IN RE WILL OF THE DECEASED LUCINA ANDRADA. LUCILA ARCE, PETITIONER AND APPELLANT.

Lucina Andrada died on June 5, 1919, in
the Municipality of Capiz, Province of Capiz; and soon thereafter a
petition was presented to the Court of First Instance of Capiz by
Lucila Arce to establish a document purporting to be the last will and
testament of the deceased. Upon hearing the petition, his Honor, Judge
Antonio Villareal, declared that the document in question had not been
executed in conformity with the requirements of section 618 of the Code
of Civil Procedure, as amended by Act No. 2645 of the Philippine
Legislature. He therefore refused to admit the purported will to
probate, and the petitioner appealed.

The attesting clause of the will in question is incorporated in
the will itself, constituting the last paragraph thereof; and its
defect consists in the fact that it does not state the number of sheets
or pages upon which the will is written, though it does state that the
testatrix and the instrumental witnesses signed on every page, as is in
fact obvious from an inspection of the instrument. Each of the pages
moreover bears successively the Visayan words, “isa,” “duha,” “tatlo,”
“apat,” “lima,” which mean respectively “one,” “two,” “three,” “four,”
“five,” Visayan being the dialect in which the instrument is written.

By section 618 of the Code of Civil Procedure, as amended by Act
No. 2645, it is required that each and every page of the will shall be
numbered correlatively in letters and that the attesting clause shall
state the number of sheets or pages used.

Without deciding in this case whether the will in question is
rendered invalid by reason of the manner in which the pages are
numbered, the court is unanimous upon the point that the defect pointed
out in the attesting clause is fatal. The law plainly says that the
attestation shall state the number of sheets or pages used, the evident
purpose being to safeguard the document from the possibility of the
interpolation of additional pages or the omission of some of the pages
actually used. It is true that this point is also safeguarded by the
other two requirements that the pages shall be consecutively lettered
and that each page shall be signed on the left margin by the testator
and the witnesses.

In the light of these requirements it is really difficult to see any
practical necessity for the additional requirement that the attesting
clause shall state the number of sheets or pages used. Nevertheless, it
cannot be denied that the last mentioned requirement affords additional
security against the danger that the will may be tampered with; and as
the Legislature has seen fit to prescribe this requirement, it must be
considered material.

In two cases we have held that the failure to comply with the
strict requirements of this law does not invalidate the instrument, but
the irregularities presented in those cases were entirely trivial, the
defect in one case being that a will in which the dispositive part
consisted of a single sheet was not signed in the margin in addition to
being signed at the bottom (In re will of Abangan, 40 Phil.,
476); in the other, that the pages comprising the body of the will were
signed by the testator and witnesses on the right margin instead of the
left (Avera vs. Garcia and Rodriguez, p. 145, ante).
In the case now before us the defect is, in our opinion, of more
significance; and the rule here applicable is that enunciated in Caraig
vs. Tatlonghari, R. G. No. 12558, decided March 23, 1918, not
reported, and In re estate of Saguinsin, 41 Phil., 875), in each of
which the will was held to be invalid.

It results that the trial judge did not err in refusing probate of
the will, and the judgment must be affirmed. It is so ordered, with
costs against the appellant.

Johnson, Araullo, Avancena, and Villamor, JJ., concur.