Can my will set a date when an heir's right to the property begins or ends?

What Article 885 allows

Article 885 provides that the designation of the day or time when the effects of the institution of an heir shall commence or cease shall be valid. A testator may therefore build a timetable into the gift. He can say the heir's right begins only on a future day — an institution from a term — or that it ends on a future day, after which the heir holds no more. Both are permitted. The institution is not required to take effect immediately at death and run forever; the testator may open it later, close it earlier, or both.

Who holds the property in the meantime

The article does not leave the property ownerless during the gap. It provides that in both cases the legal heir shall be considered as called to the succession until the arrival of the period or its expiration. So where the instituted heir's right has not yet begun, or has already ended, the legal (intestate) heirs step in for that interval and hold the property. The estate is never in limbo: either the instituted heir is entitled, or the legal heirs are, and the changeover happens on the day the testator fixed. This keeps someone answerable for the property throughout.

The security required before a deferred right begins

There is a safeguard attached to a right that only begins later. The article provides that in that first case he shall not enter into possession of the property until after having given sufficient security, with the intervention of the instituted heir. The person holding the property in the interim must secure its eventual return before he may possess it — protecting the instituted heir, whose turn is still to come, from finding the property dissipated when his day finally arrives. The security, given with the instituted heir's participation, is the price of possessing property destined for someone else.

Term versus condition, and how to draft it

As with any future date in a will, it matters whether the date is a term — certain to come — or a condition, which may never happen, because the two carry different consequences for vesting. Article 885 speaks of a designated day or time, the language of a term. When you want to phase a gift this way, state plainly when the right begins and when it ends, name who is meant to hold the property in between, and provide for the security the law expects where a right is deferred. Left vague, a timed institution invites exactly the dispute over possession that the security requirement is designed to prevent.

Related provisions

• Civil Code, Article 885 — Designation of a Day or Time