Short answer. No. Philippine law expressly prohibits courts from reforming a will or a simple donation with no conditions. Reformation is a remedy for contracts that fail to express the real agreement of the parties — but wills and unconditional donations are not the product of mutual negotiation, so the remedy simply does not apply to them.
What the law says
There shall be no reformation in the following cases: (1) Simple donations inter vivos wherein no condition is imposed; (2) Wills; (3) When the real agreement is void.
Civil Code, Article 1366 — When Reformation Is Not Allowed. Read the full provision →
What reformation is — and what it is not
Reformation is a specific legal remedy that allows a court to rewrite a written contract to reflect the true intention of both parties when that intention was not correctly expressed in the document — for example, because of mutual mistake, fraud on one side, or a scrivener's error. It does not create a new agreement; it corrects the written form to match what the parties actually agreed on. The key is that there must have been a genuine meeting of minds that the document failed to capture.
Why wills cannot be reformed
A will is a unilateral act — the expression of a single person's wishes about how their estate should be distributed after death. There is no other party whose "true intention" must be reconciled. If the will does not correctly express what the testator intended, the proper remedy is to challenge the will's validity based on fraud, mistake, or incapacity — not to reform it into something the testator did not write. Courts cannot rewrite a will on the theory that the testator meant something other than what the document says.
Why simple unconditional donations cannot be reformed
A simple donation without conditions is also excluded. Like a will, a donation inter vivos is fundamentally the unilateral generosity of the donor — the donee accepted, but the terms were set by the donor alone. When no condition is attached, there is nothing to align or correct between two negotiated positions. If a donor made a mistake in the document and the donation itself remains valid, the appropriate action may be annulment or a separate correction through the proper legal processes — not reformation, which presupposes a mutual agreement that was poorly documented.
The third exclusion — when the underlying agreement is void
Article 1366 also bars reformation when the real agreement itself is void. Reformation is meant to correct the form of a valid agreement, not to rescue an agreement that is legally defective at its core. If the underlying deal is void — because it is illegal, contrary to morals, or otherwise unenforceable — reforming the written document cannot save it. There is nothing valid to reform into. This prevents parties from using reformation as a backdoor to enforce contracts that the law will not allow in the first place.
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.
- Heirs of Cornelio Miguel vs Heirs of Angel Miguel, G.R. No. 158916, March 19, 2014 — read the decision on LawPhil →