Brennan & Costa

The Problem#

• Thousands of Irish nationals retire to Portugal, maintaining property and bank accounts in both countries — when they die, two separate legal processes must run in parallel
• The EU Succession Regulation (Brussels IV) allows a nationality election for Irish law to govern the entire estate, but if no election was made, Portuguese forced heirship rules apply by default to Portuguese assets
• Dublin and Lisbon offices coordinate via email and PDF, with each jurisdiction’s documentation in a different format and language
• Each communication cycle loses 3–5 weeks to format conversion and re-keying

How They’d Use INHERIT#

• The estate.json root record captures the deceased’s domicile (Ireland or Portugal, depending on habitual residence)
• The ireland extension provides spouseLegalRightShare (1/3 with children, 1/2 without — an automatic right that cannot be defeated by will), section117Claim for children’s moral duty provisions, and capitalAcquisitionsTax thresholds
• Portuguese property is modelled in property.json with common/jurisdiction.json set to Portugal
• The eu-succession extension records BrusselsIVChoiceOfLaw — whether a nationality election was made (nationalityElection: true, electedNationality: "IE") — determining which country’s succession law governs the Portuguese property
• If a EuropeanCertificateOfSuccession has been issued, the certificateReference and issued: true fields are recorded
• A single INHERIT document replaces the current patchwork of Irish Inland Revenue affidavits and Portuguese certidao de obito

The Integration#

• Bidirectional: Brennan & Costa’s Dublin office creates the INHERIT document and shares it with their Lisbon correspondent
• The Lisbon firm adds Portuguese-specific property details and returns the enriched document
• Both offices work from the same data, eliminating discrepancies between jurisdictions

The Business Case#

• Dual-jurisdiction estate completion time reduces from an average of 14 months to 9 months
• Across 80–100 cross-border cases per year, the time saving translates to approximately EUR 320,000 in reduced legal fees for clients
• Faster asset release means beneficiaries access inherited property and funds months sooner
• The structured format eliminates the re-keying and format conversion that currently dominates paralegal time

Before / After#

Without INHERIT:

1. Irish retiree dies in Portugal — Brennan & Costa’s Dublin office opens the Irish estate file
2. Dublin sends the deceased’s details and asset information to the Lisbon correspondent as a PDF
3. Lisbon re-keys everything into Portuguese format, translates documents, and returns queries by email
4. Each round of clarification takes 3–5 weeks — format mismatches and re-keying errors compound
5. The Dublin and Lisbon files diverge — the two offices work from different versions of the truth
6. Total administration time: 14 months on average

With INHERIT:

1. Irish retiree dies in Portugal — Dublin creates an INHERIT document covering both jurisdictions
2. The document is shared with Lisbon, who enriches it with Portuguese property details directly
3. Both offices work from a single structured record — no re-keying, no format conversion
4. Total administration time: 9 months on average