Art. 2893.Period Within Which Will Must Be Probated

A testament does not stay eligible for probate forever. Article 2893 sets a firm outside limit: no testament can be admitted to probate unless a petition for its probate is filed within five years after the succession was judicially opened.

The clock starts running from the judicial opening of the succession, not from the date of death or the date the testament was discovered. A succession can be opened intestate, treated, for the time being, as though no testament exists, and if a testament later surfaces, the petitioner still has to get it before the court within five years of that judicial opening.

The deadline matters because a succession cannot stay open indefinitely on the possibility that a testament might someday appear. Once the five years run, the succession's disposition proceeds as though no testament exists for probate purposes, giving heirs, legatees, and creditors a fixed point at which the estate's course is settled.