A poisoned gift. This is how experts describe inheritances that have more liabilities than assets. This is the case of Daniel González, 45 years old. His grandmother died a year ago and, according to the will, the town house belonged to her grandchildren. That is, it covered a quarter of the floor. However, when they appraised the home, they realized that the value of the asset was only 80,000 euros. Additionally, the house had outstanding bills because taxes, utilities, and mortgage had not been paid in recent years. The debts amounted to more than 100,000 euros, so all the grandchildren made the decision to reject the inheritance. “I was sad to give up the house, because I had very happy childhood memories, but I had no way to pay,” says González, who works in a real estate agency in Madrid and earns about 1,250 euros per month. His case is just one more among the 56,108 people who rejected the transmission to which they were entitled last year. In total, some 354,250 succession awards were recorded in the country, a slight drop of 0.7% compared to 2022. Spaniards renounced more inheritances than ever last year, consolidating the trend registered in recent years and recording thus a new record in the historical series, which has been updated for more than a decade by the General Council of Notaries (CGN). The profile of young people with a low salary is the one that has the most difficulty when it comes to paying the corresponding taxes and possible debts. The lawyer and partner at RSM, Guillermo Gastón de Iriarte, explains that, many times, Inheritances are a problem much more than a solution. “The causes behind the phenomenon usually point mainly to the existence of debts. When an inheritance is accepted, everything becomes a single patrimony and, if the legacy also has debts, one must respond with one's own assets, which is why the family legacy in Spain is increasingly being renounced,» he says. For Gastón , one of the reasons why more legacies than ever were renounced last year is that many inheritances of the thousands of deceased during the covid-19 pandemic are still being resolved.
In favor of the State
The assets of Antonio Luque, 39, ended up in the hands of the State. When his parents died, they left him an apartment on the outskirts of Madrid valued at 110,000 euros. However, the debts amounted to 140,000 euros. He only earned 1,100 euros a month and, although he was very excited to have the apartment where he had grown up, he had to give up the inheritance. The other heirs also rejected the property, so the State ended up acquiring the asset. Spaniards usually reject their inheritances due to the high amounts of debt they hide. Around this situation, which has been getting worse, all kinds of businesses have been born to buy, sell and find inheritances. This is the case of Juan Ignacio Diez's company, which is dedicated to buying inheritances without the need to reach an agreement with the owners or heirs. “We are dedicated to avoiding uncomfortable discussions between family members and so that people do not have to go through all the judicial processes, which can be very long. We bought the inheritance from them in 72 hours,” says Diez, who was accompanying Luque throughout his process until he decided to renounce the inheritance. “He called us and said he was going to receive an inheritance. The surprise came when the value of the debt, due to the seizure of the apartment, was much greater than the value of the property,” he recalls. Another type of business is the search for heirs. The Navarro y Navarro family office has been dedicated to this task since 1970. Guillermo Navarro, partner of the firm, explains that more and more real estate agencies and neighborhood communities are turning to them to locate heirs and thus be able to provide a solution to the acquired assets. “Fear influences a lot when it comes to quitting. Sometimes, people, in order not to have problems, prefer not to even see the inventory of the inheritance. Our job is to make them see that it is not difficult. We even take care of paying taxes,” he says. Much of their business is based on locating the heir of the property and handing over the inheritance that corresponds to them, and whose existence is often unknown. The investor and lawyer Alejandro Bancalero, who runs Bancalero Abogados, explains that the law does not allow him to receive only a part of the inheritance and that this must be accepted in its entirety, which means taking charge of the financial commitments left by the deceased while he was alive. “The Treasury obliges you to pay the inheritance tax only with money and within a maximum period of six months,” he points out. Other minor causes for the rejection of the estate are fiscal or, simply, purely personal. “These reasons come to light in those situations in which the heirs acknowledge not having a relationship with the deceased or problems with the other heirs,” says Navarro, a specialist in fishing in the river of inheritances. According to experts, the resignations They increase in times of crisis or economic difficulties. The pandemic first and the rise in inflation later suggest that the trend will grow in 2025.