Louisiana sets no deadline for filing a succession petition. A family can file one year after a death or twenty years after it, and the court will still hear the case. The limits that do exist are prescriptive periods on an heir’s claim rather than filing deadlines. The longest is thirty years. The shortest, just two years, applies when succession property has already been sold to an outside buyer. That is the trap that catches families who wait. Property left in an unopened succession also becomes harder to sell, refinance, or divide with every year that passes. At Buhrer Law Firm, our experienced Metairie succession/probate lawyer guides families through the Louisiana succession process whether the death was recent or decades ago.
What Happens to the Estate Before Anyone Files
Louisiana treats death itself as the operative event. Succession occurs at the death of a person, and immediately at that moment universal successors acquire ownership of the estate while particular successors acquire ownership of the things left to them. Nothing sits in limbo waiting on a courthouse.
The practical problem is proof, not ownership. Your name is not on the deed, the bank has no order recognizing you, and a title company has no document to insure. Heirs own property they cannot practically sell, mortgage, or clear, because no buyer’s title insurer will write a policy on it. The succession proceeding exists to put that ownership on the public record, which is why the absence of a deadline rarely means the absence of urgency.
The Nine-Month Deadline That Is Not a Succession Deadline
Search this question online and you will find confident statements that Louisiana requires a succession within nine months of death. That figure is real, but it belongs to federal tax law rather than Louisiana succession law. Under the Internal Revenue Code, an estate tax return required by Section 6018(a) must be filed within nine months after the date of the decedent’s death.
Two things follow from that. The deadline governs a tax return, not the succession itself, so missing it does not close the courthouse door on your family. And the return is generally required only where the gross estate of a citizen or resident is large enough to cross the federal filing threshold for the year of death, which is tied to the basic exclusion amount. Most estates fall well under it and never have a return to file. Whether a particular estate has to file, and whether any tax is owed, are separate questions we can walk you through.
The Louisiana Clocks That Do Run
Two Louisiana prescriptive periods matter here, and the shorter one is the one that catches families who wait. An action for the recognition of a right of inheritance and recovery of all or part of a succession is subject to a liberative prescription of thirty years, and that period begins on the day the succession opens, which is the day of death.
The second clock is much faster and far less known. If a relative opens the succession, is recognized in a judgment of possession, and then sells the family home to an outside buyer who pays for it, an heir who was left out of that judgment has only two years from the date the judgment was rendered to bring a claim against that buyer. After two years, the buyer is protected and the omitted heir can no longer reach the property in that person’s hands. Two years, not thirty, is the number that decides most of these disputes.
Neither period forfeits anything automatically, because liberative prescription is a defense that has to be raised. But we see the pattern often enough to name it. One relative stays in the family home for decades, the others assume the matter will sort itself out, and by the time anyone looks closely the useful window has closed.
When an Affidavit Can Replace a Court Proceeding
Not every Louisiana succession has to be opened in court. The Code of Civil Procedure lets certain estates be settled by sworn affidavit instead. Where the estate includes a home or land, that affidavit still has to be filed and recorded in the parish records to move title, and some banks or title companies may still ask for more before they act.
An estate can qualify as a small succession in any of these situations:
- A Louisiana domiciliary who left modest property. The estate qualifies if the gross value is one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars or less, valued as of the date of death.
- Louisiana property owned by someone domiciled elsewhere. The ancillary succession qualifies if the Louisiana property has a gross value of one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars or less on the date of death.
- A death that occurred at least twenty years earlier. Where the death predates the affidavit by twenty years or more, property left in Louisiana qualifies regardless of its value.
That third category is the one long-delayed families should notice, because after twenty years value stops disqualifying the estate. Qualifying as a small succession is only the first question, though.
Judicial opening is unnecessary in three situations:
- A person domiciled in Louisiana who died intestate
- A person domiciled in Louisiana who died testate leaving no Louisiana immovable property where everyone who would inherit agrees to waive probate of the testament
- A person domiciled outside Louisiana who died intestate or whose will was probated by a court in another state
Each of the three routes has its own affidavit with its own signer rules. The intestate Louisiana route is the most common, so its requirements are set out here. The affidavit for the intestate Louisiana route must be executed by at least two people, including the surviving spouse if there is one and one or more heirs, and it must set out:
- The date of death and domicile
- The fact of intestacy
- The marital status and the heirs
- A description of the property and whether it is community or separate
- The value of each item and the total
- Each heir’s interest and any legal usufruct of the surviving spouse
- Sworn affirmations of acceptance and of truth under penalty of perjury
An heir who does not sign has to either be unlocatable after reasonable diligence or have been given thirty days’ notice by mail without objecting.
What Waiting Actually Costs New Orleans Area Families
The legal answer and the practical answer diverge here. Delay does not forfeit the succession itself, but it steadily raises the cost and the difficulty of finishing one.
Families who wait tend to run into some combination of the following:
- More heirs to locate. Each intervening death multiplies the parties whose signatures or consents you need to move forward.
- Records that have gone cold. Account statements, appraisals, and date of death values are far harder to reconstruct after a decade.
- Property that cannot be transacted. We regularly see homes in Jefferson Parish and around New Orleans that no one can sell because title was never cleared after a parent died.
- Disputes that hardened over time. Informal arrangements among siblings tend to become contested claims once real money is finally on the table.
None of these is a legal bar. They are cost multipliers, and they are the reason we usually advise families to begin the process well before any deadline comes into view.
Talk With a Metairie Succession Attorney About Your Timeline
Whether the death happened last month or thirty years ago, the first step is the same. Find out which procedure your family’s situation actually calls for. Mr. Buhrer has practiced law in Louisiana for more than 35 years, and family law judges in Jefferson, St. Tammany, and Orleans Parishes have appointed him as a Special Master in complex cases, where his recommendations carry real weight. That experience shapes how we read an estate, including whether an affidavit will do the work of a full proceeding and whether a long neglected succession can still be cleaned up.
If you also want your own affairs in order, we draft wills and related estate documents to fit Louisiana law. To arrange an initial consultation, contact the Buhrer Law Firm online to speak with a friendly staff member.