History of Paternity and Filiation Rules in the Philippines

Spanish Period: Acknowledgment is required to establish filiation or paternity

Under the Civil Code of Spain, which was in force in the Philippines from 08 December 1889 up until the
day prior to 30 August 1950 when the Civil Code of the Philippines took effect, acknowledgment was
required to establish filiation or paternity. Acknowledgment was either judicial (compulsory) or voluntary.
Judicial or compulsory acknowledgment was possible only if done during the lifetime of the putative
parent; voluntary acknowledgment could only be had in a record of birth, a will, or a public document.[32]
Complementary to the new code was Act No. 3753 or the Civil Registry Law expressing in Section 5
thereof, that -

"In case of an illegitimate child, the birth certificate shall be signed and sworn to jointly by the parents of
the infant or only by the mother if the father refuses. In the latter case, it shall not be permissible to state
or reveal in the document the name of the father who refuses to acknowledge the child, or to give therein
any information by which such father could be identified."

In order that the birth certificate could then be utilized to prove voluntary acknowledgment of filiation or
paternity, the certificate was required to be signed or sworn to by the father. The failure of such
requirement rendered the same useless as being an authoritative document of recognition [Dayrit vs.
Piccio, G.R. No. L-5627, February 27, 1953] In the 1966 case of Mendoza vs. Mella [G.R. No. L-18752,
July 30, 1966] the Court ruled -

"Since Rodolfo was born in 1935, after the registry law was enacted, the question here really is whether
or not his birth certificate (Exhibit 1), which is merely a certified copy of the registry record, may be relied
upon as sufficient proof of his having been voluntarily recognized. No such reliance, in our judgment,
may be placed upon it. While it contains the names of both parents, there is no showing that they signed
the original, let alone swore to its contents as required in Section 5 of Act No. 3753. For all that might
have happened, it was not even they or either of them who furnished the data to be entered in the civil
register. Petitioners say that in any event the birth certificate is in the nature of a public document
wherein voluntary recognition of a natural child may also be made, according to the same Article 131.
True enough, but in such a case, there must be a clear statement in the document that the parent
recognizes the child as his or her own."

In Pareja vs. Pareja, G.R. No. L-5824, May 31, 1954 the Supreme Court defined what could constitute
such a document as proof of voluntary acknowledgment:

"Under the Spanish Civil Code there are two classes of public documents, those executed by private
individuals which must be authenticated by notaries, and those issued by competent public officials by
reason of their office. The public document pointed out in Article 131 as one of the means by which
recognition may be made belongs to the first class."

Civil law provisions point to an obvious bias against illegitimacy. This discriminatory attitude may be
traced to the Spanish family and property laws, which, while defining proprietary and successional rights
of members of the family, provided distinctions in the rights of legitimate and illegitimate children. In the
monarchial set-up of old Spain, the distribution and inheritance of titles and wealth were strictly
according to bloodlines and the concern to keep these bloodlines uncontaminated by foreign blood was
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paramount. [see Tecson, et al. vs. COMELEC, et al. G.R. No. 161434, March 3, 2004]

1950 Civil Code

The 1950 Civil Code categorized the acknowledgment or recognition of illegitimate children into
voluntary, legal or compulsory:

1. Voluntary recognition was required to be expressedly made in a record of birth, a will, a statement
before a court of record or in any authentic writing;

2. Legal acknowledgment took place in favor of full blood brothers and sisters of an illegitimate child
who was recognized or judicially declared as natural; and

3. Compulsory acknowledgment could be demanded generally in cases when the child had in his
favor any evidence to prove filiation.

Unlike an action to claim legitimacy which would last during the lifetime of the child, and might pass
exceptionally to the heirs of the child, an action to claim acknowledgment, however, could only be
brought during the lifetime of the presumed parent. [see Tecson, et al. vs. COMELEC, et al. G.R. No.
161434, March 3, 2004]

Amicus Curiae Ruben F. Balane defined, during the oral argument in Tecson, "authentic writing," so as
to be an authentic writing for purposes of voluntary recognition, simply as being a genuine or
indubitable writing of the father. The term would include a public instrument (one duly acknowledged
before a notary public or other competent official) or a private writing admitted by the father to be his
(Tecson, id.).

Paternity and Filiation under the Family Code liberalized the rules

Art. 172. The filiation of legitimate children is established by any of the following:

(1) The record of birth appearing in the civil register or a final judgment; or

(2) An admission of legitimate filiation in a public document or a private handwritten instrument and
signed by the parent concerned.

In the absence of the foregoing evidence, the legitimate filiation shall be proved by:

(1) The open and continuous possession of the status of a legitimate child; or

(2) Any other means allowed by the Rules of Court and special laws.

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Art. 173. The action to claim legitimacy may be brought by the child during his or her lifetime and shall
be transmitted to the heirs should the child die during minority or in a state of insanity. In these cases,
the heirs shall have a period of five years within which to institute the action.

The action already commenced by the child shall survive notwithstanding the death of either or both of
the parties.

Art. 175. Illegitimate children may establish their illegitimate filiation in the same way and on the same,
evidence as legitimate children.

The action must be brought within the same period specified in Article 173, except when the action is
based on the second paragraph of Article 172, in which case the action may be brought during the
lifetime of the alleged parent.

The provisions of the Family Code are retroactively applied

Article 256 of the Code reads:

Art. 256. This Code shall have retroactive effect insofar as it does not prejudice or impair vested or
acquired rights in accordance with the Civil Code or other laws.

Thus, in Vda. de Sy-Quia vs. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. L-62283, November 25, 1983, the Court has
ruled:

"We hold that whether Jose was a voluntarily recognized natural child should be decided under Article
278 of the Civil Code of the Philippines. Article 2260 of that Code provides that 'the voluntary recognition
of a natural child shall take place according to this Code, even if the child was born before the effectivity
of this body of laws' or before August 30, 1950. Hence, Article 278 may be given retroactive effect."

The growing trend to liberalize the acknowledgment or recognition of illegitimate children is an attempt to
break away from the traditional idea of keeping well apart legitimate and non-legitimate relationships
within the family in favor of the greater interest and welfare of the child.

Paternity and Filiation rules apply only to family or personal affairs

The provisions are intended to merely govern the private and personal affairs of the family. There is little,
if any, to indicate that the legitimate or illegitimate civil status of the individual would also affect his
political rights or, in general, his relationship to the State. (Tecson, supra.)

In Yañez de Barnuevo vs. Fuster, G.R. No. 7487, December 29, 1913, the Court has held:

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"In accordance with Article 9 of the Civil Code of Spain, x x x the laws relating to family rights and duties,
or to the status, condition and legal capacity of persons, govern Spaniards although they reside in a
foreign country; that, in consequence, 'all questions of a civil nature, such as those dealing with the
validity or nullity of the matrimonial bond, the domicile of the husband and wife, their support, as between
them, the separation of their properties, the rules governing property, marital authority, division of
conjugal property, the classification of their property, legal causes for divorce, the extent of the latter, the
authority to decree it, and, in general, the civil effects of marriage and divorce upon the persons and
properties of the spouses, are questions that are governed exclusively by the national law of the
husband and wife."

The distinctions between legitimacy and illegitimacy were codified in the Spanish Civil Code, and the
discrimination survived when the Spanish Civil Code became the primary source of our own Civil Code.
Such distinction, however, remains and should remain only in the sphere of civil law and not
unduly impede or impinge on the domain of political law (see Tecson, supra).

Related Rules: Declaration about Pedigree

The Civil Code or Family Code provisions on proof of filiation or paternity do not have preclusive effects
on matters alien to personal and family relations. The matter about pedigree is not necessarily precluded
from being applicable by the Civil Code or Family Code provisions.

Section 39, Rule 130, of the Rules of Court provides -

"Act or Declaration about pedigree. The act or declaration of a person deceased, or unable to testify, in
respect to the pedigree of another person related to him by birth or marriage, may be received in
evidence where it occurred before the controversy, and the relationship between the two persons is
shown by evidence other than such act or declaration. The word `pedigree' includes relationship, family
genealogy, birth, marriage, death, the dates when and the places where these facts occurred, and the
names of the relatives. It embraces also facts of family history intimately connected with pedigree."

For the above rule to apply, it would be necessary that (a) the declarant is already dead or unable to
testify, (b) the pedigree of a person must be at issue, (c) the declarant must be a relative of the person
whose pedigree is in question, (d) declaration must be made before the controversy has occurred, and
(e) the relationship between the declarant and the person whose pedigree is in question must be shown
by evidence other than such act or declaration.

[Tecson, et al. vs. COMELEC, et al. G.R. No. 161434, March 3, 2004]

DNA Testing

In Tijing v. CA, G.R. No. 125901, March 8, 2001, the Court has acknowledged the strong weight of DNA
testing -

"Parentage will still be resolved using conventional methods unless we adopt the modern and scientific
ways available. Fortunately, we have now the facility and expertise in using DNA test for identification
and parentage testing. The University of the Philippines Natural Science Research Institute (UP-NSRI)
DNA Analysis Laboratory has now the capability to conduct DNA typing using short tandem repeat (STR)
analysis. The analysis is based on the fact that the DNA of a child/person has two (2) copies, one copy
from the mother and the other from the father. The DNA from the mother, the alleged father and the child
are analyzed to establish parentage. Of course, being a novel scientific technique, the use of DNA test
as evidence is still open to challenge. Eventually, as the appropriate case comes, courts should not
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hesitate to rule on the admissibility of DNA evidence. For it was said, that courts should apply the results
of science when competently obtained in aid of situations presented, since to reject said result is to deny
progress."

It is not enough though to state that the child’s DNA profile matches that of the putative father. A
complete match between the DNA profile of the child and the DNA profile of the putative father does not
necessarily establish paternity. For this reason, following the highest standard adopted in an American
jurisdiction. trial courts should require at least 99.9% as a minimum value of the Probability of Paternity
(“W”) prior to a paternity inclusion. W is a numerical estimate for the likelihood of paternity of a putative
father compared to the probability of a random match of two unrelated individuals. An appropriate
reference population database, such as the Philippine population database, is required to compute for W.
Due to the probabilistic nature of paternity inclusions, W will never equal to 100%. However, the
accuracy of W estimates is higher when the putative father, mother and child are subjected to DNA
analysis compared to those conducted between the putative father and child alone.

a. DNA analysis that excludes the putative father from paternity should be conclusive proof of
non-paternity. If the value of W is less than 99.9%, the results of the DNA analysis should be considered
as corroborative evidence. If the value of W is 99.9% or higher, then there is refutable presumption of
paternity. [Herrera vs Alba, G.R. No. 148220, June 15, 2005].

b. DNA is admissible in evidence to prove paternity or non-paternity. [Tijing v. CA, supra; Agustin vs.
Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 162571, June 15, 2005]

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