Art. 3171.Appointment

Chapter 2 of Title III addresses a narrow but important gap in succession administration: what happens when an heir or legatee cannot be found, or has not appeared, while the succession moves forward without them. Article 3171 answers that gap by directing the court to appoint an attorney at law to stand in for that person, an absentee, so the proceeding does not run its course while their interest goes unwatched.

The appointment is not automatic in every succession. It turns on two things appearing from the record, or being proved by an interested party: that an heir of an intestate decedent, or a legatee or presumptive legal heir of a testator, is an absentee, and that there is a necessity for the appointment. Where both conditions are met, the court has no discretion to decline once the necessity is shown.

This attorney's role differs from the succession representative's. The succession representative, the executor or administrator described in Chapter 1 of this Title, administers the succession's property as a whole, on behalf of the estate rather than any one heir. The attorney appointed under Article 3171 works instead for a single absent person, giving that individual a voice in a proceeding they cannot attend themselves.