FIRST
DIVISION
G.R. No.
L-56504 May 7, 1987
POMPILLO
VALERA and EUMELIA VALERA CABADO, petitioners,
vs.
HON. JUDGE
SANCHO Y. INSERTO, in his capacity as Presiding Judge, Court of First Instance
of Iloilo, Branch 1, and MANUEL R. FABIANA, respondents.
Nos.
L-59867-68 May 7, 1987
EUMELIA V.
CABADO, POMPILLO VALERA and HON. MIDPANTAO L. ADIL, petitioners-appellants,
vs.
MANUEL FABIANA, JOSE GARIN and HON.
COURT OF APPEALS (Tenth Division)
FACTS
: the fishpond originally belonged to the
Government, and had been given in lease to Rafael Valera in his lifetime. Rafael
Valera ostensibly sold all his leasehold rights in the fishpond to his
daughter, Teresa Garin; but the sale was fictitious, having been resorted to
merely so that she might use the property to provide for her children's support
and education, and was subject to the resolutory term that the fishpond should
revert to Rafael Valera upon completion of the schooling of Teresa Garin's
Children; and with the income generated by the fishpond, the property was
eventually purchased from the Government by the Heirs of Teresa Garin,
collectively named as such in the Original Certificate of Title issued in their
favor.
In
the proceedings for the settlement of the intestate estate of the decedent
spouses, Rafael Valera and Consolacion Sarrosa 1 — in which Eumelia Cabado and
Pompiro Valera had been appointed administrators 2 — the heirs of a deceased
daughter of the spouses, Teresa Garin, filed a motion asking that the
Administratrix, Cabado, be declared in contempt for her failure to render an
accounting of her administration. Cabado replied that no accounting could be
submitted unless Jose Garin, Teresa's husband and the movant heirs' father,
delivered to the administrator an 18-hectare fishpond in Baras, Barotoc Nuevo,
Iloilo, belonging to the estate and she in turn moved for the return thereof to
the estate, 4 so that it might be partitioned among the decedents' heirs. Jose
Garin opposed the plea for the fishpond's return to the estate, asserting that
the property was owned by his children and this was why it had never been
included in any inventory of the estate
The
Court, presided over by Hon. Judge Midpantao Adil, viewed the Garin Heirs'
motion for contempt, as well as Cabado's prayer for the fishpond's return to
the estate, as having given rise to a claim for the recovery of an asset of the
estate within the purview of Section 6, Rule 87 of the Rules of Court. Thereafter,
the Court issued an Order dated September 17, 1980 commanding the Heirs of
Teresa Garin "to reconvey immediately the fishpond in question * * to the
intestate Estate of the Spouses.
Thereafter,
the Court issued an Order dated September 17, 1980 commanding the Heirs of
Teresa Garin "to reconvey immediately the fishpond in question * * to the
intestate Estate of the Spouses. Judge Adil afterwards granted the
administrators' motion for execution of the order pending appeal, and directed
the sheriff to enforce the direction for the Garin Heirs to reconvey the
fishpond to the estate.
Later
however, Fabiana filed a complaint-in-intervention with the Probate Court
seeking vindication of his right to the possession of the fishpond, based on a
contract of lease between himself, as lessee, and Jose Garin, as lessor
G.R.
No. 56504
Fabiana
thereupon instituted a separate action for injunction and damages, with
application for a preliminary injunction. This was docketed as Civil Case No.
13742 and assigned to Branch I of the Iloilo CFI, Hon. Sancho Y. Inserto,
presiding. The estate administrators
filed a motion to dismiss the complaint and to dissolve the temporary
restraining order, averring that the action was barred by the Probate Court's
prior judgment which had exclusive jurisdiction over the issue of the lease,
and that the act sought to be restrained had already been accomplished, Fabiana
having voluntarily surrendered possession of the fishpond to the sheriff
G.R.
Nos. 59867-68
In
the meantime, Jose Garin — having filed a motion for reconsideration of the
above mentioned order of Judge Adil (declaring the estate to be the owner of
the fishpond), in which he asserted that the Probate Court, being of limited
jurisdiction, had no competence to decide the ownership of the fishpond,
These
two special civil actions were jointly decided by the Court of Appeals. The
Court granted the petitions
ISSUE:
WON Probate Court
had authority to
order reconveyance of the fishpond?
HELD
: As regards the first issue, settled is the rule that a Court of First
Instance (now Regional Trial Court), acting as a Probate Court, exercises but
limited jurisdiction, 28 and thus has no power to take cognizance of and
determine the issue of title to property claimed by a third person adversely to
the decedent, unless the claimant and all the Other parties having legal
interest in the property consent, expressly or impliedly, to the submission of
the question to the Probate Court for adjudgment, or the interests of third
persons are not thereby prejudiced
The
facts obtaining in this case, however, do not call for the application of the
exception to the rule. As already earlier stressed, it was at all times clear
to the Court as well as to the parties that if cognizance was being taken of
the question of title over the fishpond, it was not for the purpose of settling
the issue definitely and permanently, and writing "finis" thereto,
the question being explicitly left for determination "in an ordinary civil
action," but merely to determine whether it should or should not be
included in the inventory. Parenthetically,
in the light of the foregoing principles, the Probate Court could have admitted
and taken cognizance of Fabiana's complaint in intervention after obtaining the
consent of all interested parties to its assumption of jurisdiction over the
question of title to the fishpond, or ascertaining the absence of objection
thereto. But it did not. It dismissed the complaint in intervention instead.
And all this is now water under the bridge.
Since
the determination by the Probate Court of the question of title to the fishpond
was merely provisional, not binding on the property with any character of
authority, definiteness or permanence, having been made only for purposes of in.
conclusion in the inventory and upon evidence adduced at the hearing of a
motion, it cannot and should not be subject of execution, as against its
possessor who has set up title in himself (or in another) adversely to the
decedent, and whose right to possess has not been ventilated and adjudicated in
an appropriate action. These considerations assume greater cogency where, as
here, the Torrens title to the property is not in the decedents' names but in
others, a situation on which this Court has already had occasion to rule
Since, too, both the Probate Court and the
estate administrators are one in the recognition of the proposition that title
to the fishpond could in the premises only be appropriately determined in a
separate action, 36 the actual firing of such a separate action should have
been anticipated, and should not therefore have come as a surprise, to the
latter. And since moreover, implicit in that recognition is also the
acknowledge judgment of the superiority of the authority of the court in which
the separate action is filed over the issue of title, the estate administrators
may not now be heard to complain that in such a separate action, the court
should have issued orders necessarily involved in or flowing from the
assumption of that jurisdiction.
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