Less than families expect. By law, only what the recipient received free of charge in the last three years before the donor's death is set off against a descendant's forced share (Section 1660(2) of the Czech Civil Code). Nothing is set off against an ordinary share of the estate unless the deceased ordered it in the form prescribed for a will. Customary gifts never count and the recipient returns nothing. If you want lifetime gifts treated differently in the succession, you must order it, typically in your will.
Nothing is returned. Setting off (lawyers call it collation) means that the value of the gift is added to what the recipient heir takes from the estate, and their share is reduced accordingly; it creates no duty to hand anything over (Section 1658 of the Civil Code). The gift is valued as at the time it was handed over, at its price on that day, not at its value when the estate is divided (Section 1659). The Czech Supreme Court summed up the purpose: the set-off is to serve the fair distribution of the wealth flowing from the deceased among the heirs and to remove, or reduce, disparities between them where these originate in assets provided by the deceased (decision file no. 24 Cdo 3365/2022).
Only those made in the last three years before the donor's death. The forced share is the minimum a descendant must receive from the estate even if the will passes them over. Set off against it is everything the descendant actually took from the estate, plus gratuitous transfers received in the last three years before the deceased's death; customary gifts (birthdays, Christmas, graduation) are disregarded (Section 1660). Citing the explanatory report, the Supreme Court noted that the 2012 Code introduced a more lenient approach: only gratuitous transfers from the last three years are set off by default, and earlier ones only if the deceased so ordered (file no. 24 Cdo 3365/2022). If you want older gifts counted, simply order the set-off to cover a longer period; do it in your will so the order is beyond doubt.
Because there the statute reverses the default. Whatever the deceased gave a descendant to ease the costs of setting up a household, marrying or entering a similar union, taking up an occupation or starting a business, and whatever was used to pay an adult descendant's debts, is set off against the forced share regardless of when it happened; for transfers older than three years the set-off is omitted only where the deceased expressed a contrary will (Section 1661). The reason is practical: a start-in-life endowment tends to be the largest transfer of wealth between parent and child, and by its nature it is given early in the recipient's life, usually long before the donor dies. If it vanished after three years like an ordinary gift, the set-off would practically never reach the very gifts that create the biggest differences between siblings; as the Supreme Court put it, the legislature evidently expects the more significant and valuable gifts to be those listed in Section 1661(1) (file no. 24 Cdo 3365/2022). A flat bought for a son at his wedding ten years ago counts; a flat given five years ago on no such occasion does not.
Not by itself. Whether the estate passes under a will or by intestacy, a set-off against an ordinary share is made only if the deceased ordered it by an act in the form prescribed for making a will (Section 1663). Without such an order the heirs take equal shares even though one of them received a cottage during the donor's lifetime. Anyone wanting earlier gifts evened out among the children must order it in a will or codicil; a clause in the deed of gift does not replace the form of a will.
Exceptionally, where a forced heir would otherwise be unjustifiably disadvantaged (Section 1664). This is where the provision earns its keep: the ordinary set-off under Section 1660 only affects the calculation of the forced share, the statutory minimum (one quarter of the intestate share for an adult descendant), so in intestacy among children it usually evens out nothing by itself, because the child who received no gift takes their intestate share anyway. Only Section 1664 allows the gift to be reflected in the shares of the estate themselves. An example: a father dies without a will, leaving two sons and an estate of CZK 4 million; two years before his death he gave the first son a flat worth CZK 4 million. Without a set-off the sons split the estate equally, so the first receives CZK 6 million from his father in total and the second CZK 2 million. With the set-off, the gift is added to the estate (CZK 8 million in all, notionally CZK 4 million each), the value of the flat is deducted from the first son's share, he therefore takes nothing from the estate and all of it goes to the second son. Each ends up with CZK 4 million from their father; the flat is not returned, the share is simply reduced. Even then the court will not touch older gifts. In decision file no. 24 Cdo 222/2019 the Supreme Court dealt with a garden given to a daughter more than three years before her father's death. The other sibling demanded its set-off, but the court held that a gift made more than three years before the deceased's death is not subject to set-off against an ordinary share unless the deceased ordered otherwise.
The main rule: you change the statutory set-off regime only by your own order, typically in a will. Three practical points follow. First, a deed of gift on its own does not change how the estate will be divided; whatever is to govern the inheritance belongs in a will. Second, if you want gifts among your children evened out, order the set-off in your will, and you may extend it beyond three years; without an order, older gifts are ignored. Third, if you want the recipient to keep the gift on top of their share, with ordinary gifts it is usually enough to do nothing, and for a start-in-life endowment under Section 1661 you must express a contrary will. Whether the deceased may prohibit the set-off against the forced share altogether is disputed in the literature, so do not rely on a clause in the deed of gift and discuss the wording of your will with a notary or a lawyer.
Source: Sections 1658 to 1664 of Act No. 89/2012 Coll., the Civil Code; Supreme Court decision of 28 January 2020, file no. 24 Cdo 222/2019; Supreme Court decision of 29 March 2023, file no. 24 Cdo 3365/2022; Supreme Court decision of 28 May 2019, file no. 24 Cdo 3893/2018. The links lead to the full texts (nsoud.cz).
Under Section 1660(2), whatever the forced heir received from the deceased free of charge in the last three years before the death is also set off against the forced share, unless the deceased orders the set-off to cover a longer period; a descendant is also charged with what their own ancestor received from the deceased. Customary gifts are disregarded. Under Section 1663, a set-off against an ordinary share, whether under a will or on intestacy, is made only if the deceased ordered it by an act in the form prescribed for making a will. Two common rules frame the whole mechanism: the set-off creates no duty to hand anything over (Section 1658), and the value is taken as at the time of handover, with a judicial correction reserved for extraordinary cases (Section 1659).
Decision file no. 24 Cdo 222/2019 of 28 January 2020 concerned intestate succession: a son demanded that a plot of land given to his sister more than three years before their father's death be set off against her share. The Supreme Court noted it was deciding the question under the 2012 Code for the first time. It reasoned that Section 1664 does not define what is subject to set-off, so the neighbouring provisions of the same subdivision must be applied, and that their common placement sufficiently justifies applying the whole of Section 1660 by analogy under Section 10(1) of the Code; there is no reason to apply only part of the sentence describing what is set off without its integral component, receipt free of charge in the last three years before the death. An older gift is therefore not subject to set-off, and examining any unjustifiable disadvantage becomes irrelevant. The court described Section 1664 as an exception to Section 1663 for the case where the deceased gave no order. Decision file no. 24 Cdo 3365/2022 of 29 March 2023 confirmed these conclusions and added that the condition of Section 1661(2) (a descendant stepping into the place of their ancestor) also governs the set-off of what the descendant's parents received from the deceased.
Section 1661(1) covers transfers made to ease the costs of setting up a separate household, marrying or entering a similar union, taking up an occupation or starting a business, and sums used to pay an adult descendant's debts. These are set off against a descendant's forced share even after three years: where they occurred earlier than in the last three years before the death, the set-off is made unless the deceased expressed a contrary will. In file no. 24 Cdo 3365/2022 the Supreme Court explained that the legislature evidently expects the more significant and valuable gifts to be those under Section 1661(1), since their eligibility for set-off is not limited by any period by default. Subsection (2) concerns a descendant stepping into the place of their deceased ancestor (typically a grandchild after a predeceased parent): what the grandchild's parents received from the deceased is set off as well.
Two points. First, the analogical extension of the three-year limit of Section 1660(2) to judicial set-off under Section 1664: commentators have criticised the Supreme Court for relying on systematic arguments while leaving the teleology aside (Drachovský/Fischer, pravniprostor.cz, 2021). The holding of file no. 24 Cdo 222/2019 nevertheless stands and was repeated in 2023. Second, whether the deceased may waive (prohibit) the set-off against the forced share altogether: the commentaries diverge, and part of the literature (Drachovský, Ad Notam, 2022) concludes it is not possible. The practical consequence: do not rely on a no-set-off clause in a deed of gift; whatever needs to be certain for the succession should be done in the form of a will.
The purpose was summed up in decision file no. 24 Cdo 3893/2018 of 28 May 2019: the set-off serves the fair distribution of the wealth flowing from the deceased among the heirs and aims to remove, or reduce, the disparities between them where these originate in assets provided by the deceased. The same decision draws the outer line: only benefits coming from the deceased can be set off; what an heir inherited from the deceased's own ancestor is outside the mechanism. What a child inherited from their grandmother is therefore not counted against their share after their mother. And customary gifts are never taken into account, neither for the forced share (Section 1660(2)) nor in a judicial set-off against an ordinary share (Section 1664).
Provisions cited from the current wording of Act No. 89/2012 Coll. (Sections 1658 to 1664), verified on 23 July 2026. Case law verified from the full texts at nsoud.cz: Supreme Court decisions 24 Cdo 222/2019 of 28 January 2020, 24 Cdo 3365/2022 of 29 March 2023 and 24 Cdo 3893/2018 of 28 May 2019. Literature: Drachovský/Fischer (pravniprostor.cz, 7 December 2021), Drachovský (Ad Notam, 23 June 2022), Fajt (epravo.cz, 4 August 2020), Brejlová (Ad Notam, 26 March 2018).