Mr. Tuan, an overseas Vietnamese (Viet kieu) and Australian citizen, asked DEDICA:
"My father was Vietnamese. He had previously been married and had two children in Da Nang. After the divorce he moved abroad, married my mother, a foreign national, had me, and settled in Australia. My mother passed away long ago; my father died just over a year ago, leaving an old house in Da Nang and no will. Now his two children from that first marriage are putting the house up for sale, claiming that because I am the child of his foreign wife and hold Australian citizenship, I have no share. I can rarely travel to Vietnam, so can I stop the sale, and what should I do?"
DEDICA ADVISES You still hold your full inheritance rights. From the moment your father passed away, the house became the common property of all his heirs, including you, and no co-heir may sell the entire house without your consent; being the child of his foreign wife or holding Australian citizenship does not strip you of your share. The immediate priority is to verify how far the title transfer has progressed and to stop any further transfer, because once the house has been transferred to a good-faith purchaser you may be left only with a claim for the value of your share rather than the house itself. Below are the legal grounds and the concrete steps to take.
Your rights to an undivided estate while living abroad
First, it must be made clear that what your father's two children claim is incorrect under the law: neither being the child of his second wife (a foreign national) nor holding foreign citizenship causes you to lose your inheritance rights in Vietnam. The law looks solely to the parent-child relationship: every biological child of the deceased, whether born to the first or the second wife, and whether born and living inside or outside Vietnam, belongs to the first rank of heirs and inherits an equal share.
More importantly, your rights do not arise only when you return to complete the formalities; they arise the very moment your father passed away (Article 614, Civil Code 2015). This means that, from that moment, the house is the common property of you and your father's other children, and no one holds full power to dispose of it. Each co-heir may dispose only of his or her own share; to sell the entire house, all of them must consent.
Therefore, if your father's two children from his first marriage sell the entire house without your consent, the portion of that transaction corresponding to your rights is unlawful. Indeed, to transfer title to inherited property, the law requires a deed of estate division to be executed before a notarial organization and publicly posted, precisely the step that allows heirs like you to learn of the matter and raise objections.
If they have already completed the procedure while "omitting" you, that is grounds for you to request annulment of the division and a re-division of the estate.
Steps to take while you are in Australia
You are not required to return to Vietnam in order to protect your share, but the order in which you act matters greatly; getting that order wrong can cost you the chance to keep the house itself.
- Verify the legal status of the house. The first step is to check whether the Land Use Right and Property Ownership Certificate (so hong) is still in your father's name or has already been transferred, to whom they have signed a sale contract, and whether it has been notarized and registered in the buyer's name. This determines whether you can still recover the house itself or only its value.
- Prevent any further transfer. If the transaction has not yet been completed, you may ask the Court to apply provisional emergency measures (such as attachment, or a prohibition on transferring rights to the disputed property) to "freeze" the house and prevent it from being sold off to a third party.
- Prepare and legalize your documents from abroad. You will need documents proving the parent-child relationship and your inheritance rights (your birth certificate, identity documents, and your father's death certificate). Documents issued by Australian authorities must undergo consular legalization and notarized translation before they can be used in Vietnam.
- Choose your approach: negotiation or litigation. If they act in good faith, the parties can jointly execute a new estate-division agreement before a notary and return your share to you. If they refuse to cooperate or have already sold the house, you have the right to sue for division of the estate, annulment of the unlawful transaction, or payment of the value of your share together with damages.
- Authorize a lawyer in Vietnam. You need not be present in Vietnam: under a power of attorney, a lawyer can deal with the notary, the co-heirs, the court, and the enforcement authorities on your behalf, and then remit the proceeds to you.
Conclusion
In short, as a biological child of the deceased, you are entitled to a share equal to that of your father's two children from his first marriage, even though you are the child of his foreign wife, hold Australian citizenship, and live abroad; they have no right to sell the entire house without your consent. The immediate priorities are to verify how far the title transfer has gone and to stop any further transfer; in parallel, have the documents proving the parent-child relationship legalized through consular channels so you are ready either to negotiate a re-division or to sue for your share. If you cannot travel to Vietnam, you may authorize a lawyer to handle everything on your behalf.
If you suspect that your inheritance is being sold off or that you have been left out of the estate declaration, DEDICA can promptly verify the status of the house at the land registry, request that the transaction be halted, and act under a power of attorney to negotiate with the co-heirs or sue for a re-division of the estate, all carried out in Vietnam on your behalf, even when you cannot return. Contact DEDICA to have a lawyer review your specific situation and propose a strategy to preserve your share.
This content is for reference only; every inheritance matter has its own facts and documents, so please consult a DEDICA lawyer for advice tailored to your specific case.
