SSS · Inheritance & Will Planning

Is there a way to reduce the reserved share?

The reserved share is mandatory law: a testator cannot cut it back by will alone. What the Turkish Civil Code (No. 4721) does allow is a plan built to sit within it. The instruments are a r…

Updated · July 20261 min readCategory · Inheritance & Will Planning
Short answer

The reserved share is mandatory law; however, with renunciation agreements, insurance solutions, and balanced inter vivos transfers, the plan can be structured in line with the reserved share.

The reserved share is mandatory law: a testator cannot cut it back by will alone. What the Turkish Civil Code (No. 4721) does allow is a plan built to sit within it. The instruments are a renunciation agreement concluded with the protected heir themselves — with or without consideration — balanced and documentable lifetime transfers, life insurance solutions, and planned use of the disposable portion.

The aim is not to defeat the reserved share but to balance the estate and the expectations early, so that an abatement claim (tenkis) never becomes worth bringing. Two things decide whether the plan holds. A renunciation agreement is the cleanest instrument, but it is one the protected heir has to sign themselves — it cannot be imposed on them. And lifetime gifts made to defeat the reserved share are clawed back into the calculation, so the plan has to survive that recalculation rather than merely look balanced. Simulated transactions — a gift dressed up as a sale — do the opposite of protecting you: they invite abatement and annulment both. What matters in practice is that the plan is made early, in writing, and consistent with the reserved-share arithmetic.

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