TESTATE ESTATE OF MARIA CONSUELO IGNACIO, RE­PRESENTED BY THE EXECUTOR-ADMINISTRATOR, (WITH THE WILL ANNEXED) DR. AGUSTIN I. IGNACIO, JR., PLAINTIFF AND APPELLANT, VS. PASTOR MA…

This appeal was originally taken to the Court of Appeals by
reason of the statement made in appellant’s notice of appeal (record on appeal,
p. 80) to the effect that he was appealing “on all questions of law and
fact”.  The Court of Appeals found,
however, that “the errors assigned by appellant show that no question of
fact is raised”
and, as a consequence,
granted appellees’ motion appearing at page 5 of their brief “to certify
this case to the Supreme Court”.

Agustin I. Ignacio, Jr., in his capacity as ex­ecutor-administrator
of the testate estate of the de­ceased Maria Consuelo Ignacio took the instant
appeal from the decision of the Court of First Instance of Bataan in Civil Case
No. 2771 dismissing the complaint he had filed against the spouses Pastor
Manalo and Paula de Vera for the recovery of a parcel of registered land situated
in the municipality of Orani, province of Bataan, and identified as Lot No.
1148 of the Orani Cadastre and covered by T.C.T. NO. 1223 issued by the
Register of Deeds of said province.  As
only questions of law are involved, the following findings of fact made by the
lower court are now beyond review:

“There is no dispute as to the fact in this case
that on August 18, 1945, Maria Con­suelo
died leaving a will and an estate
con­sisting of several parcels of land located in Orani, Bataan, plus five (5)
religious images.  One of the parcels of
land left by her was Lot No. 1148 of the Orani Cadastre containing an area of
141,917 square meters more or less and covered by Transfer Certi­ficate of Title No. 1223 of the Register of
Deeds of Bataan in her name.  Tomas Tagle
was designated in her will as executor
and was in due course of the proceedings appoint­ed as administrator by the
Court.  On April 29, 1947, Tomas Tagle,
as administrator of the estate of the deceased Maria Consuelo Ignacio and Agustin Ignacio, Sr. filed a
joint motion to sell Lot No. 1, Psu-9730, which is lot No. 1148 of the Orani
cadastre and covered by said Transfer Certificate
of Title No. 1223 of the Register of Deeds of Bataan to defendant Pastor Manalo, which motion for leave
to sell was accompanied by a Deed of Absolute Sale dated April 28, 1947, for and in consideration of the sum of P10,000.00, which the vendors, the said administrator
and Agustin Ignacio, Sr. had received from the de­fendant, Pastor Manalo, Said
Joint Motion was on September
25, 1948, denied by the Probate Court of Bataan in an order issued on said date.  On October 10, 1948, the administrator Tomas Tagle made a report dated on the same
date but filed on May 13, 1949, a manifesta­tion with the probate court in
special pro­ceedings No. 1811, on the fact that the sale was not consummated
and the land was not delivered to the vendee, the herein defendant, Pas­tor
Manalo filed a petition to detach the Deed of Absolute Sale and substitute it with a certified copy, which
petition was dated on the same date and was granted two days thereafter, i.e.,
October 14, 1949.  In a project of
partition dated April 12, 1949, Exh. ‘I’, the estate of the deceased,
Maria Consuelo Ignacio, was partitioned and Lot No. 1148, which is the land
in question was adjudicated to Agustin Ignacio, Sr. subject to the usufructuary
right of Tomas Tagle during the latter’s life time (Exhs. ‘1’, ‘1-A’, ‘1–B’,
‘1-C’, and ‘1-D’).  Said project of partition was approved on May
18, 1949, in an order of even date (Exh. ‘2’) and the executor on October 14,
1949, was ordered to distribute the shares to the testamentary heirs in accordance
with the project of partition.  The
approved project of partition was registered in the Office of the Register of
Deeds of Bataan on January 21, 1950, and the Deed of Sale executed on April 28,
1947, was registered on the same date January 21, 1950, after the project parti­tion
was registered.  Hence, Transfer
Certificate of Title No. T-1999 was issued in the name of Pastor Manalo, the
defendant herein.”

Aside from the above, however, the following relevant facts are
not disputed.

More than eight years
after the execution of the deed of absolute sale mentioned heretofore,
or more specifically on May 25, 1955, Tomas
Tagle filed a petition praying the probate court to order its cancellation and
to require appellee Pastor Manalo to
return and deliver to him the property
subject matter thereof.  On November 11,
1955, over the objection of Manalo, the probate court issued an order holding “that
the registration of the deed of sale is null and
void and transfer certificate of title No. 1999 of Bataan should be cancelled
and a new one should be is­sued in the
name of the administrator of the estate of the deceased Maria Consuelo Ignacio”
(Underline supplied) and further required Manalo “to return the property covered by
said deed of sale within a period of ten (10) days from receipt of this order
to the administrator”.  On appeal
from this order (G. R. No. L-12657), however, this Court, on July 14, 1959, rendered judgment
setting it aside on two grounds:
firstly, because the probate proceedings below had already been terminated when
the petition for cancellation of the sale was filed, and secondly, because the
declaration of nullity of the deed of sale and the consequent cancellation of
the certificate of title issued in favor of the vendee can not be obtained
through a mere motion in the probate proceedings but in an appropriate independent action in the proper court.

It appears, furthermore,
that on November 12, 1956, or four years before he died in 1960, Agustin
Ignacio, Sr. executed a sworn
statement ratifying the deed of absolute sale in question.  On the other hand, Tomas Tagle, the usufructuary, died in
the year 1961.

On September 29, 1961 (Record on Appeal, p. 2) appellant Agustin I. Ignacio, Jr. succeeded in having the
probate court appoint him as administrator
of the testate estate of the deceased Maria Consuelo Ignacio – a proceeding which this Court, in G. R. No. L-12657 mentioned
hereto­fore, had previously declared terminated for the reason that, upon the
facts before it, there had been a project of partition signed and filed by the
heirs of said deceased and duly approved by the probate court, the latter
having, in fact, issued the
corresponding order for the executor to deliver to the heirs their respective
share as specified in said project of partition.  In his
aforesaid capacity, appellant filed on November 28, 1961 the present
action in the Court of First Instance of Bataan (Civil Case No. 2771) where, as
stated before, the appealed decision was rendered “dismissing the
complaint of the plaintiff” as well as the counterclaim of the
defendants for the recovery of attorney’s fees and damages.

We agree with appellant that the four
assignments of error submitted in his brief may be reduced to the lone issue
formulated at page 4 of said brief as follows:

“Hence, the only issue in this case could be formulated as:

ISSUE OF THE CASE

WAS THERE A SALE, OR A VALID DEED OF SALE IN FAVOR OF THE
APPELLEES?”

Whether or not, as a matter of fact, there was a sale is a
question resolved in the
affirmative by the trial court.  While this finding is not now before
Us for review, the following may be stated to further show that the same is
fully justified.  The deed of absolute sale dated April 28, 1947 executed by Tomas Tagle and Agustin Ignacio,
Sr. in favor of Pastor Manalo was submitted
to the probate court in con­nection
with the vendor’s motion for authority to sell the property
subjectmatter thereof and, as stated heretofore, on November 12, 1956, Agustin
Ignacio, Sr. ratified it in an appropriate sworn statement.  The property covered by the questioned deed
of absolute sale was the very property bequeathed in the will of the deceased
testatrix to Agustin Ignacio, Sr., and adjudicated to him in the
project of par­tition submitted to the probate court on May 10, 1949 and duly approved by it on
the 18th of the same month and
year.

But appellant contends that the aforesaid deed of absolute sale
was declared null and void by the probate court in its order of November 11,
1955.  Such is not the case.  Said order, as reproduced at page 2 of
appellant’s brief, shows no more than that the probate court held “that
the registration of the deed of absolute sale is null and
void”.  Annulment of the registration is one
thing, and a declaration of nullity of the sale itself is another.  But assuming that the provision for the can­cellation of T.C.T. No. 1999 and the issuance of a new one in the name of the administrator of the estate of the deceased Maria Consuelo Ignacio and the further
require­ment that Manalo should return the property covered by said deed of sale to the administrator of said estate
amount to a declaration of nullity of the sale itself, it can not be denied that the sale was validly ratified by
Agustin Ignacio, Sr. on November 12, 1956 after he had become the owner of the
property sold, by virtue of the adjudication thereof to him in the
project of parti­tion dated April 12, 1949, approved by the probate court on May 18,
1949.  Moreover, the order in question
was set aside by this Court in G. R. No. L-12657 where
We held that “the declaration of nullity of the deed of sale and
the consequent cancellation of the certificate
of title issued in favor of the vendee can not be obtained through a
mere motion in the probate
court” but “in an appropriate
independent action in the proper court”.  This clearly im­plies that whatever
pronouncement had been theretofore made by the probate court regarding the nullity
of the aforesaid deed of sale and its registration was reversed and that,
therefore, the sale
in question and its registration must be deemed valid until annulled
in an appropriate independent
action in the proper
court.  Resort thereto, however, obviously became
foreclosed because, before any such appropriate independent action could be
filed, the property subject-matter of the sale had become the exclusive
property of Agustin Ignacio, Sr. (since May 18, 1949 when the probate
court approved the project of partition submitted to it in Special Proceedings
No. 1811) subject only to the usufructuary rights of Taos Tagle during his life
time, and said Agustin Ignacio, Sr. had ratified the questioned sale on
November 12, 1956 in a duly executed sworn statement.  It is
worth remembering in this con­nection that our decision just mentioned
did not hold that the sale in favor of Manalo was void, nor did it grant the
estate of the deceased testatrix the right to annul the sale.  It merely indicated the proper way of
question­ing the validity of the transaction, on the assumption that nothing,
in the meantime, had taken place sufficient to bar the independent action
suggested therein.

IN VIEW OF THE FOREGOING,
judgment is hereby rendered affirming the decision appealed from, with costs.

It is so ordered.

Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, Makalintal, Zaldivar, Fernando,
Teehankee, Barredo, and Villamor, JJ., concur.

Castro, J., on leave.