SECOND DIVISION

[G.R. No. 95386. May 29, 1997.]

MIGUELA CAMPOS ONG, Surviving Spouse of MANUEL ONG ,

petitioner, vs . COURT OF APPEALS, ALFREDO ONG and ROBERT ONG ,
respondents.

Garcia Garcia Ong Vano Law Offices for petitioner.

Eliseo A. Daniot for private respondents.

SYLLABUS

1. REMEDIAL LAW; EVIDENCE; CREDIBILITY OF WITNESSES; FACTUAL

FINDINGS OF THE TRIAL COURT; BINDING UPON THE SUPREME COURT; EXCEPTION;
NOT APPLICABLE IN CASE AT BAR — Factual questions as determined by the trial court,
especially rulings on the credibility of witnesses, when a rmed by the appellate court, are
binding on this Court and are accorded utmost respect. It is only when it is shown that the
trial court ignored or overlooked or did not appreciate correctly matters of substance
which affect the results of the controversy that this Court will depart from this rule. In the
case at bar, no sufficient reason has been shown for this Court not to adhere to the general
rule. aSHAIC

2. CIVIL LAW; PATERNITY; WHEN THE FATHER IS OBLIGED TO RECOGNIZE HIS

NATURAL CHILD; CASE AT BAR. — The evidence in this case su ciently makes this case
fall under the last paragraph of Art. 283, i.e., any other evidence showing that Manuel Ong
was the father of private respondents In Ilano v. Court of Appeals , 230 SCRA 242, 258
(1994), this Court held that the phrase "any evidence of proof" in the last paragraph of Art.
283 operates as a blanket provision covering all cases in the preceding ones, so that
evidence, even though insu cient to constitute proof under the other paragraphs, may
nonetheless be enough to qualify the case under par. 4. In this case, the testimony of
Saturnina Caballes that she had illicit sexual relations with Manuel Ong over a long period
(1954-1957) which, had it been openly done, would have constituted cohabitation under
par. 3 is proof that private respondents were conceived and born during such relationship
and constitutes evidence of Ong's paternity. This relationship was further established
through the testimony of Constancia Lim. The evidence for private respondents is not
negated by the admission of Saturnina Caballes that she had relations with another man
before, because the relationship terminated at least a year before the birth of Alredo Ong,
Jr. and two years before the birth of the second child Roben Caballes. DETACa

DECISION

MENDOZA , J : p

This is a petition for review of the decision of the Court of Appeals dated January
26, 1990, a rming the decision of the Regional Trial Court, Branch 19, Cebu City, which
declared Alfredo Ong, Jr. and Robert Ong the illegitimate children of Manuel Ong and thus,
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. 2018 cdasiaonline.com
 entitled to support. Also assailed herein is the resolution issued on August 16, 1990,
denying the motion for reconsideration filed by petitioner. cdtech

Petitioner Miguela Campos Ong is the surviving spouse of Manuel Ong. The latter
died on May 21, 1990, while the case was pending appeal in the Court of Appeals. On the
other hand, private respondents Alfredo Ong, Jr. and Robert Ong are children of Saturnina
Caballes allegedly by Manuel Ong. They brought this case to compel Manuel Ong to
recognize them as his illegitimate children and to give them support.
They presented evidence showing the following:
On December 20, 1953, Manuel Ong, representing himself as Alfredo Go, was
introduced to Saturnina Caballes at the Yarrow Beach Resort, a night club in Talisay, Cebu,
by Constancia Lim and Vicente Sy. In no time, the two had a relationship. Since October
1954, Manuel started spending the night with Saturnina. Saturnina testi ed that she and
Manuel Ong lived together for four months, rst on A. Lopez Street and later in Talamban.
In addition, Manuel Ong gave her money, a sack of rice each month, and other supplies. On
June 28, 1955, Alfredo Ong, Jr. was born in Talamban. He was registered in the Local Civil
Registry as Alfredo Go, Jr. On August 17, 1956, Robert Ong was born. Because the midwife
told Saturnina that the child should carry her surname as she was not married to Manuel
Ong, "alias" Alfredo Go, the child was therefore registered as Robert Caballes.
Thereafter, the nancial support from Manuel Ong started to dwindle, until seven
months later when Manuel Ong stopped seeing her. This prompted Saturnina to look for
him. She discovered his identity as Manuel Ong. Saturnina asked Manuel Ong for nancial
support of their children, but he refused her request.
In the latter part of 1961, Saturnina and private respondents again asked Manuel
Ong for monetary assistance because of nancial di culties. But Ong denied them
assistance. The records disclose that on December 25, 1976, Alfredo and Robert Ong
visited Manuel Ong in his house on M. J. Cuenco Avenue where they were entertained and
presented to Manuel Ong by Dolores Dy, Manuel's Chinese common-law wife. Alfredo Ong,
Jr. testi ed that on March 29, 1979, he was given a China Banking Corp. check for P100.00
by Manuel Ong as his gift on his graduation from high school. Later, when Alfredo Ong was
in his senior year in college, he saw Manuel in the latter's o ce and asked him for money
to defray his educational expenses. Manuel Ong gave him P100.00 cash and told him to
make a list of his school needs. After getting the list which Alfredo had prepared, Manuel
Ong told him to come back. Alfredo returned with some friends in September 1982, but
Manuel Ong turned down his request and ordered him to leave and threatened to call the
police if he did not leave.
On September 30, 1982, Alfredo led a complaint for recognition and support
against Manuel Ong. The complaint was amended on November 25, 1982 to include
Robert as co-plaintiff. After trial, private respondents were found to be the illegitimate
children of Manuel Ong in accordance with Art. 283, pars. 2 and 4 of the Civil Code.
Accordingly, the trial court ordered:
WHEREFORE, judgment is hereby rendered in favor of the plaintiffs:

1. declaring the plaintiffs as the illegitimate children of Manuel Ong,

begotten by him with Saturnina Caballes;
2. ordering Manuel Ong to pay the said plaintiffs the monthly support
of P600, effective from the date of this decision. 1
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. 2018 cdasiaonline.com
 On appeal, this decision was a rmed by the Court of Appeals. 2 Petitioner moved
for reconsideration, but his motion was denied on August 16, 1990 for lack of merit. The
appellate court cited Art. 283, par. 3 as an additional ground for ordering the recognition of
private respondents as illegitimate children of Manuel Ong. Hence, this petition.
The pertinent provisions of Art. 283 of the Civil Code state:
Article 283. In any of the following cases, the father is obliged to
recognize the child as his natural child:

xxx xxx xxx

2. When the child is in continuous possession of status of a child of
the alleged father by the direct acts of the latter or his family;

3. When the child was conceived during the time when the mother
cohabited with the supposed father;

4. When the child has in his favor any evidence or proof that the
defendant is his father.

Art. 289 allows the investigation of paternity of spurious children on the same
grounds specified in this article and in Art. 284.
The records of this case bear out the following findings of both the Court of Appeals
and the trial court: (1) that Manuel Ong introduced himself to Saturnina Caballes as Alfredo
Go; (2) that Saturnina Caballes and Manuel Ong had an illicit relationship from 1954 until
sometime in March of 1957, during which they had repeated sexual intercourse; (4) that
during this period, Manuel Ong gave support to Saturnina and private respondents; (5) that
Dolores Dy, Manuel's common-law wife, treated private respondents like close relatives of
Manuel Ong by giving them on November 2, 1979 and January 6, 1977 tokens of affection,
such as family pictures of Dolores Dy and Manuel Ong, 3 and by visiting them in their house
on A. Lopez Street in 1980; (6) that on two occasions Manuel Ong gave money to Alfredo,
rst, as the latter's high school graduation gift and second, for the latter's educational
support.
The trial court and the Court of Appeals dismissed Manuel Ong's claim that Alfredo
tried to extort money from him. They noted that Alfredo had written his name on the piece
of paper and that if this was a case of extortion, the amount demanded would have been in
round gures and not P4,974.28. On this basis they concluded that the amount written on
the list was the total of the itemized expenses which Alfredo Ong, Jr. was asking his father
to defray as his school expenses.
Petitioner questions the morality and credibility of Saturnina Caballes. She refers to
Saturnina's admission that before she had relation with Manuel she was cohabiting with a
paralytic from San Fernando, in order to distinguish this case from that of Navarro v.
Bacalla 4 in which the compulsory recognition of a natural child was ordered on the basis
of the testimony of the mother of the child that the putative father had impregnated her.
Petitioner points out that, in that case, there was also evidence presented that at no time
before and during the child's conception did the mother have any relation with any other
man. Thus:
Speci cally, as the records shows, the paternity of defendant herein was
proved by the testimony of plaintiff's mother that "he (defendant) impregnated
me" and that at the time, before, and during plaintiff's conception she had no
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. 2018 cdasiaonline.com
 affair with any other man aside from the defendant. . . .
We agree with appellant that the foregoing evidence is included in the
broad scope of paragraph 4, Article 283, New Civil Code. 5

To begin with, factual questions as determined by the trial court, especially rulings
on the credibility of witnesses, 6 when a rmed by the appellate court, are binding on this
Court and are accorded utmost respect. It is only when it is shown that the trial court
ignored or overlooked or did not appreciate correctly matters of substance which affect
the results of the controversy that this Court will depart from this rule. 7 In the case at bar,
no sufficient reason has been shown for this Court not to adhere to the general rule.
Inconsistencies there are in the testimony of Saturnina Caballes, but they are not of
such a nature as to put in doubt the testimony of Saturnina that Manuel Ong was the father
of private respondents Alfredo Ong, Jr. and Robert Caballes. The discrepancies concern
minor details and, if at all, only show that Saturnina Caballes was an uncoached witness. 8
Saturnina testi ed that shortly after getting acquainted with each other, she and Manuel
Ong had relation and in fact lived together at A. Lopez Street in Cebu City for four months,
and that Manuel Ong gave her support consisting of money and the necessities of life, like
rice.
Saturnina's testimony was corroborated by Constancia Lim Monteclaros.
Constancia was the person who introduced Saturnina to Manuel Ong. Constancia and
Vicente Sy, Manuel Ong's close friend, lived together in a room in the house of Ong. She
knew Manuel very well. No reason has been given why she should testify falsely against
Manuel Ong.
Two circumstances are mentioned which allegedly make it improbable that Manuel
Ong was the father of private respondents. The rst is that Saturnina Caballes admitted
having cohabited with another man before meeting Manuel Ong. The records show,
however, that the man, who was a paralytic, was taken by his mother in 1953, before
Saturnina started having an affair with Manuel Ong in 1954. Private respondent Alfredo
Ong, Jr. was born on June 28, 1955, more than a year after the paralytic had left Saturnina.
The other private respondent, Robert Caballes, was born on August 17, 1956. Hence,
private respondents could not have been conceived during the period of cohabitation of
their mother with the unidentified paralytic.
The other circumstance mentioned is that Manuel Ong was allegedly sterile. Ong
claimed that, in addition to petitioner Miguela Campos Ong, he lived with a common-law
wife, Dolores Dy, and with another woman named Anatolia Veloria but he had no child with
anyone of them. He said that during World war II he got sick and was treated by a certain
Dr. Deiparine who allegedly told him that as a result of his illness he would not be able to
beget any child. Ong further claimed that he cohabited with Dolores Dy before and during
his marriage with petitioner Miguela Campos Ong. His inability to procreate is said to be
the reason why petitioner and Manuel Ong raised six children not related to them by blood.
cdta

We think both the trial court and the Court of Appeals correctly dismissed claims
that Manuel Ong was sterile and therefore could not have been the father of private
respondents. No competent medical testimony was presented to prove this claim. His
testimony that he had been told by a certain Dr. Deiparine that because of an illness he
contracted during the war he would no longer be able to procreate is plain hearsay.
On the other hand, the claim that although he lived with three women (including
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. 2018 cdasiaonline.com
 petitioner) no one bore him a child is belied by the fact that he acknowledged a certain
Lourdes Balili as his natural child. The record shows that on May 24, 1948, the Court of
Instance of Cebu rendered a decision which in part stated: 9
This is a case of acknowledgment of a natural child and support. When
this case was called for trial today, the parties entered into the following
agreement:
That the defendant is agreeable to acknowledge Lourdes Ong as his
natural child and the mother, Victoria Balili, acknowledges the right of the
said defendant to the custody of the child.

Plaintiff Lourdes Ong, therefore, is hereby declared acknowledged natural

child of Manuel Ong, with the right to bear the name of natural father, who shall
have the custody upon her, without prejudice for the mother to see and visit her
from time to time.

In the complaint for support filed in that case, it was alleged:

4. That in the month of January, 1938, to the day when the last war
broke out, the guardian-ad-litem, Victoria Balili, and the herein defendant Manuel
Ong with repeated promises by the latter to marry the former, they lived together
as husband and wife;

5. That while they lived as such, the plaintiff Lourdes Ong was
begotten or born on March 31, 1939, at the City of Cebu; 1 0

These allegations contradict the claim of Manuel Ong 1 1 that during the war he lived
with Victoria Balili (not Victoria Veloria, which is apparently a typographical error) but
because of his sterility they did not beget any child.
Petitioner contends that the decision in that case cannot be presented as evidence
of his virility because it was based on a compromise agreement relating to the civil status
of persons, which is prohibited under Art. 2035, par. 1 of the Civil Code. This contention is
untenable. The evidence was not presented to establish in chief a fact but to impeach the
credibility of Manuel Ong as a witness. Moreover, as is clear from the quoted portion of the
judgment, the parties did not really enter into a compromise in the sense in which the term
is used in Art. 2028 as "a contract whereby the parties, by making reciprocal concessions,
avoid a litigation or put an end to one already commenced." Rather what Manuel Ong did
was actually to make a voluntary recognition of the child pursuant to Art. 278, which
provides that recognition shall be made in the record of birth, a will, a statement before the
court of record, or in any authentic writing. What he agreed to do was to acknowledge the
child as his, rather than to agree to consider the child to be his natural child.
Indeed, the evidence for petitioner does not show that Manuel Ong was sterile and
could not have begotten private respondents or that even if he was so during the war that
he could not have been cured ten years later of that condition when Alfredo Ong, Jr. was
conceived. On the other hand, as this Court has ruled 1 2 an adult male is presumed to have
normal powers of virility and the burden of evidence to prove the contrary rests upon him
who claims otherwise. Petitioner has not overcome this presumption.
The Court of Appeals declared private respondents the illegitimate children of
Manuel Ong pursuant to Art. 283, pars. 2, 3 and 4. In regard to the nding that private
respondents had been in the continuous possession of status as children of Manuel Ong,
petitioner cites the ruling in De Jesus v. Syquia, 1 3 wherein it was stated:
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. 2018 cdasiaonline.com
 The word "continuous" in subsection 2 of article 135 of the Civil Code does
not mean that the concession of status shall continue forever, but only that it
shall not be of an intermittent character while it continues.

Petitioner contends that Manuel Ong's acts of recognition were intermittent and
isolated and not continuous, as Alfredo Ong, Jr. claims to have encountered his putative
father only four times, in 1961, on December 25, 1976, March 29, 1979 and sometime in
September 1982, whereas Robert had only two such encounters, which were in 1961 and
on December 25, 1976.
Petitioner also contends that the refusal of Manuel Ong to recognize and give
support to private respondents is proof that he never recognized them as his children
because, as held in Mendoza v. Ibañez: 14
. . . the enjoyment of the status of a natural child referred to in the said
article must necessarily be proven by acts showing an express desire on the part
of the father, or of his family, as the case may be, to recognize the claimant as his
natural child, such as the keeping of the child, or by other analogous acts, of
equal weight and e cacy, showing that such relationship exists between the
child and the alleged father or his family.

With regard to the Court of Appeals' nding that there was cohabitation between
Manuel Ong and Saturnina, thus justifying the application of par. 3 of Art. 283, petitioner
points out that the Court of Appeals simply referred to its main decision and that of the
trial court in holding that there was cohabitation when the fact is that neither in the
appellate court's decision nor in that of the trial court was it found that there was
cohabitation. On the contrary, the trial court held that there was no cohabitation because
Manuel Ong and Saturnina Caballes did not openly live together as husband and wife, for a
period of time, under the same roof, but did so clandestinely. 1 5
We agree that this case does not fall under pars. 2 and 3 of Art. 283 of the Civil
Code. As petitioner well states, the four times during which Manuel Ong met Alfredo and
gave the latter money cannot be considered proof of continuous possession of the status
of a child. The father's conduct toward his son must be spontaneous and uninterrupted for
this ground to exist. Here there are no acts shown of Manuel Ong treating Alfredo Ong, Jr.
as his son except on the four occasions during which they met. In the case of Robert
Caballes, there is no proof at all that Manuel Ong treated him as his son.
Nor can it be said that there was proof of cohabitation in this case. While Saturnina
Caballes testi ed that she and Manuel Ong lived together for four months as husband and
wife in order to justify a nding of cohabitation, the relationship was not open and public
so as to constitute cohabitation. 16 While the parties are not required to hold themselves
out as husband and wife, neither must they act clandestinely or secretly, otherwise they will
be considered to have merely engaged in illicit sexual intercourse. 17
Nonetheless, we hold that the evidence in this case su ciently makes this case fall
under the last paragraph of Art. 283, i.e., any other evidence showing that Manuel Ong was
the father of private respondents. In Ilano v. Court of Appeals, 1 8 this Court held that the
phrase "any evidence or proof" in the last paragraph of Art. 283 operates as a blanket
provision covering all cases in the preceding ones, so that evidence, even though
insu cient to constitute proof under the other paragraphs, may nonetheless be enough to
qualify the case under par. 4. In this case, the testimony of Saturnina Caballes that she had
illicit sexual relation with Manuel Ong over a long period (1954-1957) which, had it been
openly done, would have constituted cohabitation under par. 3 is proof that private
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. 2018 cdasiaonline.com
 respondents were conceived and born during such relationship and constitutes evidence
of Ong's paternity. This relationship was further established through the testimony of
Constancia Lim. The evidence for private respondents is not negated by the admission of
Saturnina Caballes that she had relation with another man before, because the relationship
terminated at least a year before the birth of Alfredo Ong, Jr. and two years before the
birth of the second child Robert Caballes.
WHEREFORE, the decision of the Court of Appeals, dated January 26, 1990, and its
resolution, dated August 16, 1990, are AFFIRMED. cdti

SO ORDERED.
Regalado, Romero, Puno and Torres, Jr., JJ., concur.

Footnotes
1. Rollo, p. 43.
2. Per Justice Jose C. Campos, Jr. and concurred in by Justices Oscar M. Herrera and
Fernando A. Santiago.
3. Exhibits L and M.

4. 15 SCRA 114 (1965).

5. Id. at 116.
6. People v. Valencia, 214 SCRA 88, 96-97 (1992).
7. Ayco v. Fernandez, 195 SCRA 328, 333 (1991).
8. People v. Puloc, 202 SCRA 179, 190 (1991).
9. Exhibits B and B-1, Pre-trial records.
10. Exhs. A-1 and A-2.
11. TSN, pp. 197-199, September 26, 1985.
12. People v. Fontanilla, 23 SCRA 1227, 1245 (1968); Menciano v. Neri San Jose, 89 Phil.
63 (1951).
13. 58 Phil. 866, 870 (1933).
14. 4 Phil. 666, 668-669 (1905).

15. Citing People v. Pitoc, 43 Phil. 758 (1922).

16. See People v. Pitoc, 43 Phil. 758 (1922); Ocampo v. People, 72 Phil. 268 (1941).
17. Cf . Montenegro v. Montenegro, L-8343, June 29, 1957 (unreported).
18. 230 SCRA 242, 258 (1994).

CD Technologies Asia, Inc. 2018 cdasiaonline.com