Cyprus takes nothing on death, which is why so many people hold assets here. What it does instead is decide, by statute, who inherits most of your estate. And in 2015 it quietly removed the exemption that British owners had relied on for decades.
Cyprus abolished inheritance tax with effect from 1 January 2000. There is no estate duty, no succession duty and no gift tax. On the tax question, the island is about as clean as Europe gets.
The trade is that Cyprus is a forced heirship jurisdiction. Under the Wills and Succession Law, Cap 195, a fixed share of your estate, the statutory portion, is reserved by law for close family. Your will directs only what is left over, the disposable portion.
For anyone arriving from a common law system this is the genuinely foreign part. In England you can, in principle, leave everything to a cats' home. In Cyprus, if you have a spouse and children, three quarters of your estate is already spoken for before you write a word.
None of this is a reason to avoid holding assets here. It is a reason to write the will deliberately rather than assume the habits of home travel with you.
The statutory portion is not a percentage of your choosing. It is set by who survives you.
Statutory portions under the Wills and Succession Law, Cap 195, as at 2026. Simplified: the precise division among a class of heirs, and the position where some predecease you leaving issue of their own, need proper advice on the actual family tree.
For decades, Section 42 of Cap 195 carved out an exemption. A person whose father was born in the United Kingdom or a Commonwealth country could dispose of their estate freely, regardless of domicile. In practice that gave most British owners of Cyprus property full testamentary freedom, and a great deal of advice was written on that basis.
Section 42 was repealed by Law 96(I)/2015, with effect from 3 July 2015. The repeal is prospective, so estates of people who died before that date are unaffected. Everyone else is now fully inside the forced heirship regime.
The practical consequence is uncomfortable. A Cyprus will drafted before mid-2015, or drafted since then by someone working from older material, may distribute an estate in a way the law will not now permit. The document reads perfectly well. It simply no longer does what it says.
If you own Cyprus property and your will predates July 2015, that is the single most useful thing on this page.
| Survived by | Reserved by law | Your will directs |
|---|---|---|
| Spouse and children | 75% | 25% |
| Children, no spouse | 75% | 25% |
| Spouse and parents, no children | 50% | 50% |
| Spouse only | 50% | 50% |
| None of the above | 0% | 100% |
Where a spouse and children both survive, the spouse takes a quarter and the children a half between them, leaving a quarter disposable. Simplified for clarity: the exact division within a class depends on the family tree.
The EU Succession Regulation gives you a lever. It has to be pulled deliberately, in the will itself.
Under Regulation 650/2012, you may elect in your will for the law of your nationality to govern your succession. For someone from a jurisdiction with full testamentary freedom, that election is the mechanism for stepping outside Cypriot forced heirship.
The choice must be made expressly and clearly in the will. Absent a valid election, the default rule applies and Cyprus law governs. A vaguely worded clause is worse than none, because it invites a dispute at exactly the moment nobody can ask you what you meant.
How far the election reaches in respect of Cyprus-situated immovable property is not treated uniformly by practitioners. Some regard the election as decisive; others consider forced heirship to bite on local land regardless. Get a written opinion rather than a reassurance.
Most pages on this subject state one of those two positions with total confidence, and they do not agree with each other. We are not going to pick a side on your behalf about the destination of your house. What we can say plainly is this: the election is standard practice, it is cheap to include, it is very likely to help, and its effect on Cyprus land specifically is the part to have confirmed in writing by the lawyer drafting the will. If someone tells you the answer is obvious, ask them which way, and then ask the next one.
A zero rate in Cyprus is not a zero rate overall. Inheritance tax generally follows domicile, not residence, and domicile is sticky in a way that tax residency is not.
For British expatriates this is the recurring problem. UK inheritance tax can continue to reach a worldwide estate long after someone has left, and the rules moved again with the post-2025 shift toward a long-term residence test. Moving to Cyprus changes your income tax position quickly and your inheritance tax position slowly, if at all.
The order that works is: understand what your home country will still claim, then decide what Cyprus law does with what is left, then draft. Doing it the other way round produces a tidy Cyprus will attached to an unresolved foreign liability.
Our UK page covers the British exit tails, and the tax system page covers domicile and the non-dom regime.
The exemption it may be relying on was repealed. Reviewing it costs an hour. Not reviewing it costs your family the argument.
Checked against primary legislation on 3 August 2026.
One point on this page is genuinely unsettled rather than merely simplified: the reach of an Article 22 choice-of-law election over Cyprus-situated immovable property, where reputable practitioners take opposing views. We have set both out rather than choosing one. The statutory portions are also stated in simplified form, since the division within a class of heirs depends on the actual family tree. This page is general information about the law and is not legal advice; we are not a law firm and estate planning is one of the areas where that distinction matters most.