Short answer. Normally no. Article 1068 provides that expenses incurred by parents in giving their children a professional, vocational or other career are not brought to collation unless the parents so provide, or unless they impair the legitime. Even then, ordinary living costs are deducted from the figure first.
What the law says
Expenses incurred by the parents in giving their children a professional, vocational or other career shall not be brought to collation unless the parents so provide, or unless they impair the legitime
Civil Code, Article 1068 — Career and Professional Expenses. Read the full provision →
The default is that education is not counted
Expenses incurred by the parents in giving their children a professional, vocational or other career shall not be brought to collation unless the parents so provide, or unless they impair the legitime. Read the structure rather than the exceptions. Not collating is the rule; the two exceptions have to be established by whoever raises them. A sibling who feels the family spent more on your degree than on his cannot simply assert that the difference should come off your share. He has to show either an instruction from your parents or an actual impairment of the reserved portion.
Even when it is counted, it is discounted
The article's closing clause is the part almost nobody knows about. Where collation of career expenses is required, the sum which the child would have spent had he lived in the house and company of his parents is deducted from the amount collated. In other words, your parents were going to feed and house you anyway, and that ordinary cost is stripped out. What remains collationable is the excess attributable to the career itself. On a degree taken while living at home, that can reduce the figure a long way, and on some facts to very little.
The wider list of what is and is not collated
Article 1067 keeps a broad category out of collation altogether: expenses for support, education, medical attendance even in extraordinary illness, apprenticeship, ordinary equipment, and customary gifts. Article 1069 points the other way and is worth knowing because it catches things families do not think of as gifts. Sums paid by a parent in satisfaction of the debts of his children, election expenses, fines, and similar expenses shall be brought to collation. A parent who quietly settled a child's loan has made a collationable advance in a way that paying his tuition was not.
If the argument has already started
Ask for the basis rather than arguing the fairness. If the claim is that your parents so provided, there should be a writing saying so, and its date matters. If the claim is impairment of the legitime, it cannot be assessed until the whole estate and all lifetime dispositions are laid out, so it is an argument that comes at the end and not the beginning. Article 1077 is useful here: a dispute over the obligation to collate does not interrupt the distribution of the estate, provided adequate security is given.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1068 — Career and Professional Expenses
- Civil Code, Article 1067 — Support and Customary Gifts Are Not Collated
- Civil Code, Article 1069 — Debts, Fines and Election Expenses Are Collated
- Civil Code, Article 1077 — Disputes Suspend Distribution