My Parent Died in Brazil — What Happens to Their Property?

The call comes at an odd hour because of the time difference. A parent has died in Brazil — in the town where they retired, or where they never left — and you are on another continent with a passport, a few old photographs of a house, and no idea who is supposed to do what next.

Two things are true at once, and holding both is the whole first week. Legally, everything your parent owned passed to the heirs the moment they died. Practically, nobody can sell, transfer, withdraw or re-register any of it until a Brazilian proceeding called the inventário is opened and finished. The house is yours and not yours. The bank balance exists and cannot be touched. That gap is where mistakes are made — by well-meaning relatives, by helpful neighbours, by whoever has the keys.

This guide is written by the ZS Advogados team for the heir who lives abroad: the daughter in New Jersey, the son in Lisbon, the family scattered across three time zones. It is a first-week checklist, not a treatise. It tells you what happens to the property by operation of law, what you should secure in the first days, what you can safely leave for later, and which decisions are yours to make from where you are. The companion pieces — judicial versus notarial inventário and inheriting property in Brazil as a non-resident heir — pick up where this one stops.

Every legal claim below is tied to a named provision. Where a point depends on the state, the cartório or the facts, we say so.

What happens to the property the moment someone dies in Brazil?

Brazilian law uses a rule the French call saisine and Brazilian lawyers call droit de saisine without irony: the inheritance transmits to the legitimate and testamentary heirs at the instant of death (Código Civil, art. 1.784). There is no intervening period in which the assets belong to nobody, and there is no executor who “holds” the estate for the heirs the way a common-law personal representative does.

But the transmission is of a single, undivided block. Until the partition, the inheritance is indivisible and governed by the rules of co-ownership (art. 1.791, sole paragraph). Every heir owns an abstract fraction of everything, and no heir owns any particular thing. Your father’s apartment is not “yours” and your brother’s car is not “his”; each of you holds an ideal share of the whole espólio.

The practical consequences follow directly:

• The property registry does not change. The matrícula at the Registro de Imóveis keeps showing the deceased’s name until a partition deed or court order is presented for registration. Until then, no sale, no mortgage, no donation can be registered.
• Bank accounts freeze in practice. Once a bank learns of the death, it restricts movement. Balances are released through the inventário or, for limited categories and amounts, through a court order (alvará) under Lei nº 6.858/1980.
• Obligations keep running. IPTU, condominium fees, utilities, rural land tax (ITR) and any loan instalments continue to accrue against the estate. The estate — not the individual heirs — is liable for them, and they are paid from estate funds during the proceeding.
• Income keeps arriving, to the wrong place. Rent from a tenant, a pension’s final instalments, dividends: all of it belongs to the estate and should be received and accounted for by the person administering it, not by whoever happens to hold the bank card.

One point changes the arithmetic before you even count heirs. If your surviving parent was married under a community regime, half of the community assets are not inheritance at all — they are the survivor’s meação, their own property under the marriage regime (Código Civil, arts. 1.658–1.688). Only the deceased’s half enters the estate. A surviving companion in a união estável is treated as a spouse for succession purposes since the Supremo Tribunal Federal’s 2017 decision in RE 878.694.

Legal basis: transmission at death is art. 1.784 of the Código Civil (Lei nº 10.406/2002); indivisibility until partition is art. 1.791; the release of small balances and labour-related credits without a full proceeding is Lei nº 6.858/1980; the companion’s equal treatment is STF, RE 878.694 (Tema 809).

Who inherits — and does it matter that you live abroad?

The order of succession is fixed by statute and does not care about nationality, residence or how long it has been since anyone visited.

Rank	Who inherits	Notes
1st	Descendants (children, then grandchildren by representation)	Concurring with the surviving spouse in some marriage regimes
2nd	Ascendants (parents, then grandparents)	Concurring with the surviving spouse
3rd	Surviving spouse or companion	Takes everything if there are no descendants or ascendants
4th	Collaterals to the 4th degree (siblings, nephews, uncles, cousins)	Only if none of the above exist

Descendants, ascendants and the spouse are necessary heirs, and half of the estate — the legítima — is reserved to them by law. A will can dispose of the other half only. This is the point foreign families most often misunderstand: a Brazilian parent cannot “leave everything to charity” or “leave everything to the second wife” as far as the Brazilian assets are concerned, whatever a will drafted abroad says.

Living abroad changes nothing about your entitlement. It changes where the proceeding happens and how you participate. For assets situated in Brazil, Brazilian authorities have exclusive jurisdiction over the inventário and partilha — regardless of the deceased’s nationality or where they lived (CPC/2015, art. 23, II). A US, Portuguese or Japanese probate order has no direct effect on a Brazilian matrícula. Conversely, the Brazilian proceeding normally deals only with the Brazilian assets; property abroad is handled where it sits.

Legal basis: the order of succession is art. 1.829 of the Código Civil; necessary heirs and the reserved half are arts. 1.845 and 1.846; exclusive Brazilian jurisdiction is art. 23, II, of the Código de Processo Civil (Lei nº 13.105/2015). The conflict-of-laws rule that succession follows the deceased’s domicile, with Brazilian law applied where more favourable to a Brazilian spouse or children, is art. 10 of the Lei de Introdução às Normas do Direito Brasileiro (Decreto-Lei nº 4.657/1942) and art. 5º, XXXI, of the Constitution.

Days 1–3: what should you secure immediately?

Grief does not follow a checklist, so this one is short and concrete. Everything here can be done by a relative in Brazil, by a trusted friend, or by counsel — you do not need to be there.

1. Get the death certificate, and get more than one. The certidão de óbito is issued by the Registro Civil das Pessoas Naturais that registered the death (Lei nº 6.015/1973, arts. 77–88). Order several full certified copies (certidão de inteiro teor where available). The court or notary, each bank, the tax authority, the pension body and the property registry will each want one, and the first copy always ends up stapled to something.

2. Locate the deceased’s core documents. RG or passport, CPF, marriage certificate (or the certificate with the divorce annotation), any escritura or matrícula for the property, the last income-tax return (Declaração de IRPF), bank cards and statements, insurance policies, vehicle documents. Photograph everything and share it with the family in one place.

3. Secure the property physically — do not change it legally. Make sure the house is locked, the utilities are paid, and someone knows where the keys are. Do not let anyone move in “to take care of it” without a written arrangement, do not sell the car, and do not empty the apartment. Possession disputes born in the first fortnight take years to unwind.

4. Do not use the deceased’s bank access. Not the card, not the app, not the password, however urgent the funeral bill. Pay from your own account, keep the receipt, and let the expense be reimbursed by the estate in the proceeding. A withdrawal after death is a fact the court, the other heirs and the bank will all eventually see.

5. Notify the bank, the INSS or pension fund, the employer and any company where the deceased held shares. Ask each what they need; do not send originals.

6. Find out whether there is a will. Ask the family, then have counsel obtain the CENSEC certificate from the Registro Central de Testamentos On-Line — a search the judge or notary is required to run in either route anyway (Provimento CNJ nº 56/2016).

7. Start a contemporaneous log of who was told what, when, and what was paid from which account with which receipt.

Speak to counsel — if the death was registered abroad, the sequence is different. A Brazilian who dies abroad is registered at the consulate and the record must be transcribed at a Brazilian civil registry before it can be used; a foreign death certificate for a non-Brazilian has to be apostilled, sworn-translated and registered. This guide assumes the death occurred and was registered in Brazil; for the other case, tell counsel in the first call.

Days 3–7: what does the document map look like?

The second half of the first week is about knowing what you will eventually need, so the pieces that take months — an apostilled birth certificate from a foreign registry, a CPF for a sibling who has never set foot in Brazil — start moving now rather than after the route is chosen.

Document	Who it concerns	Where it comes from	Why it matters
Death certificate	Deceased	Registro Civil (Brazil)	Opens everything; several copies
ID and CPF	Deceased	Family papers; Receita Federal	Identifies the estate; CPF status must be updated
Marriage or union certificate, with regime	Deceased	Registro Civil	Determines the survivor’s meação and concurrence
Certificate of death of a pre-deceased spouse	Deceased	Registro Civil	Confirms prior succession, if any
Birth or marriage certificate	Each heir	Home-country registry or Registro Civil	Proves the relationship; foreign ones need apostille + sworn translation
Passport or ID	Each heir	Home country	Identification in the deed or the case file
CPF	Each heir	Consulate / Receita Federal	Mandatory for every heir, resident or not
Proof of address	Each heir	Home country	Required by notaries and courts
Matrícula (updated)	Each property	Registro de Imóveis	The title record; shows liens and prior transfers
IPTU / ITR receipts and valuation	Each property	Municipality / Receita Federal	Tax base and proof of regularity
Bank statements at date of death	Each account	Bank	Fixes balances for the estate and the ITCMD
Vehicle registration (CRLV)	Each vehicle	DETRAN	Identifies and values the asset
Company documents and last balance sheet	Each shareholding	Junta Comercial / company	Values the quota; may trigger the company’s own rules
Will, if any	Estate	Notary / registry search	Determines route and shares
Tax-clearance certificates	Deceased and estate	Receita / state / municipality	Required before the partition is registered

Three things about this table matter more than the rest.

Foreign documents are the slow lane. A birth certificate issued in Ohio or Kent has to be apostilled under the 1961 Hague Convention in the country that issued it, then translated by a sworn translator in Brazil. Both steps take calendar time and both are routinely done wrong the first time (a photocopy apostilled instead of a certified copy; a translation by a fluent friend instead of a tradutor juramentado). Our guides on apostilling documents for Brazil and sworn translation cover the mechanics.

Every heir needs a CPF, without exception. The tax filing, the deed or court record, and the eventual registration all identify each heir by CPF. A person resident abroad obtains one without travelling; see how to get a CPF without being in Brazil. If an heir already has one, check its standing rather than assuming it. Foreign nationals aged 16 or over with an address abroad have had to update their CPF registration annually through Receita Federal’s app since 2025 — optional in 2024, mandatory from 2025 (IN RFB nº 2.172/2024, art. 23-A, inserted by IN RFB nº 2.236/2024) — and skipping it counts as a cadastral inconsistency that suspends the number. Unfiled income-tax returns produce a different status, “pendente de regularização”. Either one stops the estate cold, usually on the day of the deed.

“Updated” means recent. Notaries and courts expect matrículas and civil-registry certificates issued within a short window before the act. There is no general national validity period for them: the one national rule is narrow — for a public deed on real estate, the certificate of ações reais e pessoais reipersecutórias and of ônus reais issued by the property registry is valid, for that purpose, for 30 days (Decreto nº 93.240/1986, art. 1º, IV). Everything else is fixed state by state by each judicial Corregedoria’s service rules and, in practice, by the individual cartório — so ask the notary or the court handling the estate which window it applies. The consequence is a sequencing rule: order those certificates when the deed or the petition is ready. Order the slow foreign documents now.

Legal basis: foreign public documents are accepted in Brazil under the Hague Apostille Convention (Decreto nº 8.660/2016; Resolução CNJ nº 228/2016); documents in a foreign language must be translated by a sworn translator to produce effects in Brazil (Código Civil, art. 224; CPC/2015, art. 192; Lei nº 14.195/2021, arts. 22–34); registration of foreign documents at a Registro de Títulos e Documentos for effect against third parties is Lei nº 6.015/1973, art. 129, 6º.

How do you find out what your parent actually owned?

More estates are delayed by an unknown asset than by a known dispute. Families reliably know about the house; they reliably do not know about the second savings account, the plot of land bought in 1994, the share in a cousin’s company, or the consórcio that paid out.

Work outward from what you hold:

1. The last income-tax return (Declaração de IRPF) is the single best map. Its Bens e Direitos schedule lists every asset the deceased declared, with acquisition cost. If you cannot find it, the estate’s representative can request it from Receita Federal once appointed.
2. The property records. Each property in Brazil has a matrícula at the Registro de Imóveis of the district where it sits. Beyond the properties the family already knows about, the registries run a shared electronic platform — the Sistema de Atendimento Eletrônico Compartilhado operated by the Operador Nacional do Registro de Imóveis (ONR), now presented as RI Digital — through which an owner search can be ordered without visiting each registry. The CNJ’s national rules for the extrajudicial forum list the services it must offer, including a prior and a qualified search for assets by CPF or CNPJ, viewing a matrícula, and ordering a digital certificate. Two practical points: the search key is the owner’s CPF, not their name, and it is a paid service accessed through the platform rather than a free public lookup. Treat the result as one input alongside the tax return and the IPTU bills, not as a guaranteed complete national list. IPTU bills point to urban property; rural land shows up at INCRA (the CCIR) and in the Cadastro Ambiental Rural (CAR).
3. Bank and investment accounts. The family’s statements first. Beyond that, in a judicial inventário the court can order a nationwide account search through the judiciary’s bank-search system, and can request the deceased’s tax records — searches a private party cannot run. This is one of the concrete advantages of the judicial route when assets are genuinely unknown.
4. Vehicles at the state DETRAN; company interests at the Junta Comercial (a search by CPF returns any company where the deceased was a partner or officer); pension and insurance through the INSS, the employer, or the insurer.
5. Wills through the Registro Central de Testamentos On-Line (RCTO), a module of CENSEC, the notaries’ shared electronic registry run by the Colégio Notarial do Brasil. Consulting it is not optional: Provimento CNJ nº 56/2016 obliges both judges processing a judicial inventário and notaries drawing up an extrajudicial deed to search the RCTO, and makes a CENSEC certificate on the absence of a will a required document in either route. Note its reach — the RCTO records public wills and the approval instruments of closed wills executed in Brazil from at least 1 January 2000, so a much older instrument may not surface there.
6. Debts. Credit cards, financing, a guarantee given for someone else, unpaid taxes. The estate answers for the deceased’s debts up to the value of the assets (Código Civil, art. 1.792) — heirs do not inherit debt beyond what they receive, but the estate must settle it before distribution.

Our service page on finding property and assets a deceased relative left in Brazil sets out how that sweep is run in practice. Do this sweep before choosing the route, because the answer decides almost everything else: whether the estate is simple enough for a notary, how much ITCMD is due, in which state, and whether a judicial order is needed to find what the family cannot.

Legal basis: limitation of heirs’ liability to the value of the inheritance is art. 1.792 of the Código Civil; the court’s power to order searches and require information in the inventário follows from the general provisions of the CPC/2015 on the judicial inventário (arts. 610–673) and on court orders to third parties.

What clocks are running?

Nothing about a Brazilian estate is lost forever if a deadline passes — proceedings are opened years late all the time. But several clocks convert delay into cost, and the heir abroad should know which ones matter.

Clock	Rule	What happens if missed
Opening the inventário	Within 2 months of death (CPC, art. 611)	No procedural penalty as such; the court may extend. The bite is the state tax rule below.
Concluding the inventário	Within 12 months (CPC, art. 611)	Extendable by the court; routinely extended
ITCMD late-opening surcharge	State law — in São Paulo, Lei nº 10.705/2000, art. 21	São Paulo adds 10% to the tax after 60 days and 20% after 180 days from death; other states have their own rules
ITCMD payment itself	State law; usually before the deed or the final court decision	Interest and penalties by state; the deed cannot be signed without proof of payment
Estate tax returns	The estate (espólio) files initial and intermediate income-tax returns until the partition; the declaração final de espólio is due by the last business day of April of the year following the final judgment of partition or the signing of the deed (IN SRF nº 81/2001, art. 6º)	A late or missing return draws a penalty; separately, the judge gives judgment on the partition only once the inheritance tax is paid and a negative certificate of debts to the Fazenda Pública is on file (CPC art. 654)
Property obligations	IPTU, ITR, condominium, utilities keep accruing	Arrears accumulate against the estate; condominium debts can be enforced against the unit
CPF status of every heir	Must be in regular standing at the deed or the registration; foreign nationals with an address abroad update annually (IN RFB nº 2.172/2024, art. 23-A)	A suspended or pending CPF blocks the heir from the proceeding and the registration, and is usually discovered late

Two points of nuance. First, the two-month rule in art. 611 is a directive to the heirs and the court; the real consequence lives in state ITCMD law, and every state writes its own. Second, “late” is measured from the date of death, not from when you found out — an heir who learns of a parent’s death months after the fact inherits the clock as well as the estate.

Legal basis: the opening and conclusion periods are art. 611 of the CPC/2015; the São Paulo surcharges are art. 21 of Lei estadual nº 10.705/2000; the constitutional basis of the ITCMD, including mandatory progressivity after Emenda Constitucional nº 132/2023, is art. 155, I, of the Constitution, with national general rules in Lei Complementar nº 227/2026.

Speak to counsel — the ITCMD is in transition and the number depends on the state. Rates, exemptions, small-estate thresholds and penalty clocks differ across all 27 units of the federation and several are still adapting to the post-reform rules. Our ITCMD calculator gives an orientation figure by state; the estate’s actual tax must be run against the current law of the state that taxes it, which for real estate is where the property sits.

Who can act for the estate — and can you do it from abroad?

Somebody has to administer the estate between death and partition: pay the IPTU, receive the rent, sign the tax filings, represent the espólio before banks and courts. In the judicial route that person is the inventariante, appointed by the court in the statutory order of preference — the surviving spouse or companion living with the deceased, then an heir in possession of the assets, then any heir, then a testamentary heir, then a cessionary, and so on (CPC, art. 617). In the notarial route the deed itself designates an interested party to represent the estate with the powers of an inventariante (Resolução CNJ nº 35/2007, art. 11).

An heir living abroad can hold that role, and can certainly participate as an heir, without travelling. The mechanism is a public power of attorney with special powers — procuração pública com poderes especiais — granted to a Brazilian attorney. The notarial route expressly admits heirs represented that way (Resolução CNJ nº 35/2007, art. 12); the judicial route requires counsel in any event.

The step-by-step of running an estate this way is set out on our inventário from abroad by power of attorney page. There are two ways to sign it from abroad:

• At a Brazilian consulate. The consul acts as a Brazilian notary; the instrument is a Brazilian public deed and needs no apostille or translation. This is the cleanest path for anyone within reach of a consulate.
• Before a local notary, then apostille, then sworn translation in Brazil, then registration at a Registro de Títulos e Documentos. Slower and more error-prone, but it works where a consulate is impractical.

Brazilian notaries can also draw up an electronic public instrument with the grantor appearing by videoconference on the e-Notariado platform. The rules moved: the 2020 provimento that created it was revoked and its content now lives in the CNJ’s Código Nacional de Normas for the extrajudicial forum (Provimento CNJ nº 149/2023, arts. 284 and following). Two features decide whether it is available to a particular heir. The grantor must sign with a certificado digital notarizado issued through the platform, which requires being identified by a Brazilian notary. And competence is territorial and absolute: for an electronic power of attorney, the competent notary is the one of the grantor’s domicile or, where a property is involved, of the place where the property sits. Neither rule was written with a grantor abroad in mind, and how a given notary applies them varies — ask the specific notary before planning around it.

What the instrument must say matters more than where it is signed. Powers to represent an heir in an inventário, to sign the deed of partition, to receive and give discharge, to settle, to cede or renounce, to pay taxes and to substitute another attorney are special powers and must be express (Código Civil, art. 661, § 1º). A generic “to represent me in all matters” clause is the single most common reason a foreign power of attorney is bounced. When there are several heirs in several countries, one attorney can act for all of them as long as their interests do not conflict — the subject of our guide on coordinating powers of attorney across countries.

Legal basis: the order of preference for inventariante is art. 617 of the CPC/2015; the requirement that powers beyond ordinary administration be express is art. 661, § 1º, of the Código Civil; the admission of heirs represented by public power of attorney with special powers in the notarial inventário is art. 12 of Resolução CNJ nº 35/2007; the designation of a representative of the estate in the deed is art. 11 of the same resolution.

Which route will the estate take — and why you do not have to decide this week?

Brazil has two roads: the judicial inventário in the Vara de Sucessões of the deceased’s last domicile (CPC, arts. 610–673), and the extrajudicial inventário, a public deed at a Tabelionato de Notas under Lei nº 11.441/2007, available where all heirs are capable and in agreement and, since Resolução CNJ nº 571/2024, in defined cases involving a will or an incapable heir — a will needs a final court judgment expressly authorizing the deed, and an incapable heir must take an ideal part of every asset with the Ministério Público’s favourable manifestation. The choice is reversible — the parties may opt for either route and may suspend or abandon a judicial proceeding to pursue the notarial one (Resolução CNJ nº 35/2007, art. 2º). So the first-week job is not to choose; it is to collect the facts that make the choice obvious. We compare the two, with a qualification test and document lists, in extrajudicial versus judicial inventário: which one you qualify for.

Legal basis: the judicial route is arts. 610–673 of the CPC/2015; the notarial route is art. 610, §§ 1º–2º, of the CPC/2015 and Lei nº 11.441/2007, regulated by Resolução CNJ nº 35/2007 as amended by Resolução CNJ nº 571/2024; the freedom to choose and to switch is art. 2º of Resolução CNJ nº 35/2007.

What will it cost — and which parts are fixed?

We do not publish fee figures, and no one can quote an estate they have not seen. What we can do is name the components so the heir abroad knows what is being paid for and can ask the right questions.

Component	Judicial route	Notarial route	Who sets it
ITCMD (state inheritance tax)	Yes	Yes	State law; base is the value of the assets transmitted
Court costs (custas)	Yes — usually a percentage of the estate, capped by state tables	No	State judiciary fee tables
Notary fees (emolumentos)	No	Yes — by estate value under state tables	State law
Attorney’s fees	Yes — mandatory representation	Yes — mandatory representation (CPC art. 610, § 2º)	Written engagement; OAB minimum tables as reference
Appraisal	Sometimes — court-appointed expert if values are disputed	Rarely — values usually taken from IPTU/ITR or agreed	Court / agreement
Certificates, apostilles, sworn translations	Yes	Yes	Issuing bodies and translators
Registration of the partition	Yes — at each Registro de Imóveis, DETRAN, Junta Comercial	Yes — same	State registry tables
Estate debts and arrears	Paid before distribution	Paid before distribution	The creditors

The ITCMD is the number that moves most. It depends on the state, the value attributed to each asset, the exemptions available and, since the 2023 constitutional amendment, on progressive brackets that states are still implementing. Run an orientation figure through the ITCMD calculator and then have counsel check it against the current state law. For the full picture of how a heir abroad is served on the Brazilian side, see our probate for heirs abroad page.

Hypothetical illustration — not a real client. A retired teacher dies in Campinas, leaving an apartment, a savings account and a small rural plot bought decades earlier. Her two children live in Toronto and Dublin; her husband died years before. Neither child has a CPF. In week one, a cousin in Campinas obtains five copies of the death certificate and photographs the last tax return, which reveals the rural plot the children had forgotten. The children apply for CPFs through their consulates and order apostilled birth certificates. Because both are adult, in agreement and there is no will, the estate is a candidate for the notarial route; because the rural plot requires INCRA and CAR regularity, counsel starts that work in parallel. The children sign public powers of attorney at their consulates in week three. Every distinguishing detail here is invented — the town, the assets, the family — to show the sequence, not a result. Nothing in this example predicts any outcome.

What are the most common mistakes?

• Using the deceased’s bank access “just for the funeral”. Pay from your own funds, keep the receipt, get reimbursed by the estate.
• Letting a relative move into the property informally. Possession disputes are the slowest thing in Brazilian succession law.
• Waiting to order foreign documents until the route is chosen. Apostilles and sworn translations are the critical path.
• Assuming the will drafted abroad controls the Brazilian assets. The legítima is half the estate, and the will still goes through a Brazilian step.
• Forgetting the surviving spouse’s meação, which misstates every share and the tax.
• Signing a generic power of attorney. Special powers must be express; a vague instrument is refused and redone across an ocean.
• Choosing the route before the asset sweep. An asset discovered later means a sobrepartilha — a second proceeding.
• Engaging counsel without a written scope. Ask for the OAB number, the scope and the fee basis in writing.

The first week at a glance

Day	Do	Do not
1	Obtain several copies of the death certificate; secure the property and keys	Move money; move in; sell anything
1–2	Collect the deceased’s ID, CPF, marriage certificate, last tax return, deeds, statements	Send originals to anyone
2–3	Notify bank, INSS or pension, employer, insurer	Use the deceased’s card or app
3–4	Ask the family about a will; have counsel check the wills registry	Assume there is none
3–5	Start CPF applications for heirs who lack one; check status of existing ones	Wait for the route decision
3–7	Order apostilled birth/marriage certificates for heirs abroad	Apostille photocopies
5–7	Begin the asset sweep: tax return, registries, INCRA/CAR, DETRAN, Junta Comercial	Decide the route before the sweep
7	Engage Brazilian counsel in writing; agree who will hold the power of attorney	Sign a generic power of attorney

Key takeaways

• The property passed to the heirs at death, but nobody can touch it until the inventário and partilha are done (Código Civil, arts. 1.784 and 1.791).
• The proceeding happens in Brazil, whoever the heirs are and wherever they live (CPC/2015, art. 23, II). You participate by power of attorney; you rarely need to travel.
• Half of community assets belong to the surviving spouse or companion as meação. Count that before counting heirs.
• The first week is about securing documents and starting the slow ones — death certificate copies, CPFs for every heir, apostilled foreign certificates — and sweeping the assets before the route is chosen.
• The two-month opening period (CPC art. 611) is real, but the cost of missing it is written in state ITCMD law. In São Paulo, 10% after 60 days, 20% after 180.
• Sign a public power of attorney with express special powers — at a consulate if you can — and do not use the deceased’s bank access, let anyone move in, or sign anything you have not read in a language you understand.

Related guides on this site

• Inheriting property in Brazil as a non-resident heir
• Extrajudicial vs judicial inventário: which one you qualify for
• Multiple heirs in multiple countries: coordinating powers of attorney
• Brazil’s ITCMD inheritance tax and the 2027 reform
• Capital gains for a non-resident heir who sells inherited property
• How to get a CPF without being in Brazil
• Apostille and the Hague Convention for documents used in Brazil
• Citizenship by descent when the Brazilian relative has died

How ZS Advogados can help

A parent’s estate with heirs abroad is a logistics problem in the first week and a legal problem in the second month. Our team acts for heirs abroad across that arc: the first-week sweep and document map, CPFs and powers of attorney for every heir, the wills-registry and asset searches, the choice and conduct of the inventário in either route, the ITCMD computation under the current law of the relevant state, and the eventual transfer, sale or remittance. We work in English and Portuguese and coordinate with your own advisers abroad rather than replacing them. Read how the engagement works on our probate for heirs abroad page.

• Family law — succession, forced heirship, and the estate proceeding itself
• International law — foreign documents, remote representation, and coordination with counsel abroad
• Tax law — ITCMD, valuation elections, and the heir’s later capital gains

Book a consultation to have the first-week checklist mapped to your family’s actual documents and assets.

Technical review by the ZS Advogados Associados team, including co-founding partner Karina Peres Silvério (OAB/SP 331.050) and founding partner Zachariah Zagol (OAB/SP 351.356). Contact: zac@zsassociados.com — +55 (18) 3908-1653 — Presidente Prudente, SP.

Sources and legal basis

• Código Civil — Lei nº 10.406/2002 (arts. 224, 661, 1.658–1.688, 1.784, 1.791, 1.792, 1.829, 1.845, 1.846)
• Código de Processo Civil — Lei nº 13.105/2015 (arts. 23, 192, 610–673)
• Lei nº 11.441/2007 — inventário, partilha, separação e divórcio por via administrativa
• Resolução CNJ nº 35/2007 — disciplina a aplicação da Lei nº 11.441/2007 pelos serviços notariais
• Resolução CNJ nº 571/2024, de 26 de agosto de 2024 — insere os arts. 12-A e 12-B na Resolução nº 35/2007
• Provimento CNJ nº 56/2016 — mandatory RCTO/CENSEC wills search; the requirement now sits in the Código Nacional de Normas do Foro Extrajudicial (Provimento CNJ nº 149/2023, art. 441, II)
• Provimento CNJ nº 149/2023 — Código Nacional de Normas da Corregedoria Nacional de Justiça, Foro Extrajudicial (atos notariais eletrônicos, e-Notariado)
• Lei nº 6.015/1973 — Registros Públicos (arts. 77–88, 129)
• Lei nº 6.858/1980 — pagamento de valores não recebidos em vida aos dependentes
• Lei de Introdução às Normas do Direito Brasileiro — Decreto-Lei nº 4.657/1942 (art. 10)
• Constituição Federal — arts. 5º, XXXI, e 155, I (com a EC nº 132/2023)
• Lei Complementar nº 227, de 13 de janeiro de 2026 — normas gerais do ITCMD
• Lei estadual (SP) nº 10.705/2000 — ITCMD paulista (art. 21)
• Decreto nº 8.660/2016 — promulga a Convenção da Apostila da Haia
• Lei nº 14.195/2021 — tradutores e intérpretes públicos (arts. 22–34)
• Lei nº 9.532/1997, art. 23 — valor de transferência de bens na sucessão
• Instrução Normativa RFB nº 2.236/2024 — atualização anual do CPF de estrangeiro com endereço no exterior (art. 23-A da IN RFB nº 2.172/2024)
• Instrução Normativa SRF nº 81/2001 — declarações de espólio (art. 6º)
• Decreto nº 93.240/1986 — documentos para a escritura pública relativa a imóveis (art. 1º, IV)
• Lei nº 13.465/2017, art. 76 — cria o Operador Nacional do Registro de Imóveis (ONR)
• Provimento CNJ nº 89/2019 — regulamenta o ONR e o SAEC
• STF — RE 878.694 (Tema 809): equiparação sucessória do companheiro

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This guide is for informational and educational purposes only, in line with Provimento No. 205/2021 of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB). It is not legal advice, an opinion, or an offer of services, does not refer to any specific case, and does not guarantee any result. It describes Brazilian law and practice; references to the law of other countries are factual context only and are not advice on that law. Which route an estate may take, what tax is due and who inherits depend on facts we cannot assess from a webpage, including the marriage regime, the family configuration, the state where each asset sits and whether a will exists. The ITCMD is in transition following Emenda Constitucional nº 132/2023 and Lei Complementar nº 227/2026, so any figure, threshold or date relating to it is provisional. Rules and provisions are cited as of August 2026; changes after that date are not reflected. Each situation requires individual analysis by a licensed attorney. Last updated August 2026.