What is the right of illegitimate children to inherit from their legitimate relatives? Which rules apply between grandparents and grandchilden? Is there something grandparents do to protect them?
Stories of illegitimate children have become familiar in our society.
Jean and Jose Maria were college sweethearts. Right after their graduation in college, they had a child named Jaime. This child grew up and lived in the household of Jean.
Jaime was nurtured by her maternal grandparents who both love her as their first grandchild. Unfortunately, Jean and Jose Maria did not end up marrying each other. Jose Maria died in a car accident when Jaime was still a few months old.
Jose Maria was one of the two children of a rich businessman named Ben, who was also close to Jaime whom he would visit monthly until his untimely death in 2018.
Dante, the surviving child of Ben, now seeks to exclude Jaime from inheriting in Ben’s estate.
The question now is whether Jaime can inherit from her grandfather Ben.
What about the grandchild?
This story of Jaime looks ordinary. Grandparents love their grandchildren, perhaps more than they love their children. So it is natural for grandparents to look after their welfare. But this kind of story is further complicated by the fact the Jaime is an illegitimate child of Jose Maria.
This article deals with another complex legal problem many illegitimate children face today. These children suffer from seemingly unfair treatment because of old but still applicable legal principles in our civil laws.
We turn our attention to a topic that happens but is not always discussed: the right of illegitimate children to inherit from their legitimate relatives.
Who are Illegitimate Children?
In street language, an illegitimate child is one who is often called “anak sa labas” or “bastard.” These harsh terms are so old in their origin and so narrow in their conception of what is an illegitimate child. Our present laws, however, have broader concept of an illegitimate child.
Yet the stigma that an illegitimate child is a fruit of a forbidden love still pervades in ordinary conversations. Ask the nearest hippie on the sidewalk. You’ll learn that, more likely, he will identify an illegitimate child as the product of an adulterous wife who conceived a child with another man not her husband. Or perhaps of an unfaithful husband who impregnated a woman not his wife.
Whoever may be the culprit is, the victim of scorn will always be the child.
The example of Jaime above shows how this social stigma can be so limiting in its reach. In her case, her parents Jean and Jose Maria were both legally capacitated to marry each other. Both of them were not previously married. They could have married each other had Jose Maria not died in a tragic car accident. Yet Jaime is an illegitimate child under Philippine law.
The Family Code defines illegitimate children as “children conceived and born outside a valid marriage.” This is in contrast to those characterized as “legitimate” children.
Legitimate children are those “children conceived or born during the marriage of the parents.”
Under these definitions, an illegitimate status of a child depends on the existence of the parents’ marriage from the child’s conception until he is born. Contrary to the common notion, an illegitimate status does not depend on whether a parent or both parents are married to other persons.
What are they entitled to from their parents’ estates?
An illegitimate child in considered as a compulsory heir of his parents. He shares this status with other compulsory heirs such as the legitimate children and the spouse, among other persons.
As a compulsory heir, an illegitimate child is entitled to his legitime.
The legitime is that part of the deceased’s estate which he cannot dispose of because the law has reserved it for certain heirs. To put it simply, an illegitimate child has every right to receive an inheritance from the estate of his deceased parent.
Before the effectivity of the Family Code, illegitimate children are classified into two classes. He can either be classified as a “natural child,” or an “illegitimate child other than natural.” In the latter classification were those commonly called “spurious children.”
These previous classifications will in turn determine the fraction of a child’s legitime in the estate of his deceased parent.
The Family Code has since deleted these previous classifications of illegitimate children. The confusing fractions of legitime attached with them were likewise simplified. A child’s natural filiation today may only be legitimate or illegitimate.
The Family Code now adopts a uniform and simple fraction of legitime for illegitimate children.
“Article 176. Illegitimate children shall use the surname and shall be under the parental authority of their mother, and shall be entitled to support in conformity with this Code. The legitime of each illegitimate child shall consist of one-half of the legitime of a legitimate child.”
Rights in the inheritance of their legitimate relatives
The situation with respect to the inheritance of an illegitimate child from his legitimate relatives is different. This is because the Civil Code’s strict rule called the “Iron Curtain Rule” still applies. This rule tells us that:
“Article 992. An illegitimate child has no right to inherit ab intestato from the legitimate children and relatives of his father or mother; nor shall such children or relatives inherit in the same manner from the illegitimate child.”
This rule expressly prohibits an illegitimate child from claiming an inheritance from the legitimate children and relatives of his father or mother. In the case of Jaime, applying the Iron Curtain Rule means she cannot inherit from Ben’s estate despite being close to and being loved by Ben. Sad but true.
But why is that so?
It is true that there is a blood relationship between an illegitimate child and the legitimate children and relatives of his mother or father. Here, Jaime has a blood relationship to Ben. Yet the law does not recognize this relationship for purposes of succession or her right to inherit from Ben.
The Supreme Court tells us the basis for this Iron Curtain Rule:
“Between the legitimate family and the illegitimate family there is presumed to be an intervening antagonism and incompatibility. The legitimate family disgracefully looks down on the illegitimate child. The illegitimate child in turn, hates the legitimate family. The latter considers the privileged condition of the former, and the resources of which it is thereby deprived. The former, in turn, sees in the illegitimate child nothing but the product of sin, palpable evidence of a blemish broken in life.” (Diaz v. Intermediate Appellate Court, G.R. No. 66574)
What is the possible remedy to this?
All is not lost for illegitimate children. The legitimate relatives can use a legal device in order for the illegitimate child to inherit from them.
The legitimate relative can execute a will which names the illegitimate child as his heir or one of his heirs.
“Article 783. A will is an act whereby a personis permitted, with the formalities prescribed by law to control to a certain degree the disposition of his estate, to take effect after his death.”
This mechanism is allowed since the Iron Curtain Rule only prohibits the illegitimate child from inherting “ab intestato” or through intestacy.
Intestacy occurs when a decedent did not execute a valid will during his lifetime. It also occurs when a court declares a will executed by a person as invalid.
A relative who wishes to execute a will must ensure that he will comply with the requirements of law for his will to be valid. He can check these requirements in the New Civil Code of the Philippines.
Through a valid will, the grandparent can still bequeath or give a portion of his estate to his grandchild despite the status of the child as illegitimate under Philippine law.
If you have more questions about Estate Settlement, here’s an additional resource
I hope the article was able to help you out, but chances are you may have more questions about Estate Settlement. Please check out this additional resource and see if it can help you. Go to info.legalguide.ph/estate to learn more.
