A legislative proposal now before the House would remake one of the oldest rules in Puerto Rico property law: the obligation to leave a reserved share of an estate to certain relatives. House Bill 1468, introduced by Representative Carlos "Johnny" Méndez Núñez at the request of Omar Abdel Hadi Fernández, would amend the Civil Code to eliminate the legítima - the portion of an inheritance that Puerto Rico law currently reserves by statute for designated heirs^[1]. Under the bill, anyone with legal capacity to make a will could distribute all of their transmissible assets as they see fit^[2], rather than carving out forced shares first. Why the forced share matters beyond the family Puerto Rico's Civil Code follows the civil-law tradition, where a parent's freedom to dispose of property by will has always been partial. The practical consequence is familiar to any family that has inherited a house here: even a clear written wish can be litigated by an heir holding a statutory claim, and the property sits in dispute while the parties settle. That friction compounds the island's housing problem. Economists and housing analysts have spent 2026 documenting a market where supply falls short of demand and prices keep climbing; unused homes in town centers are the supply that is easiest to point at and hardest to mobilize, because titles are tangled across generations of co-heirs. A rule that narrows the room for post-death disputes is, in effect, a housing-supply measure wearing inheritance-law clothes. The bill's sponsors frame it as autonomy: the ability to reward a child who cared for an aging parent, provide for a particular descendant, or leave an estate to an institution^[3]. Fernández has called on professional colleges, business associations, and community organizations to weigh in during the legislative review^[4]. What would not change The proposal is narrower than it may first appear. Intestate succession - the rules that apply when someone dies without a valid will - would remain untouched^[5], so the majority of transfers that happen without estate planning continue under the current framework. The bill also carries protections around the family home, including preferential attribution and a right of habitation for the surviving spouse^[6]. And the debate over safeguards is live. Fernández himself has flagged the need to evaluate protections for minors and dependents, fraud prevention, and shield against undue pressure on testators - the standard cost of expanding testamentary freedom, and the reason most jurisdictions that abolished forced shares did so alongside those guardrails. The so-what For property owners, the bill is an option to watch, not a done deal: it is a proposal, not law, and current inheritance rules remain fully in effect until the Legislature acts^[7]. For policymakers hunting for supply, it belongs in the same conversation as vacancy inventories and permitting: title clarity is cheaper to fix than new construction, and this bill would move the law toward it. Whether the safeguards can be drawn tightly enough to pass - and whether the island's notarial and registry systems can absorb the resulting wills - will decide if it ever becomes more than a good argument.