More Argentine inheritances happen in Buenos Aires Province than anywhere else, and it is the only province that still taxes them. This guide covers the national rules, the provincial procedure and that tax, including for heirs abroad.
Buenos Aires Province at a glance
Buenos Aires Province (Provincia de Buenos Aires) is the largest and most populous province in Argentina, covering about 307,000 km². Its capital is La Plata, a planned city founded in 1882 after the city of Buenos Aires was separated from the province to become the federal capital. That city, today the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA), is surrounded by the province but is not part of it, a distinction that matters for inheritance, as explained below.
The province borders Entre Ríos and Santa Fe to the north, Córdoba and La Pampa to the west, and Río Negro to the southwest. To the east lie the Río de la Plata and over 1,000 km of Atlantic coastline. The 2022 national census counted roughly 17.5 million inhabitants, about 38% of Argentina’s population.
Beyond the metropolitan belt, the landscape is the classic humid Pampa: flat, fertile and temperate, broken only by the Tandilia and Ventania hill ranges near Tandil and Sierra de la Ventana. The Salado basin is low cattle country, and the Atlantic coast runs from San Clemente del Tuyú through Pinamar and Villa Gesell to Mar del Plata, Necochea and Monte Hermoso.
Economically, the province is Argentina’s agricultural and industrial heavyweight. It leads in soybeans, wheat, corn and sunflower, and holds the country’s largest beef herd.
What heirs typically inherit here
The mix of assets in a Buenos Aires Province estate reflects that geography. In the conurbano and La Plata we see houses and apartments, often bought decades ago and sometimes never fully titled. In the northern suburbs (San Isidro, Pilar, Escobar, Tigre) many estates include a home in a gated community or a barrio cerrado such as Nordelta, which now falls under the CCyC rules on conjuntos inmobiliarios, with its own regulations and fees. On the coast, heirs often receive a summer apartment in Mar del Plata or Pinamar. For rural property, see our page on farmland and rural property.
Who inherits: the Civil and Commercial Code in a Buenos Aires Province estate
La Plata does not write its own inheritance law. Since 2015 the answer to “who gets what” comes from Book Five of the national Código Civil y Comercial de la Nación (CCyC). The province supplies the courts, the registry and, unusually, a tax. Take a typical case: a widower from San Isidro dies leaving a house in Martínez, a field near Pergamino and two children, one of them living in New Jersey.
Reserved shares
Article 2445 protects close family with a legítima. Children and grandchildren are entitled to two-thirds of the estate; parents or grandparents to one-half; a surviving husband or wife to one-half. Whatever is not reserved, the disposable portion, can be left freely by will. In our example the widower could have left one-third of the Pergamino field to a nephew, but no more. If a will or lifetime gifts go further, the children can ask the court to cut them back.
When there is no will
Intestate heirs are called in tiers. First come descendants, sharing with a surviving spouse. Next, if no descendants survive, come ascendants, again alongside the spouse. A spouse with neither takes everything. Siblings, nephews, nieces, uncles, aunts and cousins (collaterals up to the fourth degree) inherit only after all of those, and the State only when nobody qualifies.
For married couples in the province, many of whom bought their home during the marriage, the community-property split comes first. The survivor keeps half of the gananciales as their own; when there are children, the deceased’s half goes to the children alone. Separate property (propios), such as a field inherited from one’s own parents, is shared between the spouse and children, the spouse counting as one more child. Without children but with living parents, the spouse receives half. Article 2383 also lets a surviving spouse stay, for life and free of charge, in the couple’s last home, unless it was co-owned with someone else.
The New Jersey son: which law, which court?
Article 2643 sends the succession to the judges of the deceased’s last domicile, here San Isidro. Had the father lived in New Jersey instead, Argentine courts where the real estate sits would still have jurisdiction over the Martínez house and the Pergamino field. Article 2644 adds that the law of the last domicile governs the succession, yet Argentine law applies to Argentine real property, whatever an American will or trust says.
Wills
A handwritten (holographic) will is valid only if the testator writes, dates and signs every word personally (article 2477). Under article 2479 a public will requires a notary and two witnesses, and the deed stays in the notary’s records. Families who also hold a U.S. will should know that under article 2513 a later will revokes an earlier one unless it expressly keeps it. More on coordinating both on our wills page.
Running the sucesión in Buenos Aires Province
The province’s procedure code, Decreto-Ley 7425/68, governs the case. Filing goes to a Juzgado de Primera Instancia en lo Civil y Comercial in the judicial department (departamento judicial) covering the last domicile. The province is divided into some twenty such departments, from La Plata and Lomas de Zamora to Mar del Plata, Bahía Blanca, Azul and Junín. Nordelta, for example, sits in Tigre and therefore in the San Isidro department.
- Documents: death certificate, birth and marriage records, the deceased’s last address.
- Opening: the judge orders checks of the wills registry and of other pending estates.
- Edict: a one-day notice in the Official Gazette gives creditors and other claimants thirty days to appear (article 2340).
- Result: a declaratoria de herederos for an intestate estate (ab intestato), or approval of the will in a testamentary one.
- Valuation and fees: the provincial tasa de justicia, a percentage of the value of the estate’s assets in the province, plus contributions to the lawyers’ fund.
- Title: registration at the Registro de la Propiedad Inmueble de la Provincia de Buenos Aires in La Plata, or a direct sale by notarial deed using the abbreviated chain of title (tracto abreviado).
In busy suburban departments, a cooperative family can usually expect the declaratoria within four to eight months and finished titles within about a year. Contested partitions or missing foreign paperwork add months, sometimes years.
ITGB: the province’s inheritance tax
This is what sets the province apart. Buenos Aires Province is the only Argentine jurisdiction that currently charges an inheritance tax: the Impuesto a la Transmisión Gratuita de Bienes (ITGB), collected by ARBA under the provincial Código Fiscal (Ley 10.397). Residents of the province pay on their whole inheritance; non-residents, including heirs abroad, pay only on property located in the province. ARBA’s 2026 thresholds are ARS 23,343,337 per beneficiary for parents, children and spouses, and ARS 5,606,568 for anyone else. Above them, progressive rates run from roughly 1.6% to roughly 9.5%. A sworn return is mandatory even when nothing is owed, and it must be filed before the assets are registered or transferred. The amounts change yearly with the Ley Impositiva.
Farmland and foreign heirs
Northern partidos such as Pergamino, San Nicolás and Junín are in the farming “core zone”, where Ley 26.737 caps each foreign owner at 1,000 hectares. The law also limits total foreign ownership to 15% per district (30% of that per nationality) and bars foreigners from land with large permanent water bodies. Decree 70/2023 tried to repeal it, but the Supreme Court suspended that repeal on October 9, 2026, pending the case. A child inheriting as a forced heir is not stripped of the land for exceeding the limits, but the hectares are counted against them. See our farmland page.
From New Jersey to La Plata: managing it remotely
The son abroad in our example would sign a special power of attorney before a New Jersey notary, have it apostilled by the state, and send it with apostilled birth records. An Argentine sworn translator (traductor público) translates everything, and ARCA (the federal tax agency, formerly AFIP) issues him a CDI tax number so he can appear on the title, file the ITGB return and receive sale proceeds. Bank balances are released only against a court order.
Questions we hear about Buenos Aires Province
I live in the U.S. Will I owe the Buenos Aires inheritance tax?
Only on assets physically in the province, such as a house in Pilar or a field near Tandil, and only on the portion above your threshold. An apartment in Buenos Aires City is outside the province and outside the ITGB. You still file the return even if the result is zero.
Can we sell the Martínez house before it is in our names?
Yes. Once the declaratoria is issued, the heirs can sign a sale deed through a notary, who records the inheritance and the sale together. ARBA’s ITGB filing has to be in order first.
What if my sister and I disagree on the field?
The declaratoria still issues; it only names the heirs. Disputes about valuation or who keeps the land go to negotiation, mediation or a court-ordered partition, and until then you co-own it in undivided shares.
Does a gated-community home need anything special?
Homes in barrios cerrados such as Nordelta follow the Code’s rules on conjuntos inmobiliarios. Expect the developer or association to require that fees be up to date and the new owners be registered under its internal regulations.
Work with LIMERES
Our Nordelta office (4th floor) lies within the San Isidro judicial department, and our Recoleta office covers the capital. Behind them, LIMERES works with over thirty lawyers in 23 provinces. The first consultation on any inheritance is free: write to us here, or read our overview of international successions and our real estate page.