Short answer. No. The legitime is protected from this kind of arrangement. Article 864 states in a single line that a fideicommissary substitution can never burden the legitime, so you cannot tie up your child's legally reserved share with an obligation to preserve and later transmit it.

What the law says

A fideicommissary substitution can never burden the legitime.

Civil Code, Article 864 — It Can Never Burden the Legitime. Read the full provision →

What a fideicommissary substitution tries to do

A fideicommissary substitution is an arrangement where you leave property to a first heir with the charge that he preserve it and, in time, pass it on to a second heir. It is a way of controlling property across two generations from within a single will. That control is exactly what the law refuses to let you exercise over a compulsory heir's legitime. Article 864 shuts the door with no exceptions: a fideicommissary substitution can never burden the legitime. The word 'never' is doing real work — there is no version of this arrangement that may lawfully touch that reserved share.

Why the legitime is off-limits

The legitime is the portion of your estate that the law reserves for your compulsory heirs, and your child is one of them. It must pass to that heir free and full, not hedged with obligations you attach from the grave. A fideicommissary substitution would do the opposite: it would hand your child the share but bind him to keep it and eventually surrender it to someone else. That is a burden on the very portion the law says must reach him unencumbered. Article 864 therefore treats the legitime as untouchable by this device, protecting the heir's absolute right to his reserved share.

What you can and cannot reach

The prohibition is confined to the legitime; it does not paralyse your whole will. Your estate is divided between the legitime, which the law reserves, and the free portion, which you may dispose of more freely. A fideicommissary substitution that respects the limits set by law may operate on that free portion. What it may not do is reach into the legitime. So if you want to arrange for property to pass through one person to another, you must build that plan out of the free portion and leave your child's reserved share alone.

What happens if you try anyway

If a will imposes a fideicommissary substitution on the legitime, the burden on that reserved share cannot stand, because the law flatly forbids it. The compulsory heir is entitled to receive his legitime free of the charge you tried to attach. Estate arrangements that push against this limit are a common source of later conflict among heirs, precisely because the legitime is protected and any attempt to encumber it invites challenge. Planning that keeps every burden inside the free portion, and leaves the legitime clean, avoids setting up that fight in the first place.

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.