Blog

A will lets you decide who receives your estate, but in Lebanon that freedom has limits and the form is strict. For Christians, wills are governed by a civil statute, the Law of 23 June 1959 (its full name is the Law on the Inheritance of Non-Mohammedans), read with the Decree-Law of 7 March 1929. This guide explains who may make a will, the two valid forms it can take, what a will can and cannot give away, and how heirs abroad can have a will made or carried out. For the protected shares a will cannot override, see our guide to inheritance shares under the 1959 law.

Which Wills This Guide Covers

This guide covers wills made by Lebanon’s Christians, of all denominations, whose estates pass under a civil statute applied by the ordinary courts rather than by religious-court rules. Muslim wills are a separate matter: they follow the rules of the relevant Islamic community and its religious courts, and differ in important respects, including the general rule that a bequest to a non-heir is limited to one third of the estate. If you are settling a Muslim estate, the regime below does not apply to you.

A will is also only one half of the picture. The shares the law fixes when there is no will, and the protected portion it reserves for close relatives, are covered in the companion guide to Christian inheritance shares under the 1959 law. This guide is about the will itself: making it, what it can do, and undoing it.

Who Can Make a Will

To make a valid will, the testator must be of sound mind, legally capable of making a gift, and a full eighteen years of age (Article 39). Capacity is judged at the time the will is made.

Two limits on the act of making a will catch families out. A single document cannot contain the wills of two or more people, so spouses cannot draw up one joint or mutual will in a single deed; each must make a separate will (Article 41). And an heir who has knowingly approved a will or voluntarily carried it out cannot later turn around and attack its validity (Article 42).

The Two Valid Forms of a Will

A will in Lebanon takes one of two forms: the authentic (notarial) will, or the holographic will written in the testator’s own hand (Article 54). The form is not a formality to be left to chance, because a will that fails the required form is exposed to challenge and may be set aside.

The holographic will is the one to handle with care. The sealed deposit with the notary is not an optional extra for safekeeping; it is a condition of validity. The will must be written, signed and dated by the testator’s own hand, then placed in a red-wax-sealed envelope and deposited with the notary, who authenticates the seal and records the will in a special register (Article 56). Because the law requires this solemn deposit, a holographic will that is never deposited, or that is handed over in an unsealed envelope, is open to being declared void: the deposit goes to the validity of the will, not merely to proving it later. The reason the law insists on a sealed envelope is to make sure the document cannot be opened, swapped or altered before the estate is opened.

For a will made outside Lebanon, the testator has a choice of formalities. A Lebanese person’s will made abroad may be drawn up and authenticated either according to this law or according to the formalities that govern authentic instruments in the foreign country where it is made (Article 54). A holographic will made abroad is deposited with the notary or with the Lebanese consul (Article 56). This is the practical route for a testator living overseas, and it is covered further below.

What a Will Can and Cannot Give Away

A person under this law may make a will, but not an unlimited one. The law reserves a protected portion, the réserve, for the closest heirs, and a will is cut down to the extent it trespasses on that reserve (Article 58). The reserved heirs are the descendants, the parents, and the surviving spouse, so the spouse is a forced heir, not merely an intestate one. What is left after the reserve is the disposable portion, which the testator is free to leave to anyone, an heir or a stranger.

The size of the reserve, and therefore of the disposable portion, depends on which of those heirs survive. Because the figures shift with the family, we set them out in full, with a worked example, in the companion guide to inheritance shares under the 1959 law, and you can compute them for a real family with our inheritance shares calculator. The short version: a will can only ever direct the disposable portion, and it cannot reach into the reserve.

A will that gives away more than the disposable portion is not void. It is reduced down to the legal limit when the estate is opened (Article 65). Three points follow that matter in practice. First, only a reserved heir, or those standing in that heir’s place, may ask the court to reduce the will; an heir who is not a reserved heir has no standing to complain (Article 65). Second, in working out whether the reserve was respected, the law adds back to the estate the value of substantial gifts the testator made during life, valued as at the date of each gift, so a parent cannot defeat the reserve by giving assets away shortly before death (Article 66). Third, where several legacies must be cut, they are reduced without distinction between general and specific legacies, unless the testator expressly said which will should be saved first (Article 68).

Who Can Receive a Bequest, and Who Cannot

A bequest may be made to any person, whether or not that person is an heir, and to a child already conceived provided it is later born alive (Article 40). The beneficiary must be identifiable: a will is void if it is drawn so that the beneficiary cannot be determined at the testator’s death (Article 48).

Several bequests are restricted or barred:

• The treating doctor. A will made by a patient during his last illness in favour of the doctor who treated him in that illness is void, unless the doctor is one of the testator’s heirs, or unless the bequest is genuine payment for services with the amount fixed in light of the testator’s wealth and the services rendered (Article 43).
• A foreigner. A bequest to a foreigner is valid only if the foreigner’s national law allows bequests to Lebanese, and only to the extent it allows: a rule of reciprocity (Article 44).
• Charities and institutions. Bequests to places of worship, charitable bodies, and scientific or public institutions that have legal capacity are valid. A bequest stands even if the institution is not yet legally established at the date of death, provided it acquires legal capacity within one year from the date the bequest falls due; if it does not, the asset returns to the testator’s heirs (Article 46).
• Unlawful conditions. A will carrying conditions that are impossible, unlawful, or contrary to public order or public morality is void. But if such a condition was not the essential motive for the will, the condition alone is treated as unwritten and the will stands (Article 52).

Changing or Revoking a Will

A will is never set in stone. The testator may revoke it in whole or in part at any time (Article 69). Revocation is done by making a later will, by an authentic deed, or by a holographic writing deposited with the notary in the same way as a will, in which the testator declares that he revokes the earlier one (Article 70). A later will that does not expressly revoke the earlier one still impliedly cancels any earlier provisions that conflict with it (Article 71). And if the testator sells an asset he had bequeathed, the sale counts as revocation of the bequest to the extent of the thing sold (Article 72).

Separately, a court may revoke a will at the request of an heir or a beneficiary in two situations: where conditions attached to the will were not carried out, or where the beneficiary commits a crime that would have made him unfit to inherit from the testator. An action on either ground must be brought within one year of the death, or of the date the claimant learned of the facts justifying revocation (Articles 73 and 74).

When a Bequest Fails

A bequest can also fall away by operation of law, without anyone challenging it. A bequest lapses where the beneficiary dies before the testator, where the beneficiary dies before a condition on which the bequest depended is met, where the beneficiary rejects the bequest or becomes incapable of receiving it, or where the bequeathed asset perishes entirely before the testator’s death (Article 75).

Acceptance is the mirror image. A bequest takes effect only when the beneficiary accepts it, expressly or by conduct, after the testator’s death; for a beneficiary who is a minor or under guardianship, the guardian accepts (Article 77). A beneficiary may accept part of a bequest and reject the rest (Article 78), and once accepted the effect dates back to the testator’s death (Article 79). A renunciation made before the testator dies has no effect at all (Article 80).

The Executor of the Will

A testator may appoint one or more executors to carry out the will, provided the executor enjoys full civil rights and legal capacity; the role does not pass to the executor’s own heirs (Article 81). The testator can define the executor’s functions, and if he does not, the executor’s task is to administer the estate, pay its debts, and distribute its assets in the way the testator directed or the law provides (Article 82).

The executor’s role has real teeth, which is why it matters to families settling an estate from a distance. While an executor is in office, the heirs are barred from dealing with or administering the estate’s assets (Article 85). The executor must notify the heirs at once that he has accepted, hand them a statement of the estate’s contents and debts, and tell them when the estate will be inventoried (Article 87). An executor is liable for his negligence and for damage his conduct causes the estate, under the ordinary rules of an agent’s liability, and he cannot be released in advance from all liability (Article 90). If the testator set no fee, the executor may claim a reasonable one (Article 91). The heirs may have an executor removed by the court if he breaches his duties or becomes unfit, after he has been heard (Article 92).

Making or Carrying Out a Will from Abroad

For Lebanese families overseas, two features of the law make the will manageable at a distance. A will made abroad can follow the foreign country’s own formalities for authentic instruments, rather than requiring a trip back to Lebanon (Article 54), and a holographic will made abroad is deposited with the Lebanese consul where there is no local notary to receive it (Article 56). On the other side, when the estate falls open, naming a trusted executor lets the estate be administered and the assets distributed without every heir needing to be present in Lebanon, since the heirs cannot themselves deal with the estate while the executor acts (Article 85).

The two recurring pitfalls for diaspora testators are form and the reserve. A holographic will that is written and signed but never deposited, sealed, with a notary or consul is the single most common way a home-made will fails. And a will that tries to favour one child, or a new spouse, beyond the disposable portion will be cut back to the reserve when the estate opens, however clearly it was expressed. Both are avoidable with advice before the will is signed.

Getting It Right

A valid will in Lebanon is the meeting of two things: the correct form, and a disposition that respects the reserved share. Get the form wrong and the will can be set aside; ignore the reserve and the will is cut back. Both turn on the particular family and assets.

➤ To see what portion of an estate can actually be left by will, and what is locked up as the reserved share, open our inheritance shares calculator.

For how a will fits into the wider process of settling an estate in Lebanon, and the two systems that decide who inherits, see our pillar guide to inheritance law in Lebanon.

Related resources:

• Inheritance Law in Lebanon: A Guide for Heirs and Families Abroad
• Christian and Non-Muslim Inheritance in Lebanon: Shares Under the 1959 Law
• Inheritance Tax in Lebanon: Rates, Exemptions and How to Calculate It
• Probate, Inheritance and Asset Transfer in Lebanon: Procedure and Inheritance Tax
• Inheritance Shares Calculator

References: Law of 23 June 1959 on the inheritance of non-Mohammedans (Articles 39 to 92, in particular 39, 41 to 56, 58, 65, 66, 68 to 92); Decree-Law of 7 March 1929 on the wills of non-Mohammedans.