Buying from heirs in Croatia: how an unsettled estate gets resolved

If you have ever asked about an old stone house on Pelješac that obviously nobody uses, you have heard the same answer. The house belonged to someone who died, there are several of them now, one is in America, one does not speak to the others, and nobody knows exactly who owns what. Then the conversation stops.

In our other guides we have said the same thing ourselves. In the guide to stone houses for renovation, unresolved co-ownership sits at the top of the list of situations where we advise you not to buy. That still holds for most cases and we are not taking a word of it back.

But it is not the whole story, and it is time we wrote the other half. Some of the best houses on the peninsula are exactly these houses. They have not sold because they were not ready to sell, not because there is anything wrong with them. The difference between a case that resolves in a few months and one that never resolves is visible in advance, from the paperwork, before anyone falls in love with a view.

This guide explains what an unsettled estate actually looks like, how it gets resolved, how long it takes, how to recognise the one that will not resolve, and how to buy while the procedure is still running. It is written from the buyer side, but it is just as useful to an owner who has inherited something on Pelješac and does not know where to start.

One note before we begin. This is a guide, not legal advice. It explains how things work so that you know what to ask and what to require. Decisions on a specific property are made with a lawyer who acts for you.

Why so many houses on Pelješac have several owners

This is not a legal anomaly. It is the consequence of two things that happened at the same time: the way inheritance works in Croatia, and the way people left the peninsula.

How one owner becomes twelve

Croatian succession law divides property equally among the children. There is no firstborn who takes the house, no rule that keeps an estate together, and no mechanism that automatically holds a family house in one pair of hands.

Take a typical example. A man dies in 1968 leaving a house and four children. The house becomes the property of four people, a quarter each. Nobody sells anything, because nobody needs the money and the house is the family house anyway.

By 2005 three of those four children have also died, each with children of their own. The first quarter splits three ways, the second two ways, the third four ways. Instead of four owners there are now ten, with shares like 1/12, 1/8 and 1/16. None of them has done anything unusual. They have simply died in the order people die.

By today part of that generation has died as well, which gives fifteen to twenty people spread across branches of a family who barely know one another and some of whom have never met. The shares still add up neatly to 1/1. The document is mathematically perfect and practically unusable.

Emigration and the house nobody sells

The second half of the story is leaving. People left Pelješac and the surrounding islands in waves, first for America, Australia, New Zealand and South America, later for Zagreb, Split and Germany. The seafaring tradition of the peninsula meant that leaving was a normal path through life rather than an exception.

What matters is that people left but did not sell. The house in the village stayed the place you come back to in summer, where the furniture is stored and which nobody touches. As long as a relative stayed in it, kept the roof on and paid the small costs, nobody had any reason to open the legal question. Opening it meant asking fifteen people to make a decision they did not have to make.

That is why the land registry on Pelješac still shows the names of people born at the start of the last century. Nobody did anything wrong. There was simply never a need, because nothing was being sold.

Why the problem only appears now

The need appears when somebody decides to sell, when a bank wants collateral, when something has to be built, or when the house starts falling apart and somebody has to decide who pays for the roof. At that point something that sat quietly for sixty years has to be resolved in a single conversation.

For a buyer that matters for one reason. The time that created the problem passed slowly, and the time available to fix it is measured in your deadline, your season and your budget. Which is why the state of the paperwork gets checked first, not last.

What settling an estate means, and why so many were never settled

Settling an estate is the procedure that establishes who the heirs are and what each of them inherited. In Croatia it is conducted by a notary acting as a commissioner of the court, and it ends with a decision on inheritance.

Ownership passes on death, not on the decision

The first thing to understand, and the thing that surprises almost every foreign buyer, is that ownership is not acquired through that decision. Under Croatian law property passes to the heirs at the moment of the deceased person’s death, automatically, without any act and without anyone applying for it. The decision on inheritance only establishes what has already happened.

The heirs are owners from the day of death. The decision does not create their ownership, it proves it.

That sounds like a legal technicality, but it has very practical consequences. It means there is no deadline for settling an estate, nothing lapses, and the right to inherit is not lost by the passage of time. A grandson can settle the estate of a grandfather who died in 1961, and that is neither unusual nor exceptional. On Pelješac it is routine.

But it also means this, which is decisive for you as a buyer: while there is no decision, the person registered as owner in the land register is still the deceased. The heirs are owners, but that is recorded nowhere, so they can neither sell nor mortgage the property. A transfer of ownership requires the registered owner, and the registered owner died half a century ago.

So the phrase "buying from the heirs" is more precise than it sounds. You really are buying from them. They simply have to be registered first.

Why the procedure never happens

The procedure is normally started automatically, when the registrar sends the death certificate to the court. In practice it fails to happen for a handful of reasons that repeat constantly:

• The death occurred abroad and was never reported to a Croatian registrar, so there is no death certificate and the court never learned that a procedure was due.
• The estate was settled, but only for part of the property. What was known got declared, while old parcels in the fields, pastures, yards and paths were never mentioned because nobody knew about them.
• The heirs agreed verbally. Somebody uses the house, the others do not object, and it suits everyone for years until somebody decides to sell.
• Nobody wanted to raise it for fear of a family argument, and nobody needed the property as money.
• The procedure started and then stalled, because one heir’s address could not be established and nobody kept pushing it.

None of these is a legal problem in itself. All of them are solvable. But each means that work which should have been done thirty years ago now has to be done by someone who wants to buy or sell, inside a deadline they set themselves.

What if there is a will

A will changes who inherits, but it changes nothing about the procedure. An estate is still settled, only the distribution follows the will instead of the statutory order of succession.

On Pelješac wills are rarer than you might expect, and where one exists it is usually simple. What you need to know is that a will cannot exclude the heirs entitled to a reserved share, which we come to below. If a will exists, ask to see it early, because it shows whether a challenge is likely.

How to spot it in the land registry extract

This is visible before any viewing, from the paperwork, and it is the only part of the check you can do yourself and for free. The land registry extract is public and available online through the joint information system of the land registry and cadastre. All you need is the cadastral municipality and the parcel number.

The three parts of the extract

The extract has three parts and each answers a different question. They are worth telling apart, because people usually look only at the second.

• Sheet A, the property sheet. What the parcel is: number, area, whether it is built on, how it is used.
• Sheet B, the ownership sheet. Who the owner is and in what share. This is where an unsettled estate shows.
• Sheet C, the encumbrance sheet. What burdens the property: mortgages, easements, rights of residence, notes of pending litigation.

In inheritance cases sheet C matters more than it seems. A right of residence registered in favour of a family member survives the sale, and a note of pending litigation means somebody is already running a case over this property.

The signs of an unsettled estate

In sheet B, look for this:

• The registered owner’s year of birth. If the extract shows an owner born in 1910, that is not the person who will be signing your contract.
• Markers next to the name. Entries such as "pok." or "ud.", meaning deceased or widow, show that the entry is old and that the position has since changed while the register has not followed.
• Fractions that do not add up easily. Shares like 1/12, 3/36 or 5/48 come from division across generations. Ownership of 1/1 means one owner; anything else means a conversation with several people.
• An address from the emigration years. An address in California, Auckland or Santiago registered fifty years ago usually means that this person has died in the meantime too, and that there is a second estate, in another country.
• Several surnames in one family. Married daughters registered under their maiden name, or the reverse, show that the entry has not been refreshed in decades.

If you see any of this, do not treat it as a reason to end the conversation. Treat it as information that there is work somebody has to do, and as a question you ask straight away: has the estate been settled, and if so, does it cover this parcel.

The land registry and the cadastre are not the same thing

This is a distinction we explain constantly and it is worth repeating. The cadastre describes the physical position: where the parcel is, how many square metres it has, what stands on it and how it is used. The land registry describes the legal position: who owns it and what burdens it.

A possession sheet from the cadastre is not proof of ownership, and it says so on the document itself. It shows who holds something, not who owns it. For the question of ownership only the land registry counts.

When the two registers disagree, the reason in the overwhelming majority of cases is exactly this: an inheritance that was never carried through. Somebody died, the property passed to the family in fact, the cadastre followed it to some degree through possession, and the land registry followed nothing at all. In practice the gap between those two documents is the measure of how much work lies ahead of you.

Who the heirs actually are

Where there is no will, and most often there is none, statutory succession applies through orders of succession. The system is simpler than it looks. Its consequences are not.

The first order

The children of the deceased and their spouse, in equal shares. If the deceased had three children and a wife, each of the four takes a quarter. A cohabiting partnership meeting the statutory conditions is treated the same as a marriage, which in older cases can itself become a point of dispute.

Representation

This is the rule that multiplies the number of people most. If a child died before the deceased, that child’s own children step into their place and divide their share between them. One quarter that belonged to a son becomes three twelfths for his three children.

Representation goes down without limit. If that child has also died before the deceased, their children step into their place. This is how one registered owner becomes fifteen co-owners without anyone doing anything unusual.

The second order

If the deceased had no descendants, the parents and the spouse inherit. The spouse takes one half, the parents the other half. If the parents are no longer alive, their share passes to their other children, meaning the deceased’s brothers and sisters, and then on to their children.

The second order is the one that unravels worst in practice, because it branches sideways instead of downwards. Instead of children who know each other you get cousins in three countries who have never met and who often hear about the property for the first time when a notary telephones them.

So when somebody tells you the deceased had no children, that does not simplify the case. It complicates it.

The reserved share

Descendants and the spouse are entitled to a reserved share of the estate which a will cannot take away from them. The reserved share is one half of what they would have received under the statutory rules. Parents and other ancestors are entitled to it only under additional conditions relating to capacity to work and means of support.

For a buyer this means one thing: if there is a will that excludes somebody, there is also the possibility that this person will claim their reserved share. Until that is resolved, ownership is not secure.

Renouncing and assigning

An heir may renounce the inheritance. Renunciation takes effect as if they had never been an heir, and their share is distributed among the others. This is a common and very useful mechanism in large families, because the number of co-owners can be reduced voluntarily to one or two.

There is also assignment, where an heir renounces in favour of a named person. Legally that is not renunciation but acceptance followed by transfer, and it is treated differently for tax. The notary has to explain the difference before the hearing, because afterwards the declaration cannot be changed.

When an heir has died as well

This is the single most important detail in this guide and the point at which timescales double. If an heir outlived the deceased but has since died themselves, their share falls into their own estate. To settle the first, the second has to be settled too, and not infrequently a third.

When somebody tells you they are waiting for the estate to be settled, the first question is not how long it takes. It is how many there are. That single question separates a case of a few months from a case of several years.

When the deceased lived abroad

This deserves its own chapter, because it is more common on Pelješac than elsewhere in Croatia and because the rules differ depending on where the person lived and when they died.

Within the European Union

For deaths occurring on or after 17 August 2015, the European succession regulation applies. The basic rule is that the law of the state where the person had their habitual residence at the time of death governs the whole estate, unless they chose the law of their nationality in a will.

The practical consequence is that a Croatian citizen who lived in Germany for decades and made no choice of law may be inherited under German law, including the house in Croatia. The circle of heirs and their shares are then not determined by the Croatian orders of succession.

This is one of the few situations where guessing does not pay. If the deceased lived abroad, the first question for a lawyer is which law applies, because who the heirs even are depends on the answer.

The European Certificate of Succession

Alongside the regulation there is the European Certificate of Succession. It is a document with which an heir proves their status in every member state bound by the regulation, without a separate recognition procedure. For a family scattered across several countries this is the fastest route, because it avoids running separate proceedings in each state.

If such a certificate already exists in the family, tell the notary immediately. It shortens the work considerably.

Outside the European Union

For heirs and deceased persons in the United States, Australia, New Zealand or South America the regulation does not apply. There the classic route is used: the foreign documents on death and on inheritance, certified with an apostille, translated by a court interpreter, and then Croatian proceedings for the property located in Croatia.

This is not impossible and is done routinely, but it is slow. Every document travels, every one is certified and translated, and the difference in time zones and public holidays can add weeks. If there is an heir in an overseas country, budget for that from the start.

For deaths before 17 August 2015 the earlier rules of Croatian private international law apply. That is a question for a lawyer and not something to be settled by assumption.

How it gets resolved, step by step

The procedure is standardised and it is not a mystery. It is conducted by a notary rather than a lawyer, although a lawyer on the side is almost always useful, especially where there is a buyer waiting.

1. The death certificate. If the procedure never started because no certificate was ever filed, an extract from the register of deaths is obtained. For a death abroad you need the foreign document, translated and legalised, and its entry into the Croatian registers.
2. The application. Proceedings can be started by anyone with a legal interest, meaning any heir. The consent of the others is not required to begin, which matters when one family member is willing to work and the rest are passive.
3. The inventory. Everything falling into the estate is listed. This is where most mistakes happen, through omitted old parcels. The recommendation is to obtain a list of every parcel registered in the deceased’s name in that cadastral municipality, rather than relying on the family’s memory.
4. Establishing the heirs. The notary establishes the circle of heirs, obtains birth and marriage certificates, checks whether anyone has died, and summons everyone to the hearing.
5. The hearing. The heirs make their declarations: they accept, renounce, or assign. Anyone who does not attend does not block the procedure, because in that case they are deemed to accept.
6. The decision on inheritance. The notary issues it and serves it on everyone. It becomes final once the appeal period expires. Until that moment it cannot be used for a transfer.
7. Registration. The decision goes to the land registry department and the heirs are registered as owners. Only from that moment can they validly sell.

For a buyer the whole point of the procedure is the last step. Everything before it is preparation. Only registration creates a person who can sign a sale contract and give you the declaration on the basis of which you register as owner.

When a parcel was left out of an earlier estate

If the estate was settled long ago but a parcel has now surfaced that was not included, the whole thing is not repeated. A supplementary decision is issued for the newly found property, in a shorter procedure and on the basis of the circle of heirs already established.

This is one of the faster scenarios and it is worth checking explicitly before assuming the worst. The question is: was the estate settled at all, and if so, which parcels did it cover. The answer is in the decision, and the family usually has the decision in a drawer.

How long it takes and what it costs

Time is by far the larger cost here, which is the opposite of what people expect.

Time

• All heirs known, in Croatia and in agreement: count in months, not years.
• An heir abroad, known and reachable: add time for the power of attorney, certification, apostille and service.
• An heir at an unknown address: the procedure continues through an appointed representative, but noticeably more slowly.
• An heir who has died as well: a second estate is opened and the timescale is measured in years.
• The deceased lived abroad: add the step of establishing which law applies before anything else starts.
• An heir opposed to the sale: the inheritance procedure still completes, but selling the whole may not be possible even afterwards.

We give these as orders of magnitude, not as promises. The realistic estimate for a specific file comes from the notary handling it, and it is a question to ask at the beginning rather than at the end.

Money

The cost of the procedure itself is small relative to the value of the property. There is the notary’s fee, set according to the value of the estate, then obtaining documents, translations and certifications for anything coming from abroad, and the registration fee.

We deliberately do not quote figures, because they depend on the value of the estate and the number of documents, and the tariffs change. The notary will tell you in advance, and it is a question that always gets an answer.

Tax

In the most common case there is no inheritance tax. A spouse and descendants or ancestors in the direct line are exempt by law. For other heirs the rate is 4 percent. So in the classic family situation, where children inherit a parent, there is no tax, which regularly comes as a pleasant surprise.

Your cost as a buyer is separate from all of this and identical to any other purchase. Transfer tax, notary, lawyer and fees are set out in the guide to the costs of buying property.

What genuinely costs money is the time in which you cannot deal with the property and often cannot start work on it. If you are buying a house to renovate, one lost season means starting to use it a year later, and one more winter in which an empty stone house deteriorates further.

When not everyone can or will

Selling the whole property requires all the co-owners. Not a majority, all of them. This is the point where most deals fail, and it is worth knowing what the options are.

Buying out a share

A co-owner may sell their share independently, without the consent of the others. In practice that means co-owners can buy each other out until ownership is consolidated in one or two pairs of hands, after which selling is straightforward. In families that get along this is the cleanest route and it often runs in parallel with the inheritance procedure.

For you as a buyer, buying a share is almost never a good idea. You would be buying a fraction rather than a house, and finding yourself in co-ownership with people you do not know and with whom you would have to agree every decision, from the roof to whether anyone may sleep there. There are situations where it makes sense, for instance when you are buying the last missing share, but they are exceptions and they need a lawyer from the first minute.

Dissolving the co-ownership

If the co-owners cannot agree, any of them may seek dissolution. It is carried out by physical division where the property is divisible, by payment where it is not, or by sale and division of the proceeds where neither is possible.

An old stone house in a terrace is usually not physically divisible, so in practice it comes down to a payment or a public sale. Public sales achieve prices below the market, take a long time, and nobody comes out of them satisfied. Which is why a negotiated settlement among the heirs is almost always better for everyone, including the one who is objecting. That is an argument worth putting on the table early in family discussions.

An heir abroad

An heir living abroad does not have to travel. They give a power of attorney, certified by a notary in the country where they live, with an apostille, or certified at a Croatian consulate. The power of attorney has to be specific enough and expressly cover dealing with real property, because a general power of attorney is regularly not sufficient for this.

This is a common way to lose several weeks: the document arrives, and then it turns out not to cover what is needed, so the whole loop repeats. Have the text drafted by a Croatian notary or lawyer and sent to the heir for certification, rather than the other way round.

An heir who cannot be found

If the address is unknown the procedure does not stop. The court can appoint a temporary representative to protect the absent person’s interests, and the procedure continues. That is slower and more expensive, but it is not a dead end.

You should also know the other side of it. Property acquired that way carries slightly more risk, because the absent person can appear later and raise a challenge. A lawyer will tell you how real that risk is in the specific case and how it is covered.

Who is living in it

A practical question that is rarely asked in time: is anyone using the house now. With inherited property the answer is very often yes, because somebody from the family stayed, spends summers there, or at least left belongings inside.

If that person is one of the co-owners, they are entitled to use the common property and their occupation is not unlawful. A sale ends that right, but vacating has to be agreed and written into the contract, with a date and a consequence if the date is missed. A verbal promise that the belongings will be out by spring is not a date.

If somebody who is not a co-owner is living there, check on what basis. A tenancy, a loan for use, and a right of residence registered in sheet C are three very different situations, and the last of them binds you after the purchase as well. The question is who is inside, on what basis, and when they leave.

Adverse possession

Sometimes one family member has used the house alone for decades, maintained it and paid the costs, and now relies on adverse possession. For real property the periods are ten years for a possessor in good faith with a legal basis and twenty years for a possessor in good faith.

A claim like this is decided in litigation, not in the inheritance procedure, and it can run for years. If you hear the word, that is the moment for a lawyer, not for an offer. While the litigation runs nobody knows who the owner is, so there is no valid sale either.

How to buy while the procedure is still running

This is the question we get most often, and the answer is neither a simple yes nor a simple no.

You cannot register while the heirs are not registered, because you cannot acquire ownership from a person who does not exist as owner in the register. But you can validly agree the purchase and secure your position for the moment when that happens.

The usual structure that works looks like this:

• A preliminary contract signed by all the heirs, not only the one who has been talking to you. One signature does not bind the others and is worth exactly as much as that person’s share.
• The deposit in escrow, with a lawyer or a notary, not paid directly to the sellers. The money is released only when the agreed conditions are met.
• A deadline by which the estate must be finally settled, with a clear consequence if it is missed. Without a deadline the preliminary contract binds you and does not hurry them.
• Registration of the heirs as a condition of concluding the main contract.
• Payment of the balance only against the registration declaration, meaning the document on which you register immediately.
• A note of priority ranking or a provisional entry, where one is available in the specific case, as further protection of your position.

A preliminary contract like this is drafted by a lawyer acting for you, not for the seller and not for the agent. This is one of the few parts of a purchase where saving on a lawyer is directly and measurably expensive.

There is also the option, increasingly the better one, that the heirs settle the estate first and only then come to market. Clean paperwork raises the price and shortens negotiations, and the seller is not negotiating under pressure. We write about that from the seller side in the guide on what your property is worth.

What it looks like in practice

The following example is assembled from several cases we have worked through and does not describe any particular property. The figures and timescales are typical, not promised.

A stone house in a village, two floors, empty for around twenty years. The land registry shows an owner born in 1908, ownership 1/1. The estate was never settled because the family used the house collectively and nobody needed the money.

The first check shows he had five children. Three of them have died, each with children of their own, so the circle of heirs is fifteen people. Eleven live in Croatia, two in Germany, two in New Zealand. It sounds like a case you walk away from.

But two facts change the picture. First, nobody is in dispute. There is no litigation, no adverse possession claim, nobody lives in the house and nobody has a particular interest in keeping it. Second, there is one person in the family everyone listens to and who is willing to drive the process. Those two together count for more than the number of heirs.

The procedure runs like this. The application is filed, the notary establishes the circle of heirs and obtains the civil status documents. The two heirs in New Zealand need a power of attorney with an apostille, which comes back the first time because it does not expressly cover dealing with real property, so it is repeated. For one heir who died after the deceased, a second and shorter estate is opened.

From application to final decision takes a little over a year. Registration after that goes quickly. The buyer was known throughout, with a preliminary contract signed by everyone, the deposit in a lawyer’s escrow, and a deadline that was extended once by agreement on both sides.

What made that case workable was not a small number of heirs, because there were fifteen. It was the absence of a dispute and the presence of one person driving it. When you are looking for the difference between a case that moves and one that does not, look for those two things rather than the number of names on the extract.

When this is an opportunity and when it is not

Here we come back to where we started. Our advice in the other guides, to avoid unresolved co-ownership, still stands as the rule. The exceptions are recognisable and it is worth knowing what they look like.

Cases where it makes sense to stay

• There are few heirs, they are known and they talk to one another.
• They all live in Croatia, or are at least reachable and willing to give a power of attorney.
• The estate was never settled simply because nobody needed it settled, not because there is a dispute.
• There is one person in the family driving it whom the others listen to.
• It is a supplementary decision for an omitted parcel, with the circle of heirs already established.
• There is a European Certificate of Succession or a final decision from another state.
• The price reflects the state of the paperwork rather than the price that would be asked if everything were clean.

Cases where we advise you to walk away

• There are more than a handful of heirs and some are not known even by name.
• One of the heirs has died and their estate has not even been opened.
• Somebody expressly does not want to sell, however willing the others are.
• There is an adverse possession claim or any litigation over ownership.
• Sheet C carries a note of pending litigation or a right of residence for a family member.
• The seller wants money before anyone is registered as owner.
• None of the heirs is willing to pay for the procedure and the expectation is that the buyer will.

That last item deserves an extra sentence. Buyers sometimes offer to fund the settlement of the estate themselves in order to speed things up. It seems reasonable, and what it actually means is that you are paying for a procedure over a property you have not bought and have no right to, run by people who can sell to somebody else in the meantime. If you do it anyway, it has to be contractual and secured, not agreed on a handshake.

How we handle it

This part of the work is the reason we exist as an agency rather than as a listings portal.

When somebody tells us they would like to sell a house, the first thing we do is not photography but a check of the paperwork. We obtain the land registry extract and the cadastral record for every parcel, compare them, and establish who is registered, what the shares are and whether the estate has been settled. We do that before agreeing a price, because a price without that information is not a price but a wish.

If the estate has not been settled, we tell the owner the same thing we are writing here: this has to be resolved before coming to market. Otherwise you will negotiate from a weaker position, and the first serious buyer with a lawyer will find exactly what we found, only in the middle of negotiations, when every finding becomes a reason to reduce the price.

What we can genuinely offer is that we know the families. On a peninsula where everyone knows everyone, the question of who the heirs are and where they are is often not a legal question but a practical one, and the answer is found in a conversation in the village before it is found in any register. Knowing that the third son left for Auckland in 1971 and that his granddaughter spends summers in the next village is not information held in any database. It is work that cannot be done by anyone who looks at the peninsula from a distance.

And last, which is probably the most important: we do not put a property with an unsettled estate into the portfolio as though it were ready to sell. If you see it with us, the state of the paperwork is written in the listing. If something is unresolved, you will hear it from us before you book a trip, not after you have paid for one.

What to require before you pay anything

Questions for the first conversation

Ask these six straight away, before travelling and before viewing. The answers separate a case of a few months from one that will not resolve, and they need neither a lawyer nor any expense.

1. Has the estate been settled, and if so, does it cover these parcels?
2. How many heirs are there and do they all agree to the sale?
3. Has any of the heirs died after the deceased?
4. Where are the heirs and is anyone outside the European Union?
5. Is there any dispute, litigation or adverse possession claim?
6. Is anyone using the house now, and on what basis?

If nobody knows the answer to one of these, that is an answer in itself. It means the paperwork has not been checked and you are the first person opening it.

Documents to require

This is the list worth working through for any property with any trace of inheritance in the paperwork. Ask for the answers in writing, and from the lawyer running your purchase, not from the seller and not from us.

• The land registry extract for every parcel, checking all co-owners and every encumbrance in sheet C.
• The final decision on inheritance, checking explicitly that it covers the parcels you are buying.
• A list of all the heirs with where they are and which of them has already given a power of attorney.
• Whether any heir died after the deceased and whether proceedings have been opened for them.
• Where the deceased had their habitual residence, because which law applies depends on it.
• Confirmation that no litigation is pending, including any adverse possession or dissolution claim.
• Agreement between the land registry and the cadastre, which is a more frequent problem on Pelješac than you would expect.
• The documents for the building itself: the certificate for structures older than 15 February 1968, or the decision on the as built condition for anything added later.
• Access, and where the route crosses somebody else’s parcel, a registered easement.

The last three have no direct connection to inheritance, but in cases like these they almost always appear together. A house nobody has touched legally for sixty years has usually not been touched structurally either, so legalisation gets resolved alongside the estate, and often the access road as well. We write about what that means for a renovation and a budget in the guide to stone houses for renovation, and about how to read the areas in the paperwork in the guide to usable and gross floor area.

The next step

If you have a specific house in mind and you see something in the paperwork that we have described, send us the address or the parcel number. We will tell you what we know about it, who the family is and whether it is a case that resolves or not, including when the answer is that you should not buy it.

If you have inherited something on Pelješac and do not know where to start, get in touch. The first step is always the same and always cheaper than people think: obtain the extract and see what it actually says.

And if you would like to see what is currently available with clean paperwork, look at the properties.