What a usufruct is and how it is created

It is Section One of Chapter I of Title VI of Book Three of the Civil Code of 2020, Articles 877 to 883. The usufruct is the classic tool for separating who enjoys an asset from who owns it: one receives the fruits, the other keeps the title.

It may be constituted in favour of natural or juridical persons; for juridical persons, its duration may not exceed thirty years unless special legislation provides otherwise. It may fall on things and also on rights that are not personalísimos or non-transferable.

• Creating it by facts or circumstances provided by law, by a unilateral or bilateral juridical act, or by usucapión.Verified against the official source
• That it fall on another’s thing or on a right that is not personalísimo or non-transferable.Verified against the official source
• That a usufruct in favour of a juridical person not exceed thirty years, unless special legislation provides otherwise.Verified against the official source
• To reserve reversion in a donation, specifying the causes of reversion in the title.Verified against the official source

• The constituting title, which sets the duration, the modalities and the conditions; in what does not follow from it, the Code and the legislation on the matter govern.

1. 1

   Step 1: What it is exactly

   Article 877 defines it as the real right of temporary use, enjoyment and benefit of another’s thing in accordance with its nature and its destination. Three words carry the weight: real, because it is held over the thing and not only against a person; temporary, because it always ends; and another’s, because ownership stays with someone else. It may also be constituted over a right, provided that right is not personalísimo or non-transferable.

2. 2

   Step 2: The three ways to create it

   Article 878 lists them: as a consequence of facts or circumstances provided by law; by a unilateral or bilateral juridical act — which is where a will and a deed between the living fit; or by usucapión, that is, by having possessed it for the time and under the conditions the law requires.

3. 3

   Step 3: The duration, which almost nobody writes into the title

   Article 881 fills the gap by default: when the constitution of the usufruct does not fix a duration, it is understood constituted for the whole life of the usufructuary. And it sets a ceiling for entities: a usufruct established in favour of juridical persons may not exceed thirty years, unless special legislation provides otherwise.

4. 4

   Step 4: The six modalities it admits

   Article 880 enumerates them and they are worth reading before drafting a title: for valuable consideration or gratuitously; universal, falling on all the goods of a patrimony, or singular, on one or more determined goods; on all the fruits or on part of them; in favour of one person or of several, and in the latter case simultaneously or successively; with an initial term or a final term; and purely or under condition.

5. 5

   Step 5: If the usufruct is donated, its return can be agreed

   Article 879 allows that, where the constituting title of the usufruct is a donation, the donor may reserve the faculty of reversion of the right. The condition the article itself imposes is concrete: the causes of reversion must be specified. A blank reservation is not what the Code describes.

6. 6

   Step 6: What governs when the title is silent

   Article 883 sets the hierarchy: the right of usufruct is governed by what the constituting title establishes and, in what does not follow from it, by the provisions of this Code and the legislation on the matter. First what the parties wrote; then the law.

A usufruct is created in the corresponding title — a will, a deed of donation or of sale, or by whatever route the law provides — and is asserted between the parties or before the Court of First Instance. The Civil Code designates no agency to administer it.

• Not writing the duration into the title: without it the usufruct is for life.
• Giving it to a corporation for more than thirty years.
• Believing the usufructuary becomes the owner: ownership stays with the other party.
• Reserving reversion in a donation without specifying the causes.
• Constituting it over a personalísimo or non-transferable right.
• Assuming the Code overrides the title: the constituting title governs first.

These are the government pages this guide is based on.

• Poder Judicial de Puerto Rico

  Poder Judicial

  bvirtualogp.pr.gov