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The 6-Month Deadline Foreign Heirs Almost Always Miss in Poland (And What It Actually Costs You)

Six months. That's how long Polish law gives you, from the day you learn you're an heir, to decide how you want to accept an inheritance in Poland, or whether to accept it at all. There's no notice sent to your address in Chicago or Manchester telling you the clock has started. No lawyer calls to remind you. If nobody who knows Polish inheritance law is involved, most foreign heirs find out this deadline existed the same week it runs out, or worse, after.

The three choices, and why the clock catches people off guard

Under Polish law, an inheritance passes to the heirs automatically at the moment of death, you don't have to do anything to "receive" it in that sense. But before you can do anything binding with a property, sell it, access a bank account tied to the estate, register it at the land registry, you need a formal inheritance certificate, issued by a notary if all the heirs agree, or by a court if they don't. Before that certificate can be issued, though, every heir has to make one of three choices, within six months of learning they're an heir:

1. Accept outright. You take the estate as-is, assets and debts together, with full liability for whatever's owed, even if debts turn out to exceed what you inherited.
2. Accept with benefit of inventory (z dobrodziejstwem inwentarza). You still inherit, but your liability for any debt is capped at the value of the estate. This is what most heirs choose when they're not fully certain what the estate actually owes.
3. Reject the inheritance. You walk away entirely, but so does your line, your children can inherit in your place unless they also reject it, which is worth knowing before you decide.

None of this has a real equivalent in US or UK probate. American and British heirs are used to an executor or a probate court managing the estate over many months, with no personal deadline forcing a decision this early. In Poland, the decision sits with each heir individually, and the clock doesn't pause because you live abroad, don't speak Polish, or only just found out a distant uncle in Łódź had passed away.

Where the clock actually starts, and where you file

The six months doesn't run from the date of death. It runs from the day you learned of your right to inherit, which for many diaspora families is later, sometimes much later, than the death itself. A cousin still living near Łódź might not think to contact relatives abroad for weeks. A notary handling a will might take time tracking down heirs listed only by name and an old address. Once you can show when you actually found out, that's your start date.

The declaration itself is filed in person before a Polish notary, or before a Polish consul if you're abroad, most consulates in the US, UK, Ireland, Germany and Canada handle these routinely. You don't need to fly to Poland just to file it. What trips people up isn't the process, it's not knowing the deadline exists at all until someone mentions it in passing, usually too close to the six-month mark for comfort.

We had a family near Zgierz work through this with about three weeks to spare. Two siblings had emigrated decades earlier, one to Ohio, one to the UK, and neither knew their mother's brother, who'd lived alone in a small house outside town, had passed away until a neighbor eventually reached the one relative still local. By the time word made it abroad, they were already four and a half months into a clock they didn't know was ticking. We helped them confirm the actual start date, get the declaration filed at the Polish consulate rather than waiting for a trip that wasn't going to happen in time, and only then move on to sorting out what to do with the house itself.

The 2015 change that softens the worst outcome, a little

Before 2015, doing nothing for six months meant full, unlimited acceptance, you inherited the debts along with everything else, no cap. That rule changed. Now, if the deadline passes with no declaration filed, Polish law treats it as automatic acceptance with benefit of inventory, the same capped-liability outcome as choosing it deliberately. That's a real safety net, and it's worth knowing about if you're reading this after the fact and worried about what you're on the hook for.

But it's not a reason to let the deadline pass on purpose. You lose the option to reject the inheritance cleanly if it turns out the estate is genuinely underwater. And separately, there's an inheritance tax angle that the missed-deadline safety net doesn't cover at all: close family, Group 0 under Polish tax law, spouse, children, parents, grandchildren, siblings, stepparents and stepchildren, get a full exemption from inheritance tax, but only if form SD-Z2 is filed within six months of the inheritance being formally confirmed. That's a different clock, starting from a different event, and it's entirely possible to handle the declaration correctly and still lose the tax exemption because SD-Z2 was filed late.

When it's worth calling

If you're not sure whether your six months has already started, or already run out, that's the first thing to establish, not the property's condition or what it might be worth. Once the inheritance certificate is in place and the property is legally yours to sell, a direct sale settles everything in one step: any debt tied to the estate can be paid directly out of the sale price at the notary, so you're not managing a house from another country while a separate deadline for a SD-Z2 filing or a land registry entry quietly runs down too.

Honest terms if you decide to sell

• The price is 70-90% of market value, depending on the legal and physical condition.
• The valuation is always free, ready within 2 days of contact.
• Closing happens from 4 days after you accept the offer.
• Costs on your side: none. Debt settlement is built into the process.

If you've just found out you're an heir to a property in Poland and aren't sure where you stand on the six-month clock, call before you guess. We'll help you work out the actual start date and what your options still are.

Straight answers

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