Can I Exclude a Child from My Inheritance? What Peruvian Law Establishes
Peruvian Civil Code (Arts. 723–748) and statutory grounds for disinheritance.
Forced heirship is one of the cornerstones of Peruvian succession law. Unlike common-law jurisdictions with broad testamentary freedom, Article 723 of the Peruvian Civil Code reserves the legítima whenever forced heirs exist.
Personal estrangement or emotional distance is never sufficient for disinheritance. Article 744 requires explicit statutory invocation and solid evidence of repeated unjustified denial of support, habitual mistreatment or serious insult, or unlawful deprivation of liberty.
In judicial practice across northern Peru, poorly drafted disinheritance clauses are frequently annulled due to defective legal framing in the notarial deed or lack of pre-constituted evidentiary records.
Procedural Criteria & Legal Rationale
In Peru, testamentary freedom is bounded: forced heirs (children, descendants, spouse, and parents) are legally protected through an intangible portion known as the legítima.
A testator may deprive a forced heir of their reserved share only by expressly invoking and substantiating one of the exhaustive grounds in Article 744 of the Civil Code (serious injury, unjustified denial of support, unlawful deprivation of liberty, or attempts against life).
Disinheritance must be clearly stated in a public deed will and remains subject to judicial challenge if the stated legal ground is not conclusively evidenced.