Tuesday afternoon was an intense day of signings at the Ministry of Justice. In the building located on Morandé Street, both the Minister of Justice Fernando Rabat and the Undersecretary of Justice Luis Silva (Republican Party) affixed their signatures to 35 decrees. The documents they had to approve correspond to exempt decrees declaring the cessation of functions in the position of a group of 35 justice auxiliaries who will retire for having more than 35 years of service. After the recitals, in the operative part, the Executive branch authorities declare the cessation of functions of the respective officeholder "as of October 2, 2026, in accordance with the provisions of Article 495 bis of the Organic Code of Courts in relation with the second transitional article of Law No. 21,772." These decrees arose after the respective courts of appeals formally requested the cessation of the auxiliaries in their jurisdictions. In fact, the decrees signed by the Justice authorities only constitute an administrative act, but in reality the end of the 35 notaries and conservators will occur by operation of law itself, specifically the provision of the second transitional article of the notarial reform. Along with this, the different Regional Ministerial Secretariats of Justice in all the regions of the country have begun dispatching the decrees designating, in order of precedence, who will be the interim appointees, based on what is regulated by Articles 402 and 402 bis of the notarial reform. That is the general rule for the entire country, except for the Metropolitan Region. Congress determined that there would be special rules for the Conservator of Santiago, and therefore designed an exclusive provision for this jurisdiction, which is Article 449. One of its paragraphs states that "in the case of the conservators referred to in this article, if any of them is absent or disabled from the exercise of their functions, they shall be replaced by the other conservators according to their order of seniority." For the Conservator of Santiago, this means that the three offices — the one currently held by Luis Maldonado (81) and the one exercised months ago by Kamel Saquel — will fall into the hands of Carlos Miranda, who in practice will be the only titular auxiliary of the Santiago offices. Although the law provided a six-month period to prepare this transition, the forced retirement of those over 75 years old is marked by strong uncertainty. This is because Maldonado and four more auxiliaries — the notary of Melipilla Rosemarie Mery (76), the conservator of Pozo Almonte Enso González (80), the notary of Las Condes Linda Bosch (76), and the notary of La Calera Lidia Chahuán (80) — are attempting to challenge the cessation of their positions before the Constitutional Court and in civil lawsuits. All of them allege that the provision constitutes arbitrary discrimination solely on the basis of age. However, despite all their last-minute efforts, as of the close of this edition, no civil judge nor the Constitutional Court has notified any provisional measure that could suspend the cessation of the positions of these five notaries and conservators.