Short answer. No. Article 746 requires that acceptance be made during the lifetime of the donor and of the donee. A donation between the living is only perfected when the donee accepts while both are still alive, so once the donor has died there is no longer a donation you can accept.
What the law says
Acceptance must be made during the lifetime of the donor and of the donee.
Civil Code, Article 746 — Acceptance During Lifetime Of Both. Read the full provision →
Acceptance must happen while both are alive
Article 746 states the rule in a single line: acceptance must be made during the lifetime of the donor and of the donee. A donation of this kind — a donation inter vivos, meant to take effect while the donor lives — is not complete the moment the donor decides to give. It is a contract, and like any contract it needs the agreement of both sides. The donor's offer of the gift is only half of it; the donee's acceptance is the other half, and that acceptance has to be given while both people are still living. Death of either one before acceptance leaves the gift unperfected.
Why a dead donor cannot make the gift
The reason is that acceptance is what turns an intended gift into a binding one. Until the donee accepts, the donor is free to change his mind, and nothing has left his patrimony. If the donor dies before that acceptance is made, there is no longer anyone whose gift can be completed — his property has already passed, at the moment of death, to his estate and then to his heirs. Allowing an 'acceptance' afterwards would let a person give away, after death, property that the law has already committed to succession. Article 746 closes that door.
This is not a donation that takes effect at death
It is important to separate this from a gift intended to operate only when the donor dies. A disposition meant to take effect upon the donor's death is a donation mortis causa, and the law treats it as a testamentary gift: it must follow the formalities of a will, not the rules on donations between the living. So a person who wants to benefit someone after his own death does not do it through an inter vivos donation accepted late — he does it in a will, executed with the required formalities. Mislabeling one as the other is a common and costly mistake.
What happens to the intended gift
If the donor has already died and the donee never accepted in time, the intended donation simply fails. The property was never validly given away, so it stays part of the donor's estate and is distributed according to his will, or, if he left none, according to the rules of intestate succession. The disappointed donee generally has no claim to enforce the gift, because there was no perfected donation to enforce. Where the timing is genuinely uncertain — for instance whether acceptance was communicated before death — the facts and the documents controlling those dates become decisive.