Reserved share claims under Polish law

In most of the United States, a parent can generally disinherit an adult child, and the will settles the matter. Polish law takes a different position. It treats certain close relatives as having a protected financial interest in an estate that a will alone cannot remove.

For families spread between Poland and the United States, one point decides whether any of this applies: what matters is that the estate opened in Poland and falls under Polish law — not where you live, and not where the other relatives live. A claim can belong to someone who has never lived in Poland.

That protection is zachowek. Understanding what it is — and, just as importantly, what it is not — is usually the first thing worth getting clear.

The practical consequence catches people out in both directions. If you were left out of a will, you cannot demand the apartment — but you may be entitled to be paid a share of what it is worth. If you inherited under a will, you may hold the property outright and still owe money to a sibling who received nothing.

Who is entitled

The claim belongs to a defined and narrow group: the descendants of the person who died, their spouse, and their parents. Siblings, nieces and nephews, and more distant relatives have no reserved share.

Within that group there is a further condition that is easy to miss. A person is entitled only if they would actually have inherited had there been no will. Parents, for instance, are generally in line only where the deceased left no descendants. So the question is not simply "am I on the list" but "would the law have called me to this particular estate".

How much it comes to

The calculation starts from what the claimant would have received under the rules of statutory succession — the share they would have taken had no will existed. The reserved share is then a fraction of that:

• Half of that statutory share in the ordinary case.
• Two-thirds of it where the entitled person is a minor, or is permanently unable to work.

An illustration. A widower dies leaving two adult children and a will giving everything to one of them. Without the will, each child would have taken half. The excluded child's reserved share is half of that half — a claim for the value of a quarter of the estate, payable by the sibling who inherited.

Why lifetime gifts matter

This is the part that most often changes the answer, and the part most often overlooked.

If reserved shares were calculated only on what remained at death, they would be simple to defeat: transfer the property to one child years in advance and let the estate be empty. Polish law anticipates this. For the purposes of the calculation, certain gifts made during the deceased's lifetime are added back to the value of the estate.

The consequence is that an estate which appears to hold almost nothing can still support a substantial claim, if significant assets were given away beforehand. And where the estate itself cannot cover what is owed, the claim can in defined circumstances be directed at the people who received those gifts, rather than only at the heirs.

Which gifts count, and how they are valued, is genuinely technical and depends on who received them, when, and on what terms. It is the usual reason two people looking at the same family reach very different figures.

When a will says you get nothing at all

A testator can attempt to remove the reserved share itself, through wydziedziczenie — disinheritance in the strict sense. Polish law permits this only on specific statutory grounds, concerning serious misconduct toward the deceased or persistent failure in family duties, and the reason must be stated in the will.

Because both the grounds and the way they are expressed can be examined, a will declaring someone disinherited does not automatically end the question. Equally, it is not a formality to be brushed aside. It is a point that merits a proper look at the wording rather than an assumption either way.

Time limits

Reserved share claims do not remain available indefinitely. Polish law sets limitation periods running from defined events — for claims against heirs, typically from the announcement of the will; for claims against recipients of gifts, from the opening of the succession.

Two practical points follow. Time can already be running before you learn that a will existed, which is a real risk when you live abroad and news of a death reaches you slowly. And the rules on how a reserved share is paid — whether it can be deferred or spread over time — have been modified in recent years, so the position that applied to a relative's estate a decade ago is not necessarily the position today. If you think a claim may exist, the date of the death and of any will is worth establishing early.

If you think this affects you

Whether you are considering a claim or have received one, the same information settles most of the uncertainty: who died and when, what the will says, who inherited, and what was given away during the deceased's lifetime. From that it is usually possible to say whether a claim exists at all and what order of magnitude it is — before anyone commits to a course of action.

This article is general information about Polish law, not legal advice about your situation. Entitlement, amounts, limitation periods, and the treatment of lifetime gifts depend on individual circumstances and on the law in force at the relevant time. If you would like to know how this applies to your matter, describe it to us and we will tell you whether and how we can help.