P.R. Laws tit. 31, § 3453
The following must appear in a public instrument:
(1) Acts and contracts the object of which is the creation, conveyance, modification, or extinction of rights on real property.
(2) Leases of the same property for six (6) or more years, provided they are to the prejudice of third persons.
(3) Contracts to govern property belonging to the conjugal partnership, and the creation and increase of dowries, whenever it is intended to enforce them against third persons.
(4) The assignment, repudiation, and renunciation of hereditary rights or of those of the conjugal partnership.
(5) The general power of attorney to institute lawsuits and the special powers of attorney to be presented in suits; the power of attorney to administer property and any other power of attorney, the object of which is an act drafted or which is to be drafted in a public instrument, or which may prejudice a third person.
(6) The assignment of actions or rights arising from an act contained in a public instrument.
All other contracts, in which the amount of the consideration of one or both of the two contracting parties exceeds three hundred (300) dollars, must be reduced to writing even though it be a private contract.
In all cases, contracts made through agents shall be made by means of authentic documents, the district judges and justices of the peace being hereby empowered in the absence of a notary, to certify to the authenticity of said contracts, in the manner determined by §§ 887 et seq. of Title 4.
Notwithstanding the provisions of the preceding paragraph, commercial contracts made by means of correspondence and all those in which the formality of the authentic document may cause prejudicial delay to the nature and rapidity of mercantile traffic, shall be valid.
History —Civil Code, 1930, § 1232;.