You can write any will you like in Colombia. Colombian law can still override half of it.

This is one of the biggest surprises for Anglo-country retirees moving to Colombia. In common-law countries (basically all the countries who were originally colonies of the British empire), you can leave your estate to whoever you want. In Colombia, you can't.

Colombia's civil-law forced-heirship rules — known as legítima — reserve specific portions of your estate for specific categories of heir. Attempts to disinherit them, or to leave everything to a favoured child or a new spouse, can be partially or fully overturned by Colombian courts.

How Legítima Works

Under Colombian succession law:

• Half of your estate is the legítima rigurosa — reserved for your ‘legitimate heirs’ (biological descendants ranked first, then if no children your parents, then if no parents your spouse, etcetera etcetera).

• A quarter is the mejoras — a portion you can freely distribute among your ‘legitimate heirs’ (giving one child more than another, for example), but still not outside that group.

• The remaining quarter is the libre disposición — the only truly free portion, which you can leave to anyone you want.

For an expat or retiree with children in Colombia, this means 75% of your estate is legally locked to your children. Only the last 25% can go to a spouse, a friend, a charity, or anyone else outside the forced-heir group.

This also has the potential to dispossess step-children or new partners - for example: we saw a case where an expat , let’s call him Tim, had married in Colombia, taken up the role of step-father to the son of his new wife and raised him for 15 years, and had zero contact with an adult child who he had in the US when he was 19. The Colombian forced heirship rules meant that adult child who hadn’t spoken to Tim in decades got 50% of his inheritance, which forced Tim’s widowed wife and step-son to sell their family house in El Poblado, Medellín to pay Tim’s estranged adult child (as the house made up >50% of his net worth).

What Assets Are Subject

Colombian-situs assets — real estate, bank accounts, shares in Colombian companies — are subject to Colombian forced heirship rules regardless of your citizenship.

Foreign assets held in your personal name are more contested. Colombian law generally follows the deceased's last domicile — if you die as a Colombian tax resident, Colombian succession law may apply to your worldwide personal estate, subject to conflict-of-laws rules and any bilateral treaties.

Our Most Common Solution: How a Panamanian Foundation Solves It

Assets held by a properly-structured Panamanian foundation are outside your personal estate. They belong to the foundation, not to you personally. On your death they pass to the foundation's named beneficiaries under its private regulation — not through Colombian succession law.

Panama Law 25 specifically provides that Panamanian foundations are not subject to foreign forced-heirship claims. This is one of the specific statutory advantages of the vehicle.

For a Colombian tax resident with substantial wealth, moving investment assets into a Panamanian foundation before death removes those assets from the Colombian legítima calculation entirely. You can then distribute them however you want through the foundation's regulation — to a second spouse, unequal shares among children, charity, a family trust for future generations, whatever.

The foundation also allows you to place permanent conditions on distributions - for example “X apartment to be given to X son when he turns 25"; “$50,000 to be given to X daughter when she graduates university”; “X monthly stipend to be wired to X brother on a condition of sobriety proven by regular drug urine testing”; “maximum cap of 10% of assets can be sold/withdrawn in any one calendar year”; etc. You can change these conditions as the founder while you’re alive, but can effectively ‘lock’ the conditions once you pass.

The foundation is it’s own legal identity, and is immortal. This means that you can also completely avoid triggering a tax event when you die, because you don’t own the assets, the foundation does, and the foundation lives on - meaning there’s effectively 0% inheritance tax on your main assets.

What Doesn't Solve Colombia’s Forced Inheritance Laws

• A foreign will alone. Colombian courts will apply Colombian succession law to Colombian-situs assets and often to worldwide assets of a Colombian resident, regardless of a foreign will's terms. A foreign will is effectively meaningless in most cases in Colombia.

• A common-law trust. Colombian courts don't recognise trusts cleanly and may treat trust assets as still belonging to the settlor's estate.

• Holding through a personal-name US or Canadian company. Corporate shares are personal assets subject to the same forced-heirship rules.

The foundation works because Panama Law 25 gives it its own legal personhood and specifically overrides foreign heirship claims — an outcome no personal-name or common-law-trust structure can replicate.

Practical Planning

If you're moving to Colombia with substantial wealth and want your estate to pass to non-forced-heirs (a new spouse, unequal to children, to grandchildren directly, to charity), plan the foundation before you die.

If you're already Colombian-resident and haven't planned, it's not too late — the foundation can be established and funded during your life, though the tax and reporting mechanics of the transfer need care.

If your children are your only heirs and you're happy for them to inherit equally, forced heirship may not bother you — a simple Colombian will can suffice.