Are retirement benefits and pensions considered conjugal property?

The article answers by pointing elsewhere

Article 115 is a referral rule: retirement benefits, pensions, annuities, gratuities, usufructs and similar benefits shall be governed by the rules on gratuitous or onerous acquisitions as may be proper in each case. It refuses to give one answer for all of them, and the phrase as may be proper in each case is the instruction. So the question is never whether pensions are conjugal in general; it is what this particular benefit was given for, and whether it came as a return for something the recipient did or as a pure liberality.

Onerous or gratuitous, and why most pensions are onerous

An onerous acquisition is one obtained for a price — service rendered, contributions paid, a burden accepted. A gratuitous one is a gift or an inheritance, given for nothing. Ordinary retirement pay and pensions sit on the onerous side: they are the deferred return for years of work and for premiums deducted along the way. Under the conjugal partnership, what is obtained from the labor, industry, work or profession of either or both of the spouses is partnership property, while what a spouse acquires by gratuitous title stays exclusively that spouse's. Which side a benefit falls on is a question of fact about that benefit, not a label attached to the word pension.

The timing question that actually decides it

Splitting a pension is rarely all-or-nothing, because the service that earned it usually straddles the marriage. Benefits attributable to work done and contributions made during the marriage answer to the partnership; the portion earned before it, or after dissolution, belongs to the spouse alone. That is why the useful figure is not the monthly pension but the period it was accrued over. Terminal leave pay, separation pay and gratuities are read the same way — by asking what was given in exchange, and when it was earned. A lawyer will ask when you married and when the employment began before anything else.

Get the plan documents, not the payslip

What settles this is the instrument creating the benefit: the retirement plan or collective agreement, the terms of the annuity, the statement of contributions and the dates of service. Those show whether the benefit was bought with work and money or simply given, and over what period. Check also whose funds paid the premiums, since a policy funded out of the common fund is a different case from one a parent bought for a spouse. And remember the regime matters: under absolute community, most property is community property regardless, so the gratuitous-or-onerous question does less work there.

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.

• Government Service Insurance System vs. Milagros O. Montesclaros, G.R. No. 146494, July 14, 2004 — read the decision on LawPhil →

Related provisions

• Family Code, Article 115 — Retirement Benefits, Pensions and Similar Benefits
• Family Code, Article 117 — What Are Conjugal Partnership Properties