Conditions under Greek law for the validity of a will which has been made abroad
In the case of a will which was prepared in a country other than Greece, what needs to be clarified is the applicable law under which the validity of the will is ascertained.
According to Article 11 of the Hellenic Civil Code, a legal transaction is formally valid in procedural terms if it is in accordance with either the law governing its content or the law of the place where it is entered into or the national law of all the parties. An example of such a transaction is a will. Under the provisions of Article 28 of the Hellenic Civil Code, relations arising from inheritance are governed by the law of the nationality which the deceased had when he died, and therefore testate inheritance. Consequently, in the Greek legal order, the law of nationality which the deceased had at the time of his death applies to the validity of a will.
This issue is also addressed in EU law via Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council which regulates matters of succession and takes precedence over national law. More specifically, Article 24 of that Regulation states that the law of the deceased’s last residence or, by way of exception, the law of the state with which the deceased had closer ties is applicable to the issue of the admissibility and substantive validity of the will, while the testator has the ability to choose the law governing his entire succession as the law governing the law of the state of which he is a national at the time of his choice or at the time of his death. More specifically, in Article 27 EU law attempts in any way to save the validity of the will since it characteristically states that a “disposition of property upon death made in writing” (including a will) must be considered formally valid if it is in line with either the law of the state in which the will was prepared or the law of the testator’s nationality, or the law of the state in which he was domiciled, or the state of his habitual residence at the time of its drafting or at the time of his death, or lastly with the law of the state in which the property is located.
There are the following ways of recognizing wills drafted outside of Greece. Firstly, under Article 807 of the Hellenic Code of Civil Procedure, if a public will has been prepared before a consular authority or if a mystic will has been lodged for safekeeping, the competent authority for granting probate is that consular authority. Consular authorities shall be competent to grant probate for holograph wills which are presented to them. In all events, the competent consul prepares a report signed by him (in the case of a holograph will, the person who delivered it to the consular authority also affixes his/her signature) and grants probate for the will. Copies of the probate transcript are then sent to the registry of the Athens Court of First Instance and the registry of the Court of First Instance at the testator’s last place of residence or domicile. Moreover, Article 808(6) of the Hellenic Code of Civil Procedure states that in the case of wills which have been granted probate abroad, in order to recognize them, copies may be submitted to a Greek consular authority or the secretariat of any court of the peace certified by the foreign public authority which granted them probate, and officially translated into the Greek language. The competent body (consulate or court of the peace) then prepares a filing decision and sends copies thereof to the registry of the Athens Court of First Instance.
* The information is accurate to the best of our knowledge as at the time of writing. We have no obligation to update it. We accept no responsibility against any third party who is not a client of the firm and has not signed the terms of our engagement.