Short answer. Under the law as it now stands, the adopting parents — not the biological relatives — are her legal heirs. Article 984 of the Civil Code says the opposite, but adoption is no longer governed by that Code. Republic Act No. 8552 and Republic Act No. 11642 control today.
What the law says
In case of the death of an adopted child, leaving no children or descendants, his parents and relatives by consanguinity and not by adoption, shall be his legal heirs.
Civil Code, Article 984 — Death of an Adopted Child. Read the full provision →
What Article 984 says — and why it no longer governs
The article is still printed in the Civil Code: In case of the death of an adopted child, leaving no children or descendants, his parents and relatives by consanguinity and not by adoption, shall be his legal heirs. Read literally, that sends the whole estate back to the blood family and leaves the adopting parents with nothing. That is not the position today. Adoption has been taken out of the Civil Code altogether. Republic Act No. 8552, the Domestic Adoption Act of 1998, rewrote the successional consequences of adoption, and since 2022 Republic Act No. 11642 has governed domestic adoption through an administrative process. Article 984 has to be read subject to both statutes.
The rule that applies now: succession runs both ways
Under the Domestic Adoption Act, the adopter and the adoptee inherit from each other, without the distinction the old article drew. A decree of adoption severs the legal tie to the biological parents and puts a full parent-and-child relationship in its place. So where an adopted person dies leaving no children and no descendants, the adopting parents stand as her parents for succession purposes, and the blood relatives do not displace them merely because the relationship was created by decree rather than by birth. If she left a valid will, testamentary succession governs instead and the will is read first, subject to the shares the law reserves.
Why the surviving parents may exclude you anyway
If you are asking as her brother or sister, a second rule may matter more than the adoption question. In intestate succession, surviving parents and other ascendants come ahead of brothers and sisters. Siblings inherit only when no parent or ascendant survives. So if either adopting parent is alive, that parent takes the estate whether or not the biological family also comes forward, and the sibling line is never reached. A surviving spouse, if there is one, shares alongside the parents. The order of heirs decides this, not how close the family felt anyone was.
What to check before anyone claims anything
Three documents settle most of these disputes. First, the decree or order of adoption, together with the amended birth certificate issued after it — an informal arrangement where a child was simply raised by relatives, with no case ever filed, creates no successional rights at all, and that is far commoner than families expect. Second, any will she left. Third, the death certificate and a full list of who survived her, because the order of heirs turns entirely on that list. Do not sign a deed of extrajudicial settlement drawn up by one side of the family before those are verified. Where the biological and adoptive families both press claims, the estate is better settled with a lawyer than around a table.
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.
- Bernardina P. Bartolome vs. Social Security System and Scanmar Maritime Services, Inc, G.R. No. 192531, November 12, 2014 — read the decision on LawPhil →