Short answer. No. Article 922 provides that a subsequent reconciliation between the offender and the offended person deprives the latter of the right to disinherit and renders ineffectual any disinheritance already made. If they genuinely reconciled before your father died, your brother's legitime stands.

What the law says

A subsequent reconciliation between the offender and the offended person deprives the latter of the right to disinherit, and renders ineffectual any disinheritance that may have been made.

Civil Code, Article 922 — Reconciliation Wipes Out Disinheritance. Read the full provision →

Reconciliation works on the old will by itself

Article 922 provides: A subsequent reconciliation between the offender and the offended person deprives the latter of the right to disinherit, and renders ineffectual any disinheritance that may have been made. The article does two things at once. Looking forward, it takes away the right to disinherit for that cause, so a will written after the reconciliation cannot rely on it. Looking back, it renders ineffectual a disinheritance already made — your father did not have to revoke the will or execute a new one for your brother's legitime to be restored. The clause simply stops working.

What has to be shown

The article speaks of reconciliation between the offender and the offended person, which is mutual by its terms. A father privately deciding he no longer minds, or a son privately regretting what he did, is not what the word describes; what is needed is a restored relationship between the two of them. Nor does the cause need to be undone or the offence repaired. Once the breach is mended, the ground the disinheritance rested on is spent, whatever the will still says on its face.

Proving it is where the case is won or lost

The document will be produced and it will still read as a disinheritance, so the burden in practice falls on the person asserting the reconciliation. Evidence tends to be ordinary rather than legal: messages and letters between them, photographs at family occasions, a return to living in the same house, a resumption of financial support in either direction, records showing your brother caring for your father in his last illness, and people outside the family who saw the relationship resume. Dates matter more than sentiment, because the reconciliation must have occurred before the death.

What it restores, and what it does not

Reconciliation defeats the disinheritance; it does not rewrite the rest of the will. Your brother recovers his legitime as a compulsory heir, but dispositions of the free portion in favour of others remain valid, and he does not become entitled to whatever the disinheritance clause had reallocated to the other children. Note too that under Article 923 a disinherited person's own children take his place as to the legitime while he lives; when the disinheritance falls away, that arrangement falls away with it and the share returns to your brother.

Cases citing this provision

These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.

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.