He got angry with his brother after he inherited the apartment

Do you know someone who doesn’t talk to their brother because of the inheritance? I did, and not one, two or three people, but several of them. Some are coming. These situations are common and Sebastián del Rey, director of institutional relations of the association of registrars and registrars, deals with this problem.

“Is inheriting a house always a good gift?”

—A house is real estate and as such always has a certain value, although it is highly variable depending, first of all, on its location; and later the conditions of their habitation. As with any other inherited property, it is subject to debts such as a mortgage and, in this case, it can be a more or less complicated allocation depending on the economic capacity of the person who receives it as an inheritance. Fiscal costs are no less important: inheritance tax and municipal capital gains, which can be quite high depending on the family relationship and the autonomous community in question.

—What family conflicts can be caused by inheritance?

— In the case of multiple heirs, they can contest the inheritance if they disagree with the attributed value of the house, which makes it difficult to decide on the inheritance, or if later they do not all agree on the final destination of the property, when it is sold or rented, for example, and any of these problems, along with difficulties in paying a proportionate part of the mentioned taxes, could cause serious family conflicts, especially if the economic situation of the heirs is asymmetrical and one of them has more or less urgent economic needs.

— Does this kind of situation even happen in families where the members “a priori” get along well with each other?

— In these cases, the most common trigger of conflict would be the financial need of one of the heirs.

—How important is the tax burden in a family conflict that may arise?

— This is usually a trigger in cases where one of the heirs cannot afford to pay the proportionate share that belongs to him.

— Allegedly, no income tax is paid on inherited apartments, but it is paid as soon as they are rented out or sold. It was said that there is a recommendation to increase the value of the apartment so that the capital gain realized from the sale would be smaller.

— Indeed, it is advisable to record the real market value of the property for inheritance tax purposes, because often, in cases of close relatives, they tend to be highly subsidized, which means that a low amount is paid upon receipt and at the time of their sale, recording them by market value, the capital gain, if any, will be small and this will significantly reduce the recapitalization on which the corresponding income tax will be paid.

—What problems usually arise between usufructuary and (or those) who hold bare property?

— Common problems usually arise from discrepancies between the costs that one has to pay and the other. As a rule, regular expenses are borne by the usufructuary, and extraordinary expenses, such as spillage for the maintenance of the building in which the apartment is located, are borne by the bare owner.

An example comes up in a conversation with Sebastián del Rey: a man dies, and his children and another woman with whom they want nothing to do inherit. This usually has a usufruct of certain property. So the children can pay for that usufruct with money and choose to avoid any relationship with her. This way of acting is allowed by the Civil Code.

The point is to get rid of the problem.