Short answer. Yes — the article's opening words contemplate exactly that. Each of the five terminations it lists operates unless subsequently revived by a final judgment, so an ending on a ground such as a judicial declaration of abandonment is not necessarily forever. Revival takes a court judgment, not a change of heart.
What the law says
Unless subsequently revived by a final judgment, parental authority also terminates: (1) Upon adoption of the child; (2) Upon appointment of a general guardian; (3) Upon judicial declaration of abandonment of the child in a case filed for the purpose; (4) Upon final judgment of a competent court divesting the party concerned of parental authority; or (5) Upon judicial declaration of absence or incapacity of the person exercising parental authority.
Family Code, Article 229 — Revivable Termination of Parental Authority. Read the full provision →
The qualification comes before the list
Article 229 opens with the words that answer the question: unless subsequently revived by a final judgment, parental authority also terminates: (1) Upon adoption of the child; (2) Upon appointment of a general guardian; (3) Upon judicial declaration of abandonment of the child in a case filed for the purpose; (4) Upon final judgment of a competent court divesting the party concerned of parental authority; or (5) Upon judicial declaration of absence or incapacity of the person exercising parental authority. The word also matters too — this list sits alongside the permanent terminations in Article 228, not inside them.
What the five grounds have in common
Every one of them is a formal event with a record: an adoption, an appointment, a declaration, a judgment. None of them happens by conduct alone. That is why a parent who has been absent for years has not thereby lost authority, and why the family caring for the child cannot point to the absence itself as the ending. Somebody has to have brought a case and a court has to have decided it. The first question in any dispute of this kind is therefore documentary — which order is being relied on, and what exactly does it say.
Revival is judicial too
The symmetry is deliberate. Authority ended by a judgment is restored by a judgment, so a parent who has since become sober, employed, present or well does not recover authority by demonstrating it to the family. They recover it by asking a court and satisfying it. Contrast Article 230, where suspension for a conviction carrying civil interdiction is automatically reinstated on service of the penalty, pardon or amnesty — that is the one route back the Code makes self-executing, and it is the exception rather than the model.
What a court will be looking at
The ground that ended the authority is the natural starting point: whether the abandonment, absence or incapacity that was declared has genuinely ceased, and what has changed since. But the proceeding is about the child, not about the parent's rehabilitation as such — Article 222 shows the frame the Code uses, allowing courts to appoint a guardian of the child's property or a guardian ad litem when the child's best interests so require. Gather the original order, the record of what has changed, and evidence of the child's present circumstances before approaching a lawyer.
Related provisions
- Family Code, Article 228 — Permanent Termination of Parental Authority
- Family Code, Article 230 — Suspension for Civil Interdiction