Statutory Grounds for Unworthiness to Inherit

Legal Article · 12 November 2026
Attorney Thomas Andreas Di Constantinople

Unworthiness to inherit prevents a person from acquiring rights in an inheritance because of serious conduct specified by law. The grounds listed in TMK m. 578 are exhaustive. Intentionally and unlawfully killing the deceased, or attempting to do so, is among those grounds. Weakened family ties or ordinary disputes between the parties do not by themselves create unworthiness.

Difference from Disinheritance

Unworthiness does not require the deceased to have previously prescribed a sanction in a will. Disinheritance, by contrast, requires a testamentary disposition based on a statutory ground. The conditions and matters to be proved are not the same for the two mechanisms; the same outcome cannot be assumed in every case.

The grounds for unworthiness also include permanently rendering the deceased incapable of making a disposition and influencing the making or revocation of a final testamentary intention through fraud, coercion or threats. Intentionally and unlawfully destroying or altering a testamentary disposition that cannot be remade is separately regulated.

A pardon by the deceased may remove unworthiness under the law. Unworthiness concerns only the person responsible for the conduct; their descendants do not automatically suffer the same consequence. Under TMK m. 579, the descendants may inherit as if the unworthy person had died before the deceased. Share calculations therefore cannot stop at simply excluding the unworthy person.

Source

Turkish Civil Code No. 4721, m. 578–579.

This article has been prepared for general legal information purposes.