High court rethinks inheritance rule

Screenshot of the Supreme Court main building

Children, regardless of their parents’ marital status, can now inherit from their grandparents and other direct ascendants by right of representation, according to the Supreme Court.

In a decision recently penned by Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, the high tribunal en banc reinterpreted Article 992 of the Civil Code, which prohibited nonmarital children from inheriting from their siblings who were marital children, as well as “relatives of [their] father or mother[.]”

The case involved a woman who claimed to be the nonmarital child of a man who died before she was born. After her alleged paternal grandfather died, she asserted her right to represent her deceased father—a marital child—in inheriting from her grandfather’s estate.

‘Iron curtain rule’

The high tribunal’s decision used the terms “marital” and “nonmarital” to replace the terms “legitimate” and “illegitimate” when referring to the children, saying the latter terms were pejorative terms when used to describe kids based on their parents’ marital status.

In previous cases, the high court had interpreted Article 992 as barring nonmarital children from inheriting from their grandparents and other direct ascendants, as they were covered by the term “relatives.”It had called this prohibition the “iron curtain rule,” inferred from a perceived hostility between the marital and nonmarital sides of a family.

“Now, the court reexamined the iron curtain rule, finding that Article 992 should be construed to account for other circumstances of birth and family dynamics,” the high tribunal said.

Child’s best interest

“Departing from regressive conjectures about family life in favor of the best interests of the child, the court abandoned the presumption that ‘nonmarital children are products of illicit relationships or that they are automatically placed in a hostile environment perpetrated by the marital family,’” it added.

It ruled that grandparents and other direct ascendants were outside the scope of “relatives” under Article 992.

The Supreme Court stressed that both marital and nonmarital children, whether born from a marital or nonmarital child, were blood relatives of their parents and other ascendants. Thus, a nonmarital child’s right of representation should be governed by Article 982 of the Civil Code, which does not differentiate based on the birth status of grandchildren and other direct descendants.

Beyond their power

“Peace within families cannot be encouraged by callously depriving some of its members of their inheritance. Such deprivation may even be the cause of antagonism and alienation that could have been otherwise avoided,” it said.

The high tribunal also recognized that nonmarital children primarily suffer the consequences imposed by laws, despite the status being beyond their power to change.

It noted that some children may be nonmarital because their parents chose not to marry, while others may be nonmarital because one or both of their parents were not of marrying age. It could also be that their mother was a survivor of sexual assault who did not marry the perpetrator; or one parent might have died before they could have gotten married, it added.

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