Lawyers in Madrid

Ricardo Vilas de Escauriaza served as a notary in Madrid for 30 years. Today we advise you on inheritance, tax, real estate and corporate matters.

About us

Vilas Abogados is a law firm led by Ricardo Vilas de Escauriaza, Abogado (Spanish lawyer), who served as a notary in Madrid for 30 years (1996–2026) and sees clients in Spanish, English, French and Catalan. We welcome you to our offices in a street-level detached house with step-free access and an enclosed garden, in the area between Retiro and Pacífico. If you are visiting us from outside Madrid, we are very close to the A-3 motorway exit and Atocha railway station.
  • Ricardo Vilas de Escauriaza on the garden path, in front of the glazed entrance door to the offices
  • Reception area: waiting armchairs around a coffee table, with a black reception desk in the background
  • Waiting room with cream and red armchairs, a television and a phrase lettered on the wall
  • Ricardo Vilas de Escauriaza seated at the meeting room table with a document in front of him and a large photographic mural of a bullfighter behind him
  • Reception desks and workstations, with a mural of the Cibeles Palace and the staircase in the background

Services

International successions, taxes, real estate and corporate transactions in Spain

Advice on estate planning and administration

  1. Drafting wills, finding the best way to leave specific assets to particular people while respecting the forced heirship shares (legítimas) that apply to the testator, since in certain cases it is possible to choose the testator’s national law, the law of their habitual residence or even the place where certain property or assets are located. We advise you on the option that best suits your situation and needs.
  2. Advice on allocating property or assets to particular people during the testator’s lifetime in ways that prevent deadlock caused by the forced heirs.
  3. We act as testamentary executor-partitioner (contador-partidor): carrying out the terms of wills so as to avoid conflicts and deadlock caused by dissenting forced heirs, and arranging compensation for the other forced heirs when business or real estate assets are allocated to one or some of them.
  4. Setting up joint ownership arrangements (comunidades de bienes) between co-owners or co-heirs to run a business or to lease out the inherited assets.
  5. Preparing estate partition documents (cuadernos particionales), dissolving and liquidating community property regimes (sociedades de gananciales) and allocating inherited assets, so that assets are divided appropriately and efficiently among the heirs or spouses, with advice on the tax, operational and practical implications of such divisions.
  6. Tax planning for inheritances or legal transactions during one’s lifetime; calculation and payment of inheritance tax (in Spain or abroad), gift tax, municipal land value increase tax (plusvalía municipal) and stamp duty (AJD). Impact of gifts on personal income tax (IRPF).
  7. We are in a position to work with notaries and lawyers in other countries to carry out the allocation of inherited assets in the best possible way and to file and pay inheritance tax, taking care that the tax affairs of the clients who entrust their matters to us are handled correctly.

Corporate transactions

  1. Incorporation of companies; analysis of the most suitable articles of association; agreements between shareholders and shareholders’ agreements outside the articles (pactos parasociales); changes to a company’s objects; directors’ remuneration; capital increases or capital reductions in companies in order to allocate assets to heirs or legatees (assets that the heirs use, or that are intended to become the heirs’ property, cannot be left in a will if they are held in the name of a company); dissolution and liquidation of companies.
  2. Sale and purchase or exchange of shares in companies or of business units (branches of activity), and company mergers or demergers, in all cases after first analysing the most favourable tax treatment.

Real estate matters

  1. Analysis of complex real estate situations, whether involving rural or urban properties; cancellation of attachments, mortgages and encumbrances of any kind; plot subdivisions, divisions, amalgamations and additions; creation of easements, mortgages, usufructs and life annuities (pensiones vitalicias) – an optimal solution for transferring property to people outside the family – and their cancellation.
  2. Preparation of deposit agreements (contratos de arras), sales and purchases (with or without a mortgage), exchanges of real estate and movable property, transfers of assets in payment of debts (adjudicación en pago) or to be used to pay debts (adjudicación para pago de deudas), loans, gifts of real estate or cash, and other complex real estate contracts. Collaboration with other lawyers to give the client legal and documentary assistance throughout the process, from the signing of the deposit agreement to the signing at the notary’s office, to ensure that the property transaction is successfully completed, avoiding any risk for the client.
  3. Payment and filing of the taxes arising from real estate transactions through external collaborators.

How to find us

  • Calle del Conde de Cartagena, 43
  • Corner of Avenida del Mediterráneo, 35, 28007 Madrid
  • MetroConde de Casal (Line 6)
  • BusRoutes 14, 32, 63, 143, C1 and C2
  • Car parkAvenida del Mediterráneo, 28
  • CarPaid on-street parking (blue zone)

Contact

Write to us or call us with your enquiry.

Contact details

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Data protection

Controller: Ricardo Vilas de Escauriaza. Purpose: to deal with your enquiry. Legal basis: steps taken at your request prior to a possible engagement. You may exercise your rights of access, rectification, erasure and the others granted to you by law by writing to ricardo@vilasabogados.com. Recipients: Netlify, Inc. (United States), which hosts the website and stores form submissions, under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. Full details are set out in our privacy policy.

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