Who inherits in Peru when there is no will?

When it applies

Intestate succession — the Code also calls it sucesión legal — is how an estate is divided when a will does not do it. Article 815 of the Civil Code lists five cases:

1. The deceased dies without a will; the will was declared void; it lapsed for want of judicial verification; or a disinheritance in it was declared invalid.
2. The will names no heir, or that provision lapsed or was invalidated.
3. A forced heir died before the testator, renounced the inheritance or lost it through indignidad or disinheritance, and has no descendants.
4. A voluntary heir or legatee died first, the condition was not met, they renounced or were declared unworthy, and no substitutes were named.
5. The testator named no heirs and did not dispose of all the assets through legacies: intestacy then works only over what was not disposed of.

The first case matters more than it looks: a handwritten will that nobody took to court within the year lapses, and the estate is divided as if it did not exist.

The six orders

Article 816, in the wording given by Ley 30007, sets who inherits and in what order. Each order excludes the next: if there are children, the parents do not inherit; if there are parents, the siblings do not.

The spouse or partner has a double position. They sit in the third order, but the same article says they also inherit in concurrence with the first two orders. They do not wait for there to be no children or parents; they inherit next to them.

The spouse’s share

• With children or descendants (art. 822): the spouse inherits a share equal to one child’s. Two children means three equal shares; three children, four.
• Usufruct option (art. 823): instead of that share, the spouse may opt for a usufruct over one third of the estate, unless they have already obtained the rights granted by articles 731 and 732 (not covered here).
• With parents or ascendants (art. 824): the spouse inherits a share equal to one of them.

A common confusion for foreign couples: if the marriage was under the community property regime (sociedad de gananciales), what the surviving spouse receives from the liquidation of that regime is not inheritance; it is separated first. The estate is what remained in the deceased’s own patrimony after that.

The same concurrence rules apply to the partner of a registered or judicially recognised unión de hecho. The conditions, and the split in Supreme Court rulings on unions predating 2013, are on the page about an unmarried partner’s inheritance.

From when you are an heir

From the moment of death (art. 660): assets, rights and obligations pass to the successors. The declaration of heirs (declaratoria de herederos) does not make you an heir; it proves you are one. Without it, and without registration, in practice you cannot sell or mortgage the deceased’s real property.

The procedure: notary or judge

Ley 26662 allows intestate succession to be processed before a notary or a judge, at the interested parties’ choice. Where there is no dispute, the notarial route is the usual one. We do not state here which notary has territorial competence, because we did not read the articles of that law that regulate it; the notary will tell you at the first consultation.

Ley 32377, published on 7 June 2025, trimmed the judicial procedure:

• The Public Prosecutor no longer has to be notified, unless there are minors among the heirs or a Consejo de Familia was constituted beforehand (art. 759 of the Code of Civil Procedure).
• If fifteen days pass from publication of the last notice without anyone appearing or objecting, the judge rules without a hearing (art. 834).
• Article 835 of the Code of Civil Procedure was repealed.
• On the notarial route, an opposition must be backed by the documents article 834 requires; otherwise the notary rejects it and continues (art. 6 of Ley 26662, as amended).

Registration with Sunarp

The declaration is entered in Sunarp’s Registro de Sucesiones Intestadas. With that registration, each property is then transferred into the heirs’ names in the property registry. That second step is what lets you deal with the assets.

If you were left out

Article 664 gives an heir who does not hold the assets a claim against whoever holds them as a successor, to exclude them or to share with them. It can be joined with a request to be declared heir when an earlier declaration omitted you. The law makes it imprescriptible, handled as a full judicial proceeding (proceso de conocimiento). A declaration issued without your name does not close the door.

Foreign residents and foreign heirs

If the deceased was domiciled in Peru, these rules govern the intestate succession, whether or not there are assets abroad and whatever the nationality (art. 2100 of the Civil Code, explained on the forced heirship page). Foreign heirs inherit on the same terms as Peruvians; what changes is the paperwork to prove the family relationship with documents issued in another country. Assets abroad have a practical limit: Peruvian courts have no jurisdiction over real-rights actions on land and buildings abroad (article 2067(1)), and the country where the property is may apply its own rules to it. If the deceased lived outside Peru, see inheriting from a foreigner who lived abroad.

Regularizing a property inherited without a will

When the deceased left no will and the property remains in co-ownership among the declared heirs, it is worth reviewing physical-legal title regularization in Peru to properly register the partition.