is a known procedure rather than a novelty.

What about inheritance tax in Portugal? Tax treatment is a separate matter that falls outside both this article and our practice, and it belongs with an accountant in Portugal. It does not change the documentary steps described here, which have to happen either way.

Can the American executor act directly in Portugal? Not on the strength of the American appointment alone. Whether that appointment can produce effects here is exactly the kind of question that runs through the review and confirmation process before it is relied on.

Conclusion

A habilitação de herdeiros is a reading of the Portuguese register, and for families with an American branch the register is usually decades out of date. That is why an estate that looks like a property matter turns out, on inspection, to be a records matter first.

At Fluxia Law our core area of practice is that bridge: having foreign decisions and foreign family events accepted in Portugal so that the register finally reflects the family as it really is. In estates with heirs abroad the work almost always begins with an unrecognized divorce or an unregistered marriage, which is why we read the whole chain before anything is filed.