Excess Advancement Reapportionment Calculator | Reallocate an Inheritance Fairly
When an heir's lifetime gifts or bequests exceed their rightful share (an "excess advancement heir"), free simulator that excludes them and reapportions the actual estate among the remaining heirs.
Under Japanese Civil Code Article 903(2) proviso, an heir whose advancement (lifetime gifts or bequests) exceeds their rightful statutory share does not have to return the excess, but also cannot receive anything more (an "excess advancement heir"). Our Advancement Clawback Calculator and Combined Advancement & Contribution Calculator simply clamp this excess to zero, without addressing how that leftover share should be redistributed to the other heirs. This tool excludes the excess advancement heir and reapportions the estate actually remaining (after deducting contribution amounts) among the other heirs, in proportion to what each of them would otherwise be entitled to.
Simulate from the estate value, heir composition, advancement, and contribution amounts
Tips
- When there is no excess advancement heir, this tool's results match those of the Combined Advancement & Contribution Calculator. The reapportionment logic unique to this tool only kicks in once an excess advancement heir appears.
- The amount being reapportioned is the actual remaining estate minus contribution amounts. Advancements are excluded from this pool because the recipient already holds that property.
- In the special case where every heir is an excess advancement heir, there is no baseline heir left for reapportionment, so the tool falls back to dividing the actual estate by the original statutory share ratios.
- If only advancement or only contribution applies, and there is no excess advancement heir, use the simpler single-purpose calculators instead.
- Whether an heir is an excess advancement heir is judged by whether their advancement exceeds their rightful share (statutory share times the notional estate), shown in the table in red with an "Excess" badge.
Frequently Asked Questions
Side Note — What happens when someone already received too much?
Advancement (Civil Code Art. 903) adjusts an heir's share to account for lifetime gifts or bequests they already received, for fairness among heirs. But sometimes that gift is so large it exceeds the heir's entire rightful share. This is called an "excess advancement heir."
Article 903(2) proviso states that this excess does not need to be returned. The heir keeps what they were given, but in exchange receives nothing further from the estate — their specific share becomes zero.
The remaining question is how to redistribute the portion that heir would otherwise have received. A common approach in practice is to exclude the excess advancement heir from the calculation entirely, then divide the estate that actually remains among the other heirs in proportion to what each of them would otherwise be entitled to. This method is relatively simple to explain and is widely used as a starting point in estate division discussions.
When there are multiple excess advancement heirs, or when excluding one heir causes another to become excess in turn, a more advanced multi-step calculation may be needed. In such cases, treat this tool's estimate as a starting point and ultimately defer to a lawyer or family court.