Short answer. No. Article 746 of the Civil Code requires that acceptance be made during the lifetime of the donor and of the donee. If your intended donee dies before accepting, the donation was never perfected, and it can no longer take effect — the gift fails rather than passing to the donee's heirs.
What the law says
Acceptance must be made during the lifetime of the donor and of the donee.
Civil Code, Article 746 — Acceptance During Lifetime Of Both. Read the full provision →
A donation needs two living parties
Article 746 states the rule in one line: "Acceptance must be made during the lifetime of the donor and of the donee." A donation is an act of liberality by which one person gratuitously disposes of a thing or right in favor of another who accepts it — the acceptance is not a courtesy but a structural element of the transaction. Until the donee accepts, there is only an offer of generosity, not a completed transfer. The article requires both ends of that exchange to be alive when it closes: the donor still capable of giving, and the donee personally capable of receiving. Your situation — a donee who dies before accepting — fails the second half of that requirement.
Why the heirs cannot accept for the deceased
The natural instinct is to think the acceptance can simply be supplied by the donee's heirs, the way other rights pass at death. It cannot. What passes to heirs is what the deceased already owned — and an unaccepted donation was never owned. Acceptance is also personal to the donee: under Article 745, the donee must accept personally or through a person specially authorized for the purpose, and a deceased person can neither act personally nor maintain an authorization. There was, at the moment of death, no perfected donation, so there is no gift in the donee's estate for anyone to inherit. The offer of the gift simply lapses.
The property stays yours
Because the donation never took effect, nothing ever left your patrimony. The thing you intended to give remains fully yours, free of any claim from the intended donee's estate or family. That also means you remain free to dispose of it as you wish: keep it, donate it to someone else, or — if what you really wanted was for it to reach the deceased's family — make a fresh donation directly to the children or other heirs. A new donation to them is a new transaction with its own requirements: their own acceptance, made while you and they are alive, and the formalities the law prescribes for the kind of property involved.
Timing lessons for making a gift stick
This rule is one of several ways a well-intended gift can fail purely on timing, and the lesson is to complete the whole transaction promptly. For movable property of modest value, delivery and acceptance can be simultaneous; for real property, the deed of donation and the acceptance must both be in public documents, and acceptance in a separate instrument requires notifying the donor in an authentic form. Every one of those steps has to happen while both parties live. A donation left half-finished — signed but unaccepted, or accepted but never notified — is exposed to exactly the accident that occurred here. If a planned gift matters, treat its paperwork with the same urgency as the intention behind it.