Short answer. Yes, eventually — but not quickly. The Civil Code expressly preserves the inheritance rights of a declared absentee, their representatives, and their successors in interest. Those rights survive only until the applicable prescriptive period lapses, after which they can no longer be asserted.
What the law says
The provisions of the preceding article are understood to be without prejudice to the action of petition for inheritance or other rights which are vested in the absentee, his representatives or successors in interest. These rights shall not be extinguished save by lapse of time fixed for prescription. In the record that is made in the Registry of the real estate which accrues to the coheirs, the circumstance of its being subject to the provisions of this article shall be stated.
Civil Code, Article 395 — Petition for Inheritance Preserved. Read the full provision →
What happens to an absentee's share when the estate is divided
When a person has been legally declared absent and an inheritance falls open — for instance, a parent dies while the absent person's fate is unknown — the absent heir's share is not simply ignored or given to others permanently. The law treats the absentee's rights as vested and preserved. Co-heirs who receive the property in the meantime receive it subject to the absentee's potential claim. This is why Article 395 requires the annotation of this contingency on real estate records: so that anyone dealing with that property knows it is not entirely free of the absentee's potential interest.
Prescription is the only way those rights end
Article 395 states clearly: the rights of the absentee shall not be extinguished save by lapse of time fixed for prescription. No other event — not the co-heirs spending the money, not the property being transferred to a third party, not a long period of silence — automatically cuts off the claim. Only the applicable prescriptive period for actions to claim inheritance, once it expires, eliminates the right. Until that period runs, the absentee (or their heirs or representatives, if the absentee turns out to have died) can still assert the claim.
Who can make the claim if the absentee never returns
The right is not personal to the absentee alone. Article 395 explicitly extends it to the absentee's representatives or successors in interest. If the absentee is eventually confirmed dead — whether through a declaration of presumptive death or by their reappearance and death thereafter — their own heirs inherit whatever inheritance rights the absentee had. So the question is not just whether the absentee returns but whether their estate, through their heirs, can still pursue the claim within the prescriptive period.
Practical significance for co-heirs and buyers
If you are a co-heir who received a share of property while another heir was declared absent, or if you bought property from a co-heir in such a situation, the absentee's annotated claim is a real encumbrance. It does not make the property unsaleable, but a buyer who ignores that annotation takes the property subject to the outstanding risk that the absentee or their successors will reappear and claim their share within the prescriptive period. How long that window remains open depends on the specific circumstances — which is exactly the kind of question that requires a careful look at the facts and the applicable provisions on prescription.