What Vietnam’s Civil Code decides about assets inherited abroad

For an estate with a flat in Sydney or shares in Singapore, the Civil Code tells a Vietnamese court or notary which law applies; foreign authorities apply their own. Succession follows nationality, and inheritance rights over real estate are exercised under the law of the country where it stands.

Since 1 July 2026, a tax resident pays 10% income tax above VND 20 million on inherited real estate, securities, capital or registrable assets, unless close relatives pass on real estate.

When an estate becomes a foreign case

Part Five of the Civil Code, in force since 1 January 2017 and unamended according to the Ministry of Justice’s legal database, deals with civil relations that have a foreign element. Article 663 lists three triggers: a foreign individual or legal entity among the parties, a relation established, changed, performed or ended abroad, or an object located abroad.

An heir who holds only a foreign nationality is enough on the first trigger; whether a dual national counts as a foreign individual for this purpose is not something the texts answer.

The third trigger turns on where the object of the relation is located. This indicates that it is reached when one estate asset sits outside Vietnam, although no court guidance on that point was found. A treaty to which Vietnam is party takes precedence over these rules (Articles 664 and 665).

Nationality for the estate, local law for the house

Article 680 sets the rule in two clauses. Succession is determined by the law of the country of which the deceased was a national immediately before death. The exercise of inheritance rights over immovable property is determined by the law of the country where that property is located.

Whether an asset is movable or immovable is itself decided by the law of the place where it is (Article 677).

How far the second clause reaches is not settled by any official text found: it may cover who inherits real estate and in what shares, or only how the inherited right is exercised and registered.

For a Vietnamese citizen who dies owning a house in Melbourne and a portfolio in Singapore, at the least how the heirs take and register the house follows Australian law; whether Australian law also decides who the heirs are is the open point. The portfolio, if Singapore law classifies it as movable, falls under Vietnamese law.

Article 668 includes the foreign country’s own conflict rules in a reference to its law, other than a law the parties themselves chose, and where they refer the matter back, Vietnamese substantive law applies. That matters chiefly where the deceased was a foreign national whose own law points to residence in Vietnam.

Under Article 670, foreign law is not applied where its effect would be contrary to the basic principles of Vietnamese law, or where its content cannot be established despite the measures procedural law requires; Vietnamese law then applies.

Wills made abroad

A testator’s capacity to make, change or revoke a will is determined by the law of their nationality at that time. The form of a will follows the law of the country where it was made.

Article 681 also treats the form as valid in Vietnam if it complies with the law of the testator’s residence or nationality, at the time of making or at death, or, where the estate is real estate, the law of the place where that property is.

Dual nationals

For a person with several nationalities, Article 672 points to the law of the nationality state where the person resides, and, where one of the nationalities is Vietnamese, to Vietnamese law. This means a Vietnamese court or notary would apply Vietnamese succession law to a person who died still holding Vietnamese nationality alongside another, subject to the real-estate rule and any treaty.

No decision applying the rule to an estate was found. Separately, the Nationality Law, as amended from 1 July 2025, provides that on Vietnamese territory, in dealings with Vietnamese authorities, a citizen who also holds a foreign nationality is recognised only as Vietnamese, unless a treaty provides otherwise.

Dividing the estate in Vietnam

Under Article 59 of the Notarisation Law, in force since 1 July 2025, heirs by law or by will may have an estate-division document notarised. The file includes the death certificate, the will or proof of the relationship, and proof of title where the estate includes land or property that must be registered.

The notary’s office must post a public notice first and may notarise only once the posting is complete without complaint; the same procedure applies where there is a single heir. The notarised document is the basis for the competent authority to register the transfer.

The Law says nothing about assets abroad. It neither forbids listing them nor says what a foreign registry or bank will do with a Vietnamese division document; that is for the law where the asset is. No guidance or practice was found either way.

Vietnamese embassies and consulates may notarise wills, refusals of an inheritance, powers of attorney and other transactions, but not contracts dealing in real estate in Vietnam (Article 73).

Foreign documents used in the procedure, such as a foreign death certificate or a will notarised abroad, need consular legalisation under Decree 111/2011/NĐ-CP, unless exempt under a treaty, on reciprocity, or under the other heads in Article 9 of that decree as rewritten by Decree 196/2025/NĐ-CP from 3 August 2025.

Since 11 September 2026, public documents from states in an applicable Apostille relationship with Vietnam need only the Apostille and a notarised or certified Vietnamese translation, under Decree 293/2026/NĐ-CP, unless they fall within the refusal grounds of its Article 26, such as content that breaches Vietnamese law or its basic principles on public order and social morality.

An Apostille certifies who signed and sealed a document, not what it says. A September report covered the states whose objections mean the Convention does not run between them and Vietnam.

What Vietnamese courts can decide

Among the exclusive-jurisdiction grounds of the Civil Procedure Code, the one that turns on where property is located is rights over real estate in Vietnam (Article 470); the other grounds concern divorce and cases the parties have agreed to bring before Vietnamese courts.

A Vietnamese court may hear a dispute about property abroad on general grounds, for example where the defendant lives in Vietnam (Article 469). It must, however, return or stop the case where the matter is not reserved to Vietnamese courts and is reserved to the foreign court concerned (Article 472). This is likely to be the usual position for a house abroad, depending on the foreign country’s jurisdiction rules.

A foreign court’s judgment may be recognised on application where a treaty applies or on reciprocity, and refusal grounds include that the foreign court lacked jurisdiction or that recognition would breach the basic principles of Vietnamese law (Articles 423 and 439). Whether a foreign grant of probate counts as such a decision was not established.

Published precedent 06/2016/AL, as summarised on the Supreme People’s Court portal (the precedent text itself was not read), deals with the opposite case of heirs abroad: where the court has sought judicial assistance and still cannot find an heir’s address, it may still divide the estate, with the absent heir’s share provisionally managed by those living in Vietnam until it can be handed over.

Tax on what is inherited

The Personal Income Tax Law 109/2025/QH15, in force since 1 July 2026, taxes as income inheritances of securities, capital in companies and businesses, real estate, and assets whose ownership or use must be registered. A resident pays 10% on the value above VND 20 million for each inheritance, up from a VND 10 million threshold under the 2007 law.

Residents are taxed on income arising inside and outside Vietnam, and the law contains no clause confining a resident’s inheritances to assets in Vietnam, in contrast to the rule for non-residents, who pay 10% above VND 20 million on inheritances “in Vietnam”, in the statute’s own words. No tax is withheld; the heir declares it.

Inheritances of real estate between spouses, parents and children (including adoptive parents and parents-in-law), grandparents and grandchildren, and full siblings are exempt. That exemption carries no territorial words; the next clause, by contrast, applies where the individual has only one dwelling “in Vietnam”.

That contrast suggests the family exemption also covers real estate abroad; the point rests on the wording of the law alone, not on an official position.

The list of taxable inheritances does not mention cash or bank deposits, and no official statement was found on how an inherited foreign account is treated. A brokerage account holding shares would fall under securities if foreign shares count, which is not settled either.

Decree 253/2026/NĐ-CP provides a credit for personal income tax paid in a country with which Vietnam has a double taxation agreement, on the agreement’s terms; it says nothing about foreign estate or inheritance taxes. How Vietnamese tax residence is decided is explained in a separate article.

What this article has not established

No official text was found settling how far the real-estate clause of Article 680 reaches. Whether any of Vietnam’s judicial-assistance treaties contains its own succession rule was not checked.

It was not established whether notaries in practice include foreign assets in a division document, or whether a foreign grant of probate is recognised in Vietnam.

Nor was it established how an inheritance of foreign assets is valued and timed for tax (the valuation rules in Decree 253/2026 refer to Vietnamese land-price tables), whether foreign shares count as securities or capital for this tax, or whether a foreign estate tax can be credited.

The list of states in an Apostille relationship with Vietnam was not re-read for this article. A general guide to cross-border succession covers the planning side.