Short answer. Yes. A support figure is never final in the way a judgment for a fixed debt is. It rises and falls with the recipient's necessities and the giver's means, so either side can ask for it to be adjusted when those change — but the change has to be shown, not merely asserted.
What the law says
shall be reduced or increased proportionately, according to the reduction or increase of the necessities of the recipient and the resources or means of the person obliged to furnish the same
Family Code, Article 202 — Support Rises and Falls With Circumstances. Read the full provision →
What the law says
contractual support shall be subject to adjustment whenever modification is necessary due to changes of circumstances manifestly beyond the contemplation of the parties
Family Code, Article 208 — Contractual and Testamentary Support. Read the full provision →
Support tracks circumstances, in both directions
Article 202 says support shall be reduced or increased proportionately, according to the reduction or increase of the necessities of the recipient and the resources or means of the person obliged to furnish the same. Notice that both variables can move and that the movement runs both ways. A parent who assumes an amount, once fixed, is locked in for the child's whole minority is wrong; so is a parent who assumes it can only ever go up. The word doing the most work is proportionately — the adjustment answers to the size of the change, not to how strongly either side feels about it.
What counts as a change worth raising
A real change in what the child needs or in what the payer can produce: a new medical condition, the move from grade school fees to university ones, a genuine loss of employment or of the business that funded the payments. What does not count is a change the payer arranged. Giving up work, taking a deliberate pay cut or moving assets out of sight is not a reduction in means; it is evidence about the payer. Nor is a rise in the payer's income, by itself, automatically a rise in the award — the child's necessities are the other half of the proportion and they still have to be shown.
Adjusting is something you ask for, not something you do
The commonest and most damaging mistake is self-help: the payer decides his circumstances have changed and simply starts remitting less. An amount fixed by a court remains the amount owed until it is changed, and the arrears accumulate quietly in the meantime. The reverse mistake costs less but wastes years — a receiving parent who watches the payer's fortunes improve and never raises it. Either way, the move is to gather the evidence of the change with dates and put it before the court that fixed the figure.
Support fixed by agreement or by will
Article 202 governs legal support, but a privately agreed arrangement is not frozen either. Article 208 provides that contractual support shall be subject to adjustment whenever modification is necessary due to changes of circumstances manifestly beyond the contemplation of the parties. The threshold there is higher: not any change, but one the parties plainly did not have in mind when they agreed. If your arrangement lives in a written agreement rather than a court order, that wording is the one to read first, alongside whatever the agreement itself says about revisiting the amount.
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.
- BBB vs. AAA, G.R. No. 193225, February 9, 2015 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Jose Lam vs. Adriana Chua, G.R. No. 131286, March 18, 2004 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Family Code, Article 201 — Amount of Support: Means and Needs
- Family Code, Article 208 — Contractual and Testamentary Support