Inheritance Act (Zakon o nasleđivanju) in brief: heirs, forced share

What the Inheritance Act (Zakon o nasleđivanju) covers and whom it applies to

Zakon o nasleđivanju, the Inheritance Act, governs what is inherited, who inherits and on what conditions. What passes is the estate (zaostavština): all inheritable rights that belonged to the deceased at the moment of death (Art. 1). Succession is by law or by will, called zaveštanje or testament (Art. 2). Intestate succession applies where there is no will or the will does not cover the whole estate.

The official citation is: Zakon o nasleđivanju (Sl. glasnik RS Nos. 46/95, 101/2003 - Constitutional Court decision, and 6/2015). The Act applies to the succession of every person whose estate is governed by Serbian law, whether the assets are an apartment, land, a bank balance or a stake in a company. Foreign readers usually reach this page with three questions: who inherits, how large the forced share is, and how a will is made.

The procedure in which the succession is established is not in this Act. Probate (ostavinski postupak) is governed by the Non-Contentious Procedure Act (Zakon o vanparničnom postupku) and conducted by notaries public as court commissioners. That statute is covered at the end of this page.

How the Act is structured

The Act has 239 articles in six chapters:

• Chapter one, General provisions (Art. 1-7): the estate, grounds of succession, capacity to inherit, unworthiness
• Chapter two, Intestate succession (Art. 8-77): orders of succession, special rules for the spouse and parents, the forced share, hotchpot of gifts
• Chapter three, Testamentary succession (Art. 78-178): capacity, forms of will, content, legacies, executor, revocation, nullity and voidability
• Chapter four, Contracts in succession law (Art. 179-205): prohibition of contracts of inheritance, contract on cession and distribution of property during life, lifelong maintenance contract
• Chapter five, Passing of the estate to the heirs (Art. 206-236): opening of succession, acceptance and renunciation, liability for debts, partition
• Chapter six, Transitional and final provisions

The most searched provisions of the Inheritance Act

Unworthiness (Art. 4). A person cannot inherit who intentionally killed the deceased or attempted to, who by coercion, threat or fraud induced the deceased to make or revoke a will, who destroyed or hid the will, or who seriously breached a duty to maintain the deceased. The court considers unworthiness ex officio, and the deceased may forgive it in the form required for a will (Art. 5).

Legal heirs and orders of succession (Art. 8-21). Succession proceeds by orders, and a closer order excludes a more remote one (Art. 8). First order: descendants and spouse, with the children and the spouse taking equal shares (Art. 9). Second order: spouse and parents, one half each (Art. 12); if a parent cannot or will not inherit, that parent's share passes to his or her children, the deceased's siblings (Art. 13); if the parents have no descendants, the spouse takes everything (Art. 15). Third order: grandparents by lines (Art. 16-18). Fourth order: great-grandparents (Art. 19). The Republic of Serbia inherits when there are no other heirs and cannot renounce (Art. 21).

Representation (Art. 10). If a child of the deceased cannot or will not inherit, that share passes in equal parts to the child's own children, and so on down the line of descendants. The same rule applies to the descendants of parents and grandparents (Art. 13 and 17).

Special position of the spouse (Art. 22-26). The spouse loses the right to inherit if the deceased had filed for divorce and the claim proves founded after death, if the marriage is annulled for a reason the spouse knew at the wedding, or if cohabitation had permanently ended through the spouse's fault or by agreement (Art. 22). In the second order, a spouse without means of support may within one year of the death claim a life usufruct over the estate (Art. 23), and the other heirs may seek to reduce the spouse's share to one quarter where the marriage was short and the estate consists of inherited assets (Art. 26).

Wills (Art. 78-88, 111a and 112). A will may be made by anyone aged 15 or over who is capable of judgement (Art. 79). The forms used in practice are the holographic will (Art. 84), the written will before witnesses (Art. 85), the judicial will (Art. 86-88) and the notarial will (Art. 111a). The Act also knows consular, international, shipboard, military and oral wills. Holographic, witnessed and judicial wills may be deposited with the court for safekeeping (Art. 90). A will is always revocable (Art. 78).

Renunciation and acceptance (Art. 212-220). The estate passes to the heirs at the moment of death (Art. 212). An heir may renounce by a statement in the probate proceedings until the first-instance procedure ends, in his own name only; a renouncing heir is treated as never having been an heir (Art. 213). Renunciation cannot be partial or conditional and is irrevocable, except where it results from coercion, threat, fraud or mistake (Art. 214). Renunciation in favour of a named heir is in fact acceptance followed by a cession of the share, to which the rules on gifts apply (Art. 216). An heir who has not renounced by the end of the procedure is treated as having accepted (Art. 219).

Liability for debts (Art. 222-227). An heir is liable up to the value of the inherited property (Art. 222), co-heirs jointly and severally up to their shares (Art. 224), and a renouncing heir not at all (Art. 223). The deceased's creditors may within three months demand separation of the estate (Art. 225).

Partition (Art. 228-232). Any heir may demand partition at any time, except at an inopportune moment, and the right is not time-barred (Art. 228). Until partition the heirs manage and dispose of the inheritance jointly (Art. 229), and before partition a share may be transferred only to a co-heir (Art. 231). Practical steps when heirs disagree are on the page Brat neće da podeli nasledstvo.

Inheritance Act: the forced share (nužni deo)

The forced share is the most searched topic in Serbian succession law, because it decides how far a will and lifetime gifts can change the statutory distribution. The rules are in Art. 39-60.

Forced heirs are the descendants, adoptees and their descendants, the spouse, parents, adoptive parent, siblings, grandparents and other ancestors. An adoptive parent under incomplete adoption, siblings, grandparents and other ancestors are forced heirs only if they are permanently unable to work and have no means of support (Art. 39). Only a person called to inherit by law in the specific case can be a forced heir; while there are children, the deceased's parents are not forced heirs.

The forced share of descendants, adoptees and the spouse is one half, and of the other forced heirs one third, of the share they would take by law (Art. 40). Example: the deceased leaves a wife and two children and wills the whole apartment to one child. By law each would take one third; the forced share of the wife and of the other child is one half of that third, so one sixth of the value of the estate each.

The forced share is infringed when what the forced heir received by will and by gifts is worth less than the forced share (Art. 42). The calculation starts with all assets at the time of death, deducts debts and funeral costs, then adds the value of all gifts to legal heirs and of gifts to third parties made in the last year of life (Art. 48). Excluded are assets covered by a valid contract on cession and distribution, spending on an heir's maintenance and education, charitable gifts and small customary gifts (Art. 49).

The forced heir is as a rule entitled to the monetary value, owed jointly and severally by the testamentary heirs and legatees (Art. 43 and 44); on request the court may award a share of the assets themselves (a right in rem, Art. 43). Deadlines: payment is claimed within three years of the will being read, and a top-up because of gifts within three years of the death (Art. 58 and 59). The forced heir is satisfied after creditors but before legatees, and is not liable for debts up to the value of the forced share (Art. 41). Property covered by a lifelong maintenance contract does not form part of the estate and the forced share cannot be satisfied from it (Art. 195), a frequent point of dispute; see Ugovor o doživotnom izdržavanju.

Probate: the Non-Contentious Procedure Act

The procedure in which heirs and shares are established runs under the Non-Contentious Procedure Act (Sl. glasnik SRS Nos. 25/82 and 48/88 and Sl. glasnik RS Nos. 46/95 ... 14/2022). The court opens it ex officio on receiving the death certificate (Art. 89) and, once it finds that Serbian law applies, entrusts it to a notary public, as a rule the one who drew up the death record (Art. 110a). The notary schedules the hearing, summons the heirs and takes their statements of acceptance or renunciation. If a fact on which the right to inherit depends is disputed, the parties are referred to litigation. An appeal against the probate decision is lodged within 15 days of delivery (Art. 19). The final decision is the basis for cadastre registration. A person who did not take part in the procedure asserts his right by a civil action, since probate is not reopened; the heir's right to claim the estate is not time-barred (Art. 221 of the Inheritance Act). The steps, documents and costs are described on the page Ostavinski postupak.

Is there a new Inheritance Act in 2025 or 2026

No. The 1995 Act applies with two changes. The Constitutional Court decision published in No. 101/2003 struck one item of Art. 4 on unworthiness. The 2015 amendments (No. 6/2015) introduced the notarial will (Art. 111a) and required that the contract on cession and distribution and the lifelong maintenance contract be solemnised by a notary, with a mandatory warning that the property does not form part of the estate (Art. 184 and 195). A Civil Code that would also cover succession had not been adopted by September 2026. What has changed for citizens in practice is the transfer of probate to notaries public under the Non-Contentious Procedure Act.

Where to read the official text

The official consolidated text is available in the Legal Information System of the Republic of Serbia: Zakon o nasleđivanju at pravno-informacioni-sistem.rs. For the procedure, check the Non-Contentious Procedure Act; for costs, the Notarial Tariff and the Court Fees Act.

Sources

• Inheritance Act (Zakon o nasleđivanju, Sl. glasnik RS Nos. 46/95, 101/2003 - Constitutional Court decision, and 6/2015)
• Non-Contentious Procedure Act (Zakon o vanparničnom postupku, Sl. glasnik SRS Nos. 25/82 and 48/88 and Sl. glasnik RS Nos. 46/95 ... 14/2022), Art. 19, 89, 93 and 110a
• Chamber of Notaries Public of Serbia (Javnobeležnička komora Srbije)