Can I add my father's years of possession to mine to complete the period for acquiring the land?

Tacking needs a relationship, not merely a sequence

The article allows the present possessor to complete the period by tacking his possession to that of his grantor or predecessor in interest, and the phrase to notice is the last one. You are not adding up whoever happened to be on the land before you. There has to be a relation of succession between you: an heir taking from the estate, a buyer from his seller, a donee from the donor. A stranger who moved in after another stranger left cannot borrow those earlier years, because he has no predecessor in interest to borrow them from.

What you tack, you take as it was

If your father's occupation was by the owner's tolerance, Article 1119 makes those acts unavailable for the purposes of possession, and adding them to your own contributes nothing however many years they ran. The same is true if his possession was interrupted, or if he acknowledged somebody else's ownership along the way. So the inquiry into a predecessor's years is never merely arithmetical. His possession has to satisfy Article 1118 — in the concept of an owner, public, peaceful and uninterrupted — before it is worth anything to you.

Two aids the article supplies

It presumes that a present possessor who was also the possessor at a previous time has continued to be in possession during the intervening time, unless there is proof to the contrary, which spares you proving every year separately where the beginning and the end are established. And it settles the counting: the first day shall be excluded and the last day included. Small as that sounds, it decides cases that finish within a day of a deadline, and it is worth applying rather than assuming.

Prove the link first

Without it the rest is wasted work. Death certificates, the extrajudicial settlement or the estate proceedings, the deed of sale or donation, and whatever shows how possession passed from him to you and when. Then his possession: tax declarations in his name and the years they cover, improvements he made, and people who can speak to how he held the land and in what character he held it. A chronology with dates set against documents is the form a lawyer can actually work from.

Cases citing this provision

These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.

• Roi Guzman David vs. Caridad D. Butay, G.R. No. 220996, April 26, 2022 — read the decision on LawPhil →
• Nenita Quality Foods Corporation vs. Crisostomo Galabo, et al, G.R. No. 174191, January 30, 2013 — read the decision on LawPhil →
• Limcoma Multi-Purpose Corp. vs. Republic of the Philippines, G.R. No. 167652, July 10, 2007 — read the decision on LawPhil →
• Servando Mangahas vs. the Hon. Court of Appeals, et al, G.R. No. 95815, March 10, 1999 — read the decision on LawPhil →

Related provisions

• Civil Code, Article 1118 — Possession That Ripens Into Ownership
• Civil Code, Article 1119 — Possession by Mere Tolerance Does Not Count