EVARISTO CORPUZ, PETITIONER, VS. SUSANA CORPUZ, ET AL., RESPONDENTS.

The property; involved in this appeal is a parcel of land of about 1,854
square meters covered by Original Certificate of Title No. 5980 of the land
records of Nueva Ecija. By a deed executed on November 12, 1934, some eleven
years after Bernarda Mantile’s death, Francisco Corpuz conveyed the land by way
of sale to the spouses Domingo Cruz and Eugenia Rigal for the sum of P80. The
dispute is between an heir of the wife of the vendor and the heirs of the
vendees.

It appears” that the vendees had an only son named Isabelo Corpuz, who
married Susana Santiago and had three children with her. In 1943, with Domingo
and his son Isabelo already deceased, their widows Eugenia Rigal and Susana
Santiago had a misunderstanding and, for that reason, the certificate of title
to the property in dispute was, together with other documents, entrusted by them
to the mayor of Rizal, Nueva Ecija; but upon the death of the latter during the
Japanese occupation the title was lost, and with a view to securing a duplicate
thereof, Susana Santiago enlisted the help of Evarsito Corpuz, one of the
children of the vendors. Pretending to help Susana, what Evaristo did was to
secure a duplicate certificate of title for himself and once it was obtained, he
refused to deliver it to Susana, telling her that they had better litigate the
matter in court. Hence the present action, which was filed by Susana in her
capacity as judicial guardian of her children, all minors, with the deceased
Isabelo Corpuz, as only heirs of the deceased Domingo Corpuz and Eugenia Rigal.
The complaint prays for judgment ordering the defendant Evaristo Corpuz to
deliver to plaintiff the second Owner’s Duplication Certificate of Title which
defendant obtained from the Register of Deeds; declaring defendant to be without
right to possess the said duplicate as the land covered by the same had already
been conveyed to Domingo Corpuz; and adjudging damages and costs to
plaintiff.

Answering the complaint, defendant alleged that the deed of sale supposed to
have been executed by Francisco Corpuz in favor of Domingo Corpuz and his wife
was fictitious and void and, in any event, the vendor had no authority to make
the sale because the land sold was conjugal property, it being alleged in this
connection that Bernarda Mantile died intestate in 1923, long before the sale,
and that the defendant and his brothers and sisters, Daniel, Inocencio, Narciso,
Escolastica, Canuta, and Felicidad, all surnamed Corpuz, had by operation of law
become the owners of one-half of the land in question through inheritance from
their deceased mother.

After trial, the court rendered judgment in favor of plaintiff, ordering
defendant to surrender the second Owner’s Duplicate Certificate of Title No.
5980 to plaintiff and declaring defendant to have no right to possess the same,
but denying the claim for damages. On appeal to the Court of Appeals, the
udgment of the inferior court was confirmed and the case is now before us on
appeal by certiorari.

We note at the outset that plaintiff’s title derives from the deed of sale
executed by Francisco Corpuz on November 12, 1934, which describes the land sold
as registered in the Office of the Register of Deeds of Nueva Ecija “bajo el
Certificado Original de Titulo No. 5980 a nombre de Francisco Corpuz y Bemarda
Mantile tya difunta.” Such being the case, it is to be presumed that the
land was the conjugal property of Francisco Corpuz and Bernarda Mantile, and the
presumption stands because there appears to be no proof to the contrary. It is
significant that in the deed Francisco Corpuz declares himself absolute owner of
the land merely on the basis of the fact that his wife was already dead.

The Court of Appeals, however, took the view that, even supposing the
property to be conjugal, still “in accordance with the law in force at the time
of the sale and decided cases, the surviving husband, as administrator of the
community property, had authority to sell conjugal property without the
concurrence of the children of the marriage.” The assertion is inaccurate
because, at the time of the sale, Act No. 3176, which took effect in 1924, had
already been approved. Said Act declared that when the marriage is dissolved by
the death of the husband or wife, the community property shall be administered
and liquidated in the testamentary or intestate proceedings of the deceased
spouse, or in an ordinary liquidation and partition proceeding. In the present
case, there has been no liquidation or partition of any kind and, under the Act,
the death of the wife did not make the husband the de facto
administrator of the conjugal estate or invest him with power to dispose of the
same. In fact, the Act declares that a sale, without the formalities established
for the sale of the property of deceased persons, “shall be null and void,
except as regards the portion that belongs to the vendor at the time the
liquidation and partition was made.” The cases cited as authority by the Court
of Appeals were either decided before the approval of the Act or referred to
sales antedating said approval and, are, therefore, not controlling in the
present case. Thus in the case of Ocampo et al. vs. Potenciano et al., (89
Phil., 159) where the authority of a surviving spouse to dispose of the conjugal
property was put in issue, this Court said:

“The Court of Appeals erred in supposing that the surviving spouse had such
authority as de facto administrator of the conjugal estate. As pointed
out by appellants, the decisions relied on by that court in support of its view
are now obsolete: Those decisions laid down the rule that, upon the dissolution
of the marriage by the death of the wife, the husband must liquidate the
partnership affairs. But the procedure has been changed by Act No, 3176
(approved on November 24, 1924), now section 2, Rule 75, of the Rules of Court,
which provides that when the marriage is dissolved by the death of either
husband or wife, the partnership affairs must be liquidated in the testate or
intestate proceedings of the deceased spouse.” Moran, Comments on the Rules of
Court, 3rd ed., Vol. II, p. 324.). Ocampo et al. vs. Potenciano et al.,
L-2263, promulgated May 30. 1951.)

Conformably to what has been said above, the sale made by Francisco Corpuz of
the land covered by Original Certificate of Title No. 5980 should be held to
have conveyed title only to the vendor’s share in said land, with the result
that the legal heirs of the deceased Bernarda Mantile cannot be deemed to have
been divested of their title to her share of the property.

With the property jointly owned by the heirs of the vendor’s deceased wife
and the heirs of the vendees, the latter set of heirs are not entitled to have
exclusive possession of the Torrens certificate of title now said to be in the
possession of the defendant, who is one of the other set of heirs. Perhaps
plaintiff’s remedy is to ask for another Owner’s Duplicate Certificate. But
before that is done, title to the property should first, through appropriate
procedure, be recorded in the joint names of both sets of heirs as
co-owners.

In view of the foregoing, the judgment below is revoked in so far as it
declares defendant without right to possess the Owner’s Duplicate Certificate of
Title herein involved and orders him to surrender it to plaintiff. Defendant’s
claim for damages, referring to the products of the land, may not be adequately
adjudicated in the present case because his co-heirs, who should have equal
interest in such damages, have not been made parties and cannot, therefore, be
bound by any adjudication that may be made on said claim.

The appellee shall pay the costs.

Bengzon, Acting C. J., Padilla, Montemayor, Jugo, Bautista Angela,
Labrador, and Reyes, J. B. L., JJ., concur.