MARIANO GARCIA AND SPOUSES HERMAN SANTOS AND ARSENIA GARCIA, PETITIONERS, VS. COURT OF APPEALS, HEIRS OF EUGENIO DE JESUS, NAMELY, DOMICIANO, JESUS, JOSEFINA AND AURELIO, ALL SU…

Garcia versus Court of Appeals

The Case

This is a controversy over a parcel of unregistered land, 581 square meters in area, situated at Barrio Parulan, Plaridel, Bulacan, and assessed at 930 pesos. It was the conjugal property of the spouses Eugenio de Jesus and Petra Buenaventura, acquired on November 6, 1966, out of earnings from their drugstore business. The action was brought by the De Jesus spouses to annul a deed of exchange over that land and the subsequent conveyance of it to the Santos spouses. The case matters to every reviewee because it states, in the plainest terms, the rule on the wife's consent to a husband's disposition of conjugal property, and the consequence of that rule on persons who take from a transferor who had nothing to give.

Procedural History

Two cases moved through the Court of First Instance of Bulacan. In the first, the Santos spouses sued the Flores spouses and Mrs. Antonio for recovery of possession of the land. In the second, the De Jesus spouses sued Mariano Garcia and the Santos spouses to annul the deed of exchange and the conveyance to the Santos spouses. The trial court voided the deed of exchange. The Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment, with the modification that the heirs of Eugenio de Jesus and Petra Buenaventura should return to Mariano Garcia the riceland they received under the deed of exchange, and it affirmed the trial court's earlier order dismissing the possession case. Mariano Garcia and the Santos spouses then came to the Supreme Court, assigning what they called grave errors of law. The Court treated the assignments as raising factual issues on the validity of the deed of exchange, which are not the purely legal issues contemplated in the rule on appeals by certiorari, and it resolved the appeal on the settled findings below.

Facts

On March 26, 1969, Eugenio de Jesus, then 92 years old and suffering from a cataract, signed a supposed deed whereby he exchanged the 581 square meter conjugal lot for the 3,600 square meters of riceland held by his tenant, Mariano Garcia, 58, covered by a certificate of title. De Jesus allegedly signed on the understanding that the document was not a deed of exchange but one allowing Garcia to build a house on his lot and pay the land taxes on it. His wife, Petra Buenaventura, did not sign the deed. The deed had deficiencies that were filled up with another typewriter after De Jesus had signed, so that the document could be registered, and the notary did not testify to its due execution.

Mariano Garcia then transferred the land to the spouses Arsenia Garcia and Herman Santos, who allegedly delivered possession to the spouses Natividad Antonio and Arcadio Flores. The Flores spouses built a house of light materials and a hut on the land, and Clara Gatmaitan Vda. de Antonio resided there with her daughter and son-in-law.

On November 25, 1969, the Santos spouses sued the Flores spouses and Mrs. Antonio for recovery of possession. On February 2, 1970, the De Jesus spouses sued Mariano Garcia and the Santos spouses to annul the deed of exchange and the conveyance to the Santos spouses.

Issues

• Whether or not the deed of exchange executed by the husband alone over conjugal property is void for lack of the wife's conformity.
• Whether or not the Santos spouses may be regarded as innocent purchasers for value of the land conveyed to them by Mariano Garcia.

Applicable Provisions

Article 166 of the Civil Code provides:

The husband cannot alienate or encumber any real property of the conjugal partnership without the wife's consent.

This is the mandatory requirement whose breach voids the deed of exchange, because the wife never gave her consent to the husband's disposition of the conjugal lot.

Article 5 of the Civil Code provides:

Acts executed against the provisions of mandatory or prohibitory laws shall be void, except when the law itself authorizes their validity.

This supplies the consequence: an act done against a mandatory requirement of law is void, and no validating exception applies here.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the finding of the trial court and the Court of Appeals that the wife, Petra Buenaventura, did not consent to the deed of exchange executed by her husband is binding and conclusive on the Supreme Court. The deed of exchange was void because of the absence of the wife's conformity to the disposition of the ganancial property, as required by Article 166 of the Civil Code, a mandatory requirement. The Court cited Article 5 of the Civil Code and settled jurisprudence in support.

On the second issue, the Court held that the Santos spouses cannot be regarded as innocent purchasers for value, a term used with respect to registered lands, because the deed of exchange was void from the beginning, and Mariano Garcia therefore acquired no rights whatsoever. He could not transmit anything to his vendees. The Court stated the maxim: nemo dat qui non habet, that is, no one can give what he has not.

Doctrine

First, the husband cannot alienate or encumber any real property of the conjugal partnership without the wife's consent, and this requirement is mandatory. A deed of exchange over conjugal realty executed by the husband alone, without the wife's conformity, is void under Article 166 in relation to Article 5 of the Civil Code.

Second, because the deed is void from the beginning, the husband's transferee acquires no rights whatsoever and can transmit nothing to those who take from him. The transferee's buyers cannot be innocent purchasers for value, since a void title is no title at all. The rule is captured in the maxim nemo dat qui non habet.

Third, the finding that the wife did not consent is a factual finding of the trial court and the Court of Appeals, binding and conclusive on the Supreme Court and not reviewable as a purely legal issue on appeal.

Disposition

The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeals, with costs against the petitioners, and the deed of exchange and the conveyance to the Santos spouses remained void.

Remember This

Memorize the line: the husband cannot alienate conjugal realty without the wife's consent, and a deed executed without it is void from the beginning, so the buyer from the husband's transferee is not an innocent purchaser for value. Examiners use this case on the wife's consent to conjugal dispositions and on the nemo dat qui non habet principle barring a buyer from claiming a better title than his seller had.