IN RE WILL OF LUPO MERCADO, DECEASED. REMEDIOS JACINTO, WIDOW OF MERCADO, PETITIONER AND APPELLANT, VS. SANTIAGO MERCADO, OPPONENT AND APPELLEE.

This
is an appeal from an order of the Court of First Instance of Rizal
denying a petition for the probate of the last will and testament of
the deceased Lupo Mercado.

The will is executed in the
Spanish language and is typewritten on four sheets of ordinary legal
size typewriting paper. As is usual with typewritten documents, the
writing appears on only one page of each sheet and the pages used are
numbered consecutively “uno,” “dos,” “tres” and “cuatro.” The
attestation clause states, among other things, that the document
“consta de tres hojas enumeradas correlativamente ‘uno,’ ‘dos’ y ‘tres’
aparte de la presente hoja que constituye la hoja numero ‘cuatro,’ ”
(appears on three sheets consecutively numbered “one,” “two” and
“three” aside from the present sheet numbered “four”).

The
court below held that under section 618 of the Code of Civil Procedure,
as amended, the attestation clause should have stated that the pages used, not the sheets used, were numbered inasmuch as only one page or side of each sheet had been used.

This view is in our opinion erroneous. Section 618 reads as follows:

“Requisites of will.—No
will, except as provided in the preceding section, shall be valid to
pass any estate, real or personal, nor charge or affect the same,
unless it be written in the language or dialect known by the testator
and signed by him, or by the testator’s name written by some other
person in his presence, and by his express direction, and attested and
subscribed by three or more credible witnesses in the presence of the
testator and of each other. The testator or the person requested by him
to write his name and the instrumental witnesses of the will, shall
also sign, as aforesaid, each and every page thereof, on the left
margin, and said pages shall be numbered correlatively in letters
placed on the upper part of each sheet. The attestation shall state the
number of sheets or pages used, upon which the will is written, and the
fact that the testator signed the will and every page thereof, or
caused some other person to write his name, under his express
direction, in the presence of three witnesses, and the latter witnessed
and signed the will and all pages thereof in the presence of the
testator and of each other.”

It will be
observed that the section quoted provides that the attestation shall
state the number of sheets or pages used. In the will in question only
one page of each sheet was, in accordance with the usual practice in
typewriting, used. A page used was therefore in effect a sheet used and
the two might well be treated as identical. In such circumstances, it
seems immaterial whether the word “page” or the word “sheet” is used in
the attestation clause. The situation would be different if the writing
had appeared on both sides of the sheets.

The case of the
Estate of Saguinsin (41 Phil., 875), is not in point. There the alleged
will was written in longhand and, as then customary, on both sides of
the sheets, but only the first page of each sheet was numbered and
signed. That is not this case.

The order appealed from is
reversed and it is hereby ordered that the will here in question be
admitted to probate. No costs will be allowed in this instance. So
ordered.

Johnson, Malcolm, Villamor, Johns, and Romualdez, JJ., concur.