Short answer. No. The Civil Code describes accepting or repudiating an inheritance as an act that is purely voluntary and free. Nobody, including a court, an executor, or the other heirs, can compel you to accept a share of an estate you do not want to take on.
What the law says
The acceptance or repudiation of the inheritance is an act which is purely voluntary and free.
Civil Code, Article 1041 — Acceptance Is Purely Voluntary. Read the full provision →
Inheritance is offered, not imposed
Article 1041 frames both sides of the decision — accepting and repudiating — as equally voluntary. That wording matters: the law does not treat repudiation as the exception that needs justifying while acceptance is the default that happens automatically. Being named an heir, or falling within the class of people the law calls to succeed, opens the choice to you; it does not close it for you. Until you act, or until the law's own rules on how long you may wait run their course, no one else's preference about what you should do with the inheritance controls the outcome.
Why an estate can carry burdens as well as benefits
The freedom this article protects exists because accepting an inheritance is not a purely one-sided gain. An estate can come with debts, obligations, or property nobody particularly wants to manage, and an heir stepping into a decedent's shoes can end up answering for liabilities tied to what was inherited. Because the consequences of acceptance are real and can be unwelcome, the law refuses to let acceptance be presumed or forced on someone who has not actually chosen it.
Voluntary cuts both ways
Just as nobody can force you to accept, nobody can force you to repudiate a share you do want. The same freedom protects an heir against pressure from co-heirs, creditors, or family members who would rather see the inheritance disclaimed, redirected, or divided differently than the heir intends. Whichever direction you are being pushed toward, the decision belongs to you, made on your own terms and within whatever time the law allows for making it.
The freedom has a form, though. Article 1049 recognises that acceptance may be express or tacit — inferred from acts that only an owner of the inheritance would perform — whereas Article 1051 requires a repudiation to be made in a public or authentic instrument, or by petition to the court. Silence, in other words, is a safer way of not accepting than of refusing.
If you are weighing whether to accept
Because acceptance and repudiation are treated as serious, deliberate acts rather than something that can be inferred loosely from your conduct, get a clear picture of what the estate actually contains — assets and debts alike — before deciding either way. An inheritance that looks attractive on paper can carry obligations that change the calculation, and a choice made without that picture is harder to walk back once it is made.
Two limits deserve a mention. Under Article 1052, an heir who repudiates to the prejudice of his own creditors may find them authorised by the court to accept in his name, up to the amount of their credit — repudiation is not a way of putting an inheritance beyond people you already owe. And Article 1056 makes acceptance or repudiation irrevocable once made, save where consent was vitiated or an unknown will later turns up, which is why the decision deserves a clear picture of the estate first.