Short answer. Anyone is allowed to make a will unless a law expressly prohibits them from doing so. The rule is written as a broad default in favor of everyone's capacity to make a will, with prohibition being the exception rather than something a person must first prove they qualify for.
What the law says
All persons who are not expressly prohibited by law may make a will.
Civil Code, Article 796 — Who May Make a Will. Read the full provision →
The rule is written as a broad default
Article 796 is deliberately phrased the wide way around: all persons may make a will unless they are expressly prohibited by law. The starting assumption is capacity, not incapacity. A person does not need to point to a rule that grants them the power to make a will — the power exists unless some other rule expressly takes it away.
The prohibition has to come from law, and be express
The article's wording matters: the bar has to be expressly prohibited by law. It is not enough that someone is thought unsuited to making a will, or that a family member disagrees with the idea — there has to be an actual legal provision that expressly removes the capacity from that category of person. Article 796 itself does not list what those prohibitions are. Nor does the article say a prohibition can be inferred from general incapacity rules written for other purposes, such as contractual incapacity — testamentary capacity is treated separately, so a bar has to be express and specific to making a will.
What this article does not spell out
Article 796 states the general default; it does not itself enumerate who falls into the prohibited category, at what age testamentary capacity is reached, or what mental capacity is required at the time of making a will. Those specific qualifications live in other provisions, so this article should be read as the broad principle behind them rather than a complete checklist on its own. It also does not say whether the prohibition, once it applies, is permanent or tied to a specific moment — whether someone barred at one point in life might later regain the capacity to make a will is likewise left to those other, more specific rules.
The practical implication
Because Article 796 puts the burden on identifying an express legal prohibition rather than on the will-maker proving eligibility, most adults capable of understanding what they are doing will fall within its scope. Anyone unsure whether a specific circumstance — age, mental state, or another factor — falls within an express prohibition should look to the more specific rules governing testamentary capacity rather than rely on this general article alone, since Article 796 was never meant to answer that narrower question by itself.