FEDERICO MAGALLANES, ET AL., PETITIONERS, VS. HONORABLE COURT OF APPEALS, ET AL., RESPONDENTS.

In Civil Case No. 1264 of the Court of First Instance of Iloilo, Maximo Magallanes, et al., plaintiffs vs. Federico Magallanes, et al., defendants, a decision was rendered on May 28, 1951, with the following dispositive part:

“In view of the foregoing considerations, the Court
finds that the preponderance of evidence is that the above properties
are of Justo Magallanes and that both plaintiffs and defendants are the
heirs of Justo Magallanes and, therefore, they should share
proportionately in the properties in question. Each child of Justo
Magallanes from both wives is entitled to one-seventh of the undivided
share of the land in question. Inasmuch as the plaintiffs paid P220 for
the mortgages as shown in Exhibits D and G, the other heirs are obliged
to reimburse proportionately the said amount of P220 to the plaintiffs.”

Upon appeal by the defendants to the Court of Appeals, the latter
court rendered on April 22, 1953, a decision the dispositive part of
which reads as follows :

“Wherefore, the decision appealed from is hereby
modified in the sense that each of the plaintiffs shall participate in
the proportion subject of litigation in the proportion of one-half (1/2) of
the share that corresponds to each of the defendants. The latter are
further sentenced to pay jointly and severally to plaintiffs said sum
of P220 that they spent for the redemption of the parcels of land under
Tax Declarations Nos. 21719 (Exhibit D) and 2153 (Exhibit G). In the
meantime this is not done, the properties mentioned in Exhibits D and G
will answer for the payment of this sentence. Without pronouncements as
to costs.”

Not satisfied with the decision of the Court of Appeals, the
defendants have filed the present petition for its review on certiorari.

The findings of fact of the Court of Appeals upon which its decision rests, quoted verbatim, are as follows:

“(a) That the properties under litigation were not of Damiana Tupia but of her husband, the late Justo Magallanes;

“(b)
That plaintiffs Maximo, Gaspar, Baltazar and Bienvenido, surnamed
Magallanes, had redeemed from their vendees a retro Filomeno Gallo and
Soledad Canto (Exhibit D) and Jose Capanang (Exhibit G) the parcels of
land under Tax 21719 and 2153 mentioned in said exhibits and paid for
such redemptions the sums of P100 and P120, respectively;

“(c)
That Enrica Tagaduar alleged mother of the plaintiffs, did not marry
Justo Magallanes in the year 1918 after the death of his first wife
Damiana Tupia occurred in 1915. We arrived at this conclusion not only
because Justo’s sister Aleja Magallanes positively declared ‘that until
the death of my brother (Justo) he was never married again,’ but also
because Justo Magallanes himself declared in various documents that he
executed in his lifetime and up to 1936, that he was a widower (Exhibit
B, C and I), and although it is true that in 1939 his civil status
appearing on Exhibit F is that of ‘married’ without stating to whom he
was married then), it does not follow, even if the statement of such
status was not due to a clerical error, that he was precisely married
to Enrica Tagaduar who did not pretend that she married him between
1936 and 1938, but in 1918. Plaintiffs-appellees state that according
to our jurisprudence:

‘A man or woman who are living in marital relations, under the same roof, are presumed
to be legitimate spouses, united by virtue of a legal marriage
contract, and this presumption can only be rebutted by sufficient
contrary evidence. (U. S. vs. Uri et al., 34 Phil., 653; U. S. vs. Villafuerte, 4 Phil., 559).

but
this doctrine only establishes a presumption that in the case at bar
was rebutted by the testimony of Aleja Magallanes and by documents
executed by Justo Magallanes himself. In this case it is not a matter
of imagining what might have happened to the plaintiffs, as the trial
court does without adequate support in the record. Furthermore, and
even considering that the plaintiffs are the natural children of Justo
Magallanes and that sometime between 1936 and 1939 Justo Magallanes
married Enrica Tagaduar, such marriage could not have the effect of
automatically legitimizing the children born prior to the marriage,
because our Civil Code provides:

‘Art, 121. Children shall be
considered as legitimized by a subsequent marriage only when they have
been acknowledged by the parents before or after the celebration
thereof.’

and the record fails to adequately show that such
acknowledgment ever took place.

“(d) That the
plaintiffs are the natural children of the late Justo Magallanes by
Enrica Tagaduar. The defendants do not deny their status as such and it
can be inferred from the records that they enjoyed such status during
the life time of their deceased father.”

Petitioners’ main contention is that the Court of Appeals erred in
holding that the respondents Maximo, Gaspar, Baltazar and Bienvenido
Magallanes, as mere natural children of the deceased Justo Magallanes,
without having been legally acknowledged, are entitled to inherit under
article 840 of the old Civil Code, which reads as follows:

“When the testator leaves legitimate children or
descendants, and also natural children, legally acknowledged, each of
the latter shall be entitled to one-half of the portion pertaining to
each of legitimate children who have not received any betterment,
provided that it may be included within the freely disposable portion,
from which it must be taken, after the burial and funeral expenses have
been paid.

“The legitimate children may pay the portion
pertaining to the natural ones in cash, or in other property of the
estate, at a fair valuation.”

Petitioners’ contention is tenable. We are bound by the finding of
the Court of Appeals in its decision that said respondents are the
natural children of Justo Magallanes, that the petitioners do not deny
their status as such, and that it can be inferred from the records that
they enjoyed such status during the lifetime of their deceased father.
Nonetheless, we are also bound by its finding that the record fails to
adequately show that Raid respondents were ever acknowledged as such
natural children. Under article 840 of the old Civil Code, above
quoted, the natural children entitled to inherit are those legally
acknowledged. In the case of Briz vs. Briz, 43 Phil. 763, the
following pronouncement was made: “* * * the actual attainment of the
status of a legally recognized natural child is a condition precedent
to the realization of any rights which may pertain to such child in the
character of heir. In the case before us, assuming that the plaintiff
has been in the uninterrupted possession of the status of natural
child, she is undoubtedly entitled to enforce legal recognition; but
this does not in itself make her a legally recognized natural child.”
It being a fact, conclusive in this instance, that there was no
requisite acknowledgment, the respondents’ right to inherit cannot be
sustained.

The respondents cannot demand that this suit be considered a complex
action for compulsory recognition and partition, under the authority of
Briz vs. Briz, supra, and Lopez vs. Lopez, 68 Phil.,
227, for the reason that the action was not instituted within the four
years following the death of the alleged natural father (Art. 137, Old
Civil Code; Art. 285, New Civil Code). According to the decision of the
Court of Appeals, the father, Justo Magallanes, died in 1943, and the
present action was instituted seven years later in 1950.

Wherefore, the decision of the Court of Appeals is hereby modified
by eliminating therefrom the ruling that the respondents Maximo,
Gaspar, Baltazar and Bienvenido Magallanes are entitled to inherit from
the deceased Justo Magallanes in the proportion of one-half of the
share that corresponds to each of the petitioners Federico, Fermin and
Angel Magallanes. So ordered without costs.

Pablo, Bengzon, Padilla, Montemayor, Reyes, A., Jugo, Bautista Angelo, Concepcion, and Reyes, J.B.L., JJ., concur.