Table of Contents

SECTION VII - OF THE REVOCATION OF TESTAMENTS AND CODICILS AND OF THEIR CADUCITY

Art. 182. Testaments and codicils are revocable at the will of the testator, until his decease.
The testator cannot renounce this right of revocation, nor obligate himself to exercise it only under certain words or expressions or restrictions, and if he does so obligate himself, any declaration to that effect shall be considered as not written.

Art. 183. Neither a testament nor a codicil can be revoked in whole or in part, unless by a declaration of a change of will made in one of the forms hereafter prescribed.

Art. 184. In revoking a testamentary disposition, less solemnity is required than in making it.
Thus a testament may be revoked by another testament or by a codicil, or by any other act received by a notary in presence of two witnesses expressing a declaration of a change of will.
In like manner a codicil may be revoked by a new codicil, or by a testament, or by an act passed as above specified.

Act. 185. Posterior testaments and codicils which do not, in an express manner, revoke the prior ones, annul in the latter only such of the dispositions there contained, as are incompatible with the new ones, or contrary to them, or entirely different.

Act. 186. A revocation made in a posterior testament or codicil, has its entire effect, even though this new act remains without execution, either through the incapacity of the person instituted, or of the legatee, or thro' his refusal to accept it.

Art. 187. A donation inter vivos or a sale made by the testator of the whole or part of the thing bequeathed as a legacy, amounts to a revocation of the testamentary disposition, for all that has been sold or given, even though the sale or donation be null, and the thing have returned into the possession of the testator whether by the effects of that nullity, or by any other means.

Art. 188. The testamentary disposition becomes without effect, if the person instituted or the legatee does not survive the testator.

Art. 189. Every testamentary disposition made on a condition depending on an uncertain event, so that in the intention of the testator, the disposition shall take place only in as much as the event shall or shall not happen, is without effect, if the instituted heir or the legatee dies before the accomplishment of the condition.

Art. 190. A condition which in the intention of the testator, does but suspend the execution of the disposition, does not hinder the instituted heir or the legatee from having a right acquired and transmissible to his heirs.

Art. 191. The legacy falls if the thing bequeathed has totally perished during the lifetime of the testator.
It likewise falls if the thing has perished since his death, without the act or fault of the heir, although the latter may have delayed to deliver it, when it must equally have perished in the possession of the legatee.

Art. 192. In case of an alternative legacy of two things, if one of them perishes, the legacy subsists in that which remains.

Art. 193. The testamentary disposition falls when the instituted heir or the legatee rejects it or finds himself incapable of receiving it.

Art. 194. The right of accretion relative to testamentary dispositions, shall no longer subsist, except in the cases marked in the two following articles.

Art. 195. Accretion shall take place for the benefit of the legatees, in case of the legacy's being made to several conjointly.
The legacy shall be reputed to be made conjointly when it is made by one and the same disposition without the testator's having assigned the part of each co-legatee in the thing bequeathed.

Art. 196.  It shall also be reputed to be made conjointly, when a thing not susceptible of being divided without deterioration, has been given by the same act, to several persons, even separately.

Art. 197. Except in the cases prescribed in the two preceding articles every portion of the succession remaining vacant, whether because the testator has not formally disposed of it, on the title of institution or of legacy, or because the heir or the legatee has not been able or has not been willing to accept it, shall devolve to the blood or the legitimate heirs.

Art. 198. The same causes which, according to article 66 above, and the two first dispositions of article 67, of the present title, shall authorise an action of revocation of a donation between the living, shall be admitted to ground an action of revocation for testamentary dispositions, observing only with respect to the forced heirs, that they cannot be bound to any charges or conditions imposed by the testator on their legitime or legal portion, or be sued for any act of ingratitude anterior to the decease of the testator who had against them the punishment of disinherison, if he thought proper to inflict it, and who, from his not having disinherited them, is deemed to have forgiven their offence.

Art. 199. If the action be founded on a grievous injury done to the memory of the testator, it must be brought within a year from the day of the offence.

 

SECTION VIII - OF THE INTERPRETATION OF TESTAMENTARY DISPOSITIONS

Art. 200. If any obscurity be found in the meaning or the terms of the disposition, either as to the person to whom it is made, or as to the thing bequeathed, the judge must endeavor to discover what was the intention of the donor.

Art. 201. In case of doubt as to that intention, the interpretation is made in the sense most favorable to the heir, but the sense in which the disposition will have effect, is to be preferred to that in which it could have none.




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