Art. 3211.Duty to Take Possession; Enforcement of Claims and Obligations

Section 2 of Chapter 4 turns from the representative's general fiduciary obligations to the specific job of gathering in the estate. Article 3211 is where that job starts, and it does its work through a legal fiction: the representative is deemed to have possession of all succession property, whether or not anyone has physically handed it over.

That deemed possession matters because it establishes, as a matter of law, who is answerable for the succession's property from the moment of appointment. The representative does not have to locate and physically gather every asset before being treated as its custodian; the possession attaches to the office itself, giving the representative both the authority and the responsibility to account for succession property from the outset.

The article's second half is a companion duty rather than a separate topic: the representative shall enforce all obligations in the succession's favor, collecting debts owed to the succession, pursuing claims that belong to it, and gathering in whatever the succession is entitled to receive. This is the flip side of Chapter 5's enforcement of claims against successions: Article 3211 addresses what the estate is owed, while Chapter 5 addresses what the estate owes.