Short answer. Yes. When a testator institutes brothers and sisters of both full and half blood as heirs, the law says the inheritance is distributed equally among them, unless a different intention appears in the will. Equal shares are the default only where the will itself is silent on the split.

What the law says

If the testator should institute his brothers and sisters, and he has some of full blood and others of half blood, the inheritance shall be distributed equally unless a different intention appears.

Civil Code, Article 848 — Full-Blood and Half-Blood Siblings. Read the full provision →

The default rule for a mixed group of siblings

Where a testator institutes his brothers and sisters as heirs, and some are of full blood while others are of half blood, the Civil Code sets a default: the inheritance shall be distributed equally among them. This provision applies specifically to a testamentary institution, meaning the testator named these siblings as heirs in a will, rather than to intestate succession, where a different rule on full-blood and half-blood shares applies instead. The contrast is sharp, and it is the reason the article exists. In intestate succession Article 1006 provides that where brothers and sisters of the full blood survive together with brothers and sisters of the half blood, the full-blood siblings take a share double that of the latter. Article 848 does not carry that doubling into a will.

The default gives way to a contrary intention

The equal-shares rule only holds unless a different intention appears in the will. If the testator wrote the will in a way that shows an intent to give some siblings more or less than others, whether that intent is expressed directly through unequal amounts or shares, or shown some other way in the document, that expressed intention controls instead of the equal default.

Why this matters for how a will is read

This rule means silence on the exact split among full-blood and half-blood siblings named together in a will is not treated as an oversight or an ambiguity to be resolved case by case; it is resolved by a fixed default of equal division. Anyone reading a will that names a mixed group of siblings without specifying individual shares can look to this rule as the starting point, unless something else in the will's own language points the other way. The rule also sits alongside the general one in Article 846, under which heirs instituted without designation of shares inherit in equal parts. Article 848 confirms that the mixed blood relationship is not itself a designation of unequal shares — the equality is not an accident of drafting but the answer the Code gives.

What to look for if you are affected

If you are a full-blood or half-blood sibling named in a will alongside siblings of the other kind, and the will does not spell out how much each of you receives, the practical question becomes whether anything else in the will's wording suggests the testator meant an unequal division. Absent that, the default under this article is that everyone named in that group of siblings takes an equal share of what was left to them collectively. Since the doubling in intestacy is the default people expect, the practical warning runs the other way: a testator who actually wants full-blood siblings to receive more must say so in the will, because leaving it unsaid produces equality, not the intestate proportions.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.