Short answer. No. The right to wind up a dissolved partnership's affairs belongs to the partners who did not wrongfully cause the dissolution, or to the legal representative of the last surviving partner if not insolvent. A partner who wrongfully dissolved the firm is excluded from that role unless the partners agreed otherwise.
What the law says
the partners who have not wrongfully dissolved the partnership or the legal representative of the last surviving partner, not insolvent, has the right to wind up the partnership affairs
Civil Code, Article 1836 — Who Winds Up. Read the full provision →
Who has the right to wind up
Unless the partners have agreed otherwise, the right to wind up a dissolved partnership's affairs belongs to the partners who have not wrongfully dissolved the partnership, or, once only one partner survives, to the legal representative of that last surviving partner, provided the representative is not insolvent. A partner whose own wrongful act caused the dissolution is left out of this default arrangement — the law hands the winding-up role to the partners who did not cause the break, not to the one responsible for it.
Why the wrongdoer is excluded
Winding up involves collecting the partnership's assets, paying its debts, and settling accounts among the partners — work that requires the trust of everyone whose share is at stake. Letting the partner who wrongfully caused the dissolution control that process would put the person responsible for the harm in charge of accounting for it, creating an obvious conflict between that partner's own interest and the interests of the partners left to sort out what remains. Excluding the wrongdoer from winding up keeps that process in the hands of partners who did not cause the loss the dissolution represents.
The court remains available regardless
Even where the innocent partners hold the default right to wind up, the law preserves a separate path to court: any partner, his legal representative or his assignee, upon cause shown, may obtain winding up by the court. This means a partner excluded from winding up because they wrongfully caused the dissolution is not entirely shut out of the process — if there is cause to show, that partner, or an assignee standing in their place, can ask a court to take over or supervise the winding up instead of leaving it entirely to the other partners. This safeguard matters where there is reason to doubt the winding-up partners will deal fairly with the firm's remaining assets or the wrongdoer's own stake in them.
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.
- Primelink Properties & Devt. Corp., et al. vs. Ma. Clarita T. Lazatin-Magat, et al, G.R. No. 167379, June 27, 2006 — read the decision on LawPhil →