Short answer. No. Article 1782 provides that persons who are prohibited from giving each other any donation or advantage cannot enter into a universal partnership. Because spouses are generally barred from donating to one another, they fall within this rule — so a universal partnership between them, which would work like a mutual donation of property, is not allowed.
What the law says
Persons who are prohibited from giving each other any donation or advantage cannot enter into universal partnership.
Civil Code, Article 1782 — Who Cannot Form a Universal Partnership. Read the full provision →
The prohibition and its logic
Article 1782 draws a line around who may form a universal partnership: persons who are prohibited from giving each other any donation or advantage cannot enter into universal partnership. The reason lies in what a universal partnership does. In its fullest form it pools the partners' present property and profits into a common fund to be divided — which, between two people, operates much like each making a gift of property to the other. So the law reasons that anyone forbidden to donate to a particular person cannot achieve the same transfer indirectly by dressing it up as a partnership.
Who is caught: spouses above all
The clearest example is a married couple. Spouses are, as a rule, prohibited from making donations to each other during the marriage — a restriction meant to prevent one from pressuring or unduly influencing the other, and to protect creditors and forced heirs. Because that prohibition exists, spouses fall squarely within Article 1782 and cannot form a universal partnership between themselves. The rule is not limited to spouses; it reaches anyone the law forbids to give each other a donation or advantage. But spouses are the case the article is most often invoked for, and the one founders considering going into business with a husband or wife need to know about.
What spouses can and cannot do
The bar is specific: it stops a universal partnership, the form that would sweep their property and earnings into one shared, divisible fund. It does not mean spouses can never be in business together in any form, and it does not touch a particular partnership — one for a defined undertaking, with specified contributions, rather than a wholesale pooling of everything. Those are treated differently, because a particular partnership does not carry the character of a mutual donation of one's whole estate. So the practical takeaway is not that couples cannot do business, but that they cannot use the universal partnership to do it.
Before you form one with family
If you are planning to go into business with your spouse, or with anyone the law forbids you to donate to, do not set it up as a universal partnership — an agreement to pool everything and share it risks being void under this article. Choose a form built for a specific business: a particular partnership defining what each contributes and does, or a corporation. And if you are unsure whether a proposed structure amounts to a prohibited mutual donation, that is the question to settle before signing, because getting it wrong can unravel the arrangement later.