Art. 4643.Appointment of Attorney For Incompetent When Interests Conflict

The tutor, curator, undertutor, or undercurator who ordinarily acts for a minor or interdict cannot always be trusted to represent that person's interest in a partition without reservation. That representative may also be a co-owner, or may otherwise have an interest that pulls in a different direction from the incompetent person they represent. Article 4643 addresses that conflict directly.

Whenever a partition, whatever form it takes, in kind, by licitation, or by private sale, and whether carried out judicially or through a conventional, nonjudicial partition, involves an incompetent co-owner whose interests conflict with those of the legal representative, undertutor, or undercurator otherwise handling matters on that person's behalf, the court has to step in and appoint an attorney at law to represent and act for the incompetent specifically in the partition.

The article also covers the case of multiple incompetent co-owners who share the same representative and whose interests conflict with each other, not just with the representative: the court appoints a separate attorney for each of them. And for purposes of the partition, that appointed attorney does not merely advise; the attorney acts in lieu of the legal representative, undertutor, or undercurator, holding all of that person's power and authority for the partition itself.