Reserved shares, known in Turkish law as saklı pay, are one of the most important limits on testamentary freedom. In simple terms, Turkish inheritance law does not allow a person to dispose of the entire estate freely when certain close relatives survive. If the deceased leaves descendants, parents, or a surviving spouse, the Turkish Civil Code protects part of their statutory inheritance and allows the deceased to dispose only of the remaining disposable portion. This makes reserved shares a central issue in wills, inheritance contracts, inter vivos gifts, family settlements, and estate disputes.
The practical importance of reserved shares is enormous. Many inheritance conflicts in Turkey do not arise because the heirs disagree about who the family members are, but because one heir believes the deceased gave too much to another child, to a new spouse, to a friend, or to a third party through a will or lifetime transfer. Turkish law answers that problem through a combination of statutory protection and the reduction action, known as tenkis davası. For that reason, anyone dealing with estate planning or succession litigation in Turkey must understand not only legal heirship, but also how reserved shares operate and how violations are remedied.
What Is a Reserved Share Under Turkish Law?
A reserved share is the portion of a legal heir’s inheritance that the deceased cannot freely eliminate through testamentary dispositions. Article 505 of the Turkish Civil Code states that if the deceased has descendants, parents, or a spouse as heirs, the deceased may dispose only of the part of the estate remaining outside the reserved shares. Article 506 then identifies the heirs who benefit from this protection and sets their ratios. In other words, Turkish law draws a line between the legal inheritance share and the protected minimum share that cannot be reduced below the statutory level except in narrowly defined cases such as valid disinheritance.
This distinction is essential because many people confuse a legal share with a reserved share. They are not the same thing. A legal share is the portion that a person would receive under the statutory inheritance system if there were no conflicting testamentary arrangements. A reserved share is only the protected part of that legal share. The difference between the total legal share and the protected reserved share is what creates the deceased’s room for testamentary freedom. In Turkish succession practice, the entire dispute often turns on that calculation.
Which Heirs Have Reserved Shares in Turkey?
Under current Article 506, the protected heirs are the descendants, the mother and father, and the surviving spouse. Descendants have a reserved share equal to one half of their legal inheritance share. Each parent has a reserved share equal to one quarter of his or her legal inheritance share. The surviving spouse has a reserved share equal to the full legal share when inheriting together with descendants or with the parental line, and three quarters of the legal share in other cases. Article 506 also shows that the former rule on siblings has been repealed, meaning siblings are no longer reserved-share heirs under the current law.
That last point is especially important. A sibling may still be a legal heir in some estates if the succession reaches the parental line, but that does not make the sibling a reserved-share heir. Turkish law distinguishes between being entitled to inherit under the statutory order and being entitled to a protected portion that limits testamentary freedom. Under the current version of Article 506, the law protects descendants, parents, and the surviving spouse, but not siblings. This significantly broadens the deceased’s freedom in estates where siblings would otherwise inherit only as ordinary legal heirs.
The position of the surviving spouse must also be read together with Article 499, which sets the spouse’s statutory share depending on the class of relatives who also inherit. The spouse receives one quarter if inheriting with descendants, one half if inheriting with the parental line, and three quarters if inheriting with grandparents and their descendants; if none of those groups exists, the spouse takes the entire estate. Article 506 then overlays reserved-share protection on top of that statutory share. The spouse’s reserved share is therefore not fixed in the abstract; it depends on the spouse’s legal share in the specific succession structure.
Descendants include children and, by representation, grandchildren and further descendants. Article 495 states that children inherit equally and that if a child predeceases the deceased, that child’s descendants step into the line by representation. Because Article 506 protects descendants as a class, the reserved-share protection extends through that succession structure. Article 500 also provides that an adopted child and the adopted child’s descendants inherit from the adoptive parent like blood relatives, while the adopted child’s inheritance relationship with the biological family continues. As a result, adopted children stand within the protected descendant line in the adoptive parent’s estate.
Children born outside marriage are also not excluded from inheritance protection merely because of birth status. Article 498 provides that persons born outside marriage inherit from the father’s side like children born within marriage if filiation has been established through recognition or a court judgment. Once that legal bond exists, the child enters the descendant line under Turkish inheritance law and benefits from the descendant-based reserved-share protection of Article 506. In practice, this means that reserved-share analysis in Turkey follows legal filiation, not outdated social distinctions.
How Are Reserved Shares Calculated?
Reserved shares are not calculated in a vacuum. First, the legal heirs and their statutory shares must be identified. Second, the estate base must be established. Article 507 provides that the disposable portion is calculated according to the condition of the estate on the date of death. When making that calculation, the deceased’s debts, funeral expenses, the expenses of sealing and inventorying the estate, and three months of maintenance expenses for persons living with and supported by the deceased are deducted from the estate. Only after those deductions can one determine the disposable portion and test whether a reserved share has been infringed.
Article 508 adds another important rule: inter vivos gratuitous transfers are brought back into the calculation to the extent they are subject to reduction. Article 509 similarly provides that, in certain life-insurance arrangements made for the benefit of a third person, the purchase value of the insurance claim at the time of death is added back into the estate. This matters because a reserved-share violation is not assessed only by looking at the assets physically left in the estate on the day of death. Turkish law looks beyond the apparent estate and examines whether gratuitous transfers made during life distorted the protected shares.
Consider a simple example. If the deceased leaves a spouse and two children, Article 499 gives the spouse one quarter of the estate and the children together three quarters, divided equally between them. Article 506 then protects the spouse’s entire legal share in that scenario and protects one half of each child’s legal share. So if the estate is worth 1,000,000 TL after the deductions required by Article 507, the spouse’s legal share is 250,000 TL and the spouse’s reserved share is also 250,000 TL. Each child’s legal share is 375,000 TL, and each child’s reserved share is 187,500 TL. The part that remains freely disposable is what is left after those protected amounts are taken into account.
Take another example. If the deceased leaves no descendants but leaves a spouse and both parents, Article 499 gives the spouse one half of the estate, while the parental line takes the other half. Under Article 506, the spouse’s reserved share in this configuration is the full legal share, and each parent’s reserved share is one quarter of that parent’s legal share. This shows why reserved-share analysis in Turkey is always fact-sensitive: the same spouse may have different statutory and protected positions depending on whether descendants exist, whether the parental line is called, and whether the spouse is the only heir.
A further example highlights the spouse’s changing protection. If the spouse is the sole heir because none of the statutory blood-relative classes exists, Article 499 gives the entire estate to the spouse. Article 506 does not protect the whole estate in that situation, however; it protects three quarters of the spouse’s legal share. That means the spouse’s reserved share equals three quarters of the estate, while one quarter remains disposable. The result illustrates a broader principle of Turkish inheritance law: even when one person is the only legal heir, the law may still leave part of the estate within the deceased’s freedom of disposition.
What Types of Transactions Can Violate Reserved Shares?
Reserved shares may be violated by more than just wills. Article 505 refers generally to testamentary freedom over the disposable portion, and the reduction regime in Articles 560 and following reaches both testamentary dispositions and certain inter vivos gratuitous transfers. That means the relevant question is not merely whether the deceased wrote a will, but whether the deceased, by any legally relevant disposition, transferred more than the law allowed while protected heirs existed. From a litigation standpoint, the target may be a will, an inheritance contract, a gift, a transfer of assets to one child, or another gratuitous arrangement that reduced the protected share of a reserved-share heir.
Article 565 is particularly important because it identifies which inter vivos gratuitous transfers are subject to reduction like testamentary dispositions. These include certain lifetime transfers made to legal heirs in anticipation of inheritance, transfers aimed at settling inheritance rights before death, revocable donations, gifts made within one year before death other than customary presents, and dispositions that are clearly intended to defeat the reserved-share rules. For practitioners, this article is crucial because many Turkish inheritance disputes are built around lifetime property transfers rather than formal wills.
In practice, that means a parent cannot safely assume that transferring a valuable apartment to one child during life will automatically avoid reserved-share scrutiny. If the transfer falls within Article 565 or otherwise affects the reserved-share calculation through Articles 508 and following, the court may still examine whether the protected heirs were deprived of their minimum statutory protection. This is why a succession plan that appears effective on paper may later be partially unwound through a reduction action. Turkish inheritance law looks at substance, timing, and legal characterization, not merely at the label attached to the transaction.
Can a Reserved Share Be Eliminated by Disinheritance?
Yes, but only under strict statutory conditions. Article 510 allows the deceased to disinherit a reserved-share heir by testamentary disposition if the heir committed a serious crime against the deceased or a close person of the deceased, or if the heir seriously failed to perform obligations arising from family law toward the deceased or the deceased’s family members. This is not a broad license to punish an heir for emotional disappointment or family disagreement. Turkish law treats disinheritance as an exceptional mechanism that must rest on legally recognized grounds.
Article 511 states that a person validly disinherited cannot take a share from the estate and cannot bring a reduction action. The same article adds that, unless the deceased provided otherwise, the disinherited person’s share passes as though that person had died before the deceased, meaning it may pass to that person’s descendants or, if none exist, to the deceased’s legal heirs. The article also protects the descendants of the disinherited person by allowing them to claim their own reserved shares as if their parent had predeceased the deceased.
Article 512 imposes further safeguards. Disinheritance is valid only if the deceased stated the reason for it in the disposition. If the disinherited heir objects, the burden of proving the existence of the stated reason falls on the heir or legatee who benefits from the disinheritance. If the reason cannot be proved, or if no reason was stated, the disposition is effective only beyond the reserved share unless the deceased acted under an obvious mistake about the reason, in which case the disinheritance may fail altogether. In short, Turkish law does not allow casual or unreasoned removal of a protected heir.
The Main Remedy: Reduction Action
The main remedy for a reserved-share violation is the reduction action under Article 560. That article states that heirs who did not receive the value of their reserved shares may sue to reduce the deceased’s dispositions to the extent they exceed the disposable portion. This makes the reduction action the core enforcement mechanism of reserved shares in Turkish law. The protected heir is not merely making a moral complaint that the distribution was unfair; the heir is asserting a statutory right to bring the excessive disposition down to the lawful level.
Article 561 adds a proportionality rule where testamentary gains were made to reserved-share heirs themselves. If a reserved-share heir received a testamentary benefit that exceeds the disposable portion, the amount above that heir’s reserved share may itself be reduced proportionally. Where multiple testamentary dispositions exist, gains to non-protected persons and the portion of gains to protected heirs that exceed their reserved shares are reduced proportionally. This provision prevents a protected heir from using reserved-share status as a shield for excessive gains beyond the level the law protects.
Articles 563 to 569 regulate how reduction operates in concrete situations, including indivisible legacies, inter vivos gratuitous transfers, life-insurance benefits, usufructs, annuities, and substitutionary arrangements. Article 564, for example, addresses indivisible specific legacies by allowing the legatee either to pay the value of the portion to be reduced and keep the asset, or to receive the value corresponding to the disposable part. Article 566 then distinguishes between good-faith and bad-faith recipients when determining the obligation to return what was received. These provisions show that Turkish law treats reduction not as an abstract recalculation only, but as a detailed remedial system for adjusting actual transfers.
In What Order Are Dispositions Reduced?
Article 570 is clear on order. Reduction is made first from testamentary dispositions and, if that is not enough to restore the reserved share, then from inter vivos gratuitous transfers, working backward from the most recent to the oldest. The same article places dispositions and gratuitous transfers made to public legal persons and to public-benefit associations and foundations at the end of the sequence. This order matters greatly in litigation because the identity of the defendant and the reach of the claim depend on whether the testamentary dispositions alone are enough to restore the protected share.
The timing rule is equally important. Article 571 states that the right to bring a reduction action is lost one year after the heirs learn that their reserved shares were infringed and, in any event, ten years after the opening of the will in the case of wills, or ten years after the opening of the inheritance in the case of other dispositions. The same article also provides that if invalidating one disposition causes an earlier one to become effective, the time starts when the invalidation judgment becomes final. In addition, a reduction claim may always be raised as a defense.
These rules make delay dangerous. A protected heir may feel morally wronged for many years, but Turkish law requires timely procedural action. Waiting too long can destroy the right to sue even if the substantive complaint is justified. For that reason, heirs who suspect that a will, donation, debt release, or other transfer violated their reserved share should identify the estate, calculate the legal shares, assess the protected portion, and examine time limits immediately rather than treating the issue as something that can safely be addressed later.
Common Practical Mistakes
One of the most common mistakes is assuming that a will can freely override family succession. Under Turkish law, a will can operate only within the disposable portion when reserved-share heirs exist. Another common mistake is focusing only on the estate assets left at death and ignoring gifts, asset transfers, debt forgiveness, or insurance arrangements that may have to be added back into the reserved-share calculation. A third mistake is confusing the spouse’s legal share with the spouse’s reserved share and failing to notice that both vary depending on which succession class also exists.
Another serious error is assuming that every dissatisfied heir has a reserved-share claim. Turkish law protects only specific heirs. A sibling may inherit in some circumstances, but siblings do not currently enjoy reserved-share protection under Article 506. By contrast, a child, an adopted child in the adoptive line, a legally recognized child born outside marriage, a parent, or a surviving spouse may have strong reserved-share rights depending on the succession structure. Accurate classification is therefore the starting point of any serious inheritance analysis in Turkey.
Conclusion
Reserved shares in Turkish inheritance law are not a technical side issue. They are the main legal mechanism that balances family protection with testamentary freedom. The Turkish Civil Code allows a person to plan the estate, write a will, and make transfers, but it does not permit the complete elimination of the protected minimum shares of descendants, parents, and the surviving spouse except in the limited statutory cases of valid disinheritance. The scope of that protection depends on the heir’s legal share, the structure of the succession, and the correct calculation of the disposable portion.
For heirs, the key question is never just whether the deceased left property to someone else. The real legal question is whether the deceased exceeded the disposable portion after the estate was properly calculated and the protected shares were taken into account. If the answer is yes, Turkish law provides a direct remedy through the reduction action, subject to strict ordering and time-limit rules. Anyone dealing with a contested Turkish estate should therefore evaluate reserved shares early, carefully, and with a full view of both testamentary dispositions and lifetime transfers.
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