Short answer. Not the child directly. Article 202 provides that where the money is payable to a minor or incompetent, the System pays such person or persons as it considers best qualified to take care of and dispose of the minor's property for his benefit. The System chooses that payee.
What the law says
If the money is payable to a minor or incompetent, payment shall be made by the System to such person or persons as it may consider to be best qualified to take care and dispose of the minor’s or incompetent’s property for his benefit.
Labor Code, Article 202 — Erroneous Payment. Read the full provision →
The System selects the payee, not the family
The article puts the choice in the System's hands rather than leaving it to whoever presents the child at the counter. Payment is to be made to such person as it may consider to be best qualified. That is an administrative judgment, exercised case by case, and it explains why a relative confident of receiving the money on the child's behalf sometimes finds the decision goes elsewhere. The same paragraph covers an adult beneficiary who is incompetent, so the mechanism is not confined to children — it applies wherever the person entitled cannot manage the money.
'Best qualified' is measured against the child's interest
The test is not a ranking of relationships. It asks who is best placed to take care and dispose of the property for his benefit — that is, who will actually hold the money and apply it to the child. A surviving parent is the usual answer and often the obvious one, but the wording leaves room for a grandparent, an aunt or whoever in fact has the child, where that is where the child lives and is supported. Note too that the article allows payment to persons in the plural, so the choice is not necessarily a single individual.
The money stays the child's
Whoever is chosen receives in a caretaking capacity, not as an owner. The phrase for his benefit defines both the purpose of the payment and the limit of the recipient's authority: the funds are the minor's, to be spent on the minor. This is worth stating plainly within families, because a benefit received after a workplace death is often the largest sum the household has ever seen and expectations form quickly. An adult who treats it as general family income has not done what the article contemplates when it entrusted the money to him.
Establish custody on paper, and do it early
Since the decision turns on who is genuinely caring for the child, produce evidence of that rather than of relationship alone. The birth certificate establishes filiation; school records, medical records, the address on official documents and proof of who has been meeting the child's expenses establish care. Where relatives are in conflict, put the competing claim before the System in writing at once — the same article protects a better-entitled dependent only where notice is given before payment is made. Take the papers to a lawyer if a dispute is already forming.