7 Louisiana Laws That Surprise Out-of-Staters

If you buy a used truck and discover a hidden flaw, you’ll meet a Louisiana law with a very unusual name.

It’s one of several rules rooted in a civil code that dates to 1808, years before Louisiana became a state.

Here’s how those laws could affect you, from your will to your home sale, and where newcomers get tripped up.

Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Laws, deadlines and dollar thresholds are subject to change.

1. Forced Heirship

Forced heirship reserves a share of your estate for certain children, even when your will says otherwise.

Under the code, forced heirs are your children who are 23 or younger when you die.

A child of any age also counts if a permanent incapacity keeps them from caring for themselves or managing property.

A parent can disinherit a child only for causes the Civil Code lists.

One listed cause is an adult child who knows how to reach a parent but goes two years without communicating, with no just cause.

The Code makes an exception for a child who was on active duty in the U.S. military at the time.

2. Surviving Spouse’s Usufruct

A usufruct is a right of limited duration on property that belongs to someone else.

If you die leaving descendants, your surviving spouse gets that right over your share of the community property.

It covers your share only to the extent you haven’t left it to someone else in your will.

The usufruct ends when your spouse dies or remarries, whichever comes first.

3. Undoing a Low-Priced Sale

If you sold land or a building for less than half of its fair market value, Louisiana’s lesion beyond moiety rule lets you ask to undo the sale.

Only the seller can claim lesion, and it can’t be used against a sale ordered by a court.

Even a seller who renounced the right to claim lesion can still invoke it.

The buyer can respond by returning the property to you.

Or the buyer can keep it by paying you a supplement equal to the difference between the price paid and the fair market value.

You would have one year from the time of the sale to bring the claim.

4. Redhibition for Hidden Flaws

Redhibition covers a defect that makes a thing useless, or so inconvenient to use that a buyer wouldn’t have bought it.

A used truck you buy could hide a flaw serious enough to meet that test.

The thing you buy must also be reasonably fit for its ordinary use.

You must also give notice of the defect to the seller.

That notice has to come early enough for the seller to try repairs.

If the seller didn’t know about the defect, he is only bound to repair, remedy or correct it.

If he doesn’t, he must return the price to you with interest from the time it was paid, and reimburse reasonable expenses.

The warranty covers only defects that exist at delivery.

A defect that appears within three days is presumed to have existed then.

5. Presumed Fatherhood

The Civil Code presumes that a mother’s husband is the father of a child born during the marriage.

A child born within 300 days after the marriage ends gets the same presumption.

If you’re the husband, you can disavow paternity by clear and convincing evidence that you aren’t the father, and your testimony must be corroborated by other evidence.

A child can still prove paternity, even when another man is presumed to be the father.

A man who says he is the biological father of a child presumed to be another man’s generally has one year from the child’s birth to file.

If the mother deceived him in bad faith, he has one year from when he knew or should have known, but never more than ten years after the birth.

In all cases, the action must be brought no later than one year after the child’s death.

6. Notary Powers

Under state law, a notary can receive wills, make inventories and partitions, make matrimonial contracts, and make conveyances.

The statute grants those powers within the parish or parishes where the notary is authorized.

An attorney notary has statewide jurisdiction.

An authentic act is a writing executed before a notary public, or another officer authorized to perform that function, in the presence of two witnesses.

As a party, you must sign it, along with each witness and the notary.

If you sign an authentic act, it’s full proof of the agreement against you, your heirs and your successors.

7. Peremptive Deadlines

Peremption is a period of time fixed by law for the existence of a right.

If you don’t use the right in time, it’s extinguished when the period ends.

Unless a statute says otherwise, peremption can’t be renounced, interrupted or suspended.

The one-year paternity window above is an example, since the Civil Code calls it peremptive.

The lesion deadline from earlier works the same way, so you can’t interrupt or suspend it unless a statute provides otherwise.

Code Older Than the State

The civil code you've just read about dates to 1808, only five years after the Louisiana Purchase, according to Tulane University.