Short answer. Possibly, but departure alone is not the ground. The Rules allow attachment in an action to recover a specified amount of money or damages against a party about to depart from the Philippines with intent to defraud his creditors. The intent to defraud is the element that has to be shown.
What the law says
against a party who is about to depart from the Philippines with intent to defraud his creditors
Rule 57, Section 1 — Grounds upon which attachment may issue. Read the full provision →
What the law says
At the commencement of the action or at any time before entry of judgment, a plaintiff or any proper party may have the property of the adverse party attached as security for the satisfaction of any judgment that may be recovered
Rule 57, Section 1 — Grounds upon which attachment may issue. Read the full provision →
What the first ground actually requires
The opening ground in Section 1 has more parts than the phrase about leaving the country. It applies in an action for the recovery of a specified amount of money or damages, other than moral and exemplary, on a cause of action arising from law, contract, quasi-contract, delict or quasi-delict, and then only against a party who is about to depart from the Philippines with intent to defraud his creditors. So three things have to line up: the right kind of claim, a specified amount, and a departure coupled with the intent to defraud. Losing any one of them loses the ground.
Departure by itself is not enough
People leave the Philippines constantly, for work, study, family and medical reasons. The provision does not treat the fact of an impending departure as a reason to tie up someone's property. What it targets is a departure undertaken with intent to defraud his creditors, which is a state of mind that has to be established from the circumstances rather than assumed from a booked flight. A creditor who can show only that the debtor is going abroad has shown the least contentious half of the ground and none of the part that carries it.
The claim must be for a specified amount
The requirement that the action be for a specified amount of money or damages does real work here, and the express exclusion of moral and exemplary damages narrows it further. Those categories are left to the court's appreciation and are not fixed sums a creditor can state at the outset, so they cannot supply the measure for an attachment. A claim that is genuinely unliquidated at the time of application does not fit this ground, however strong the underlying grievance. That is a question to work through with counsel before applying rather than after the writ is questioned.
Timing, and what attachment is for
The remedy is available at the commencement of the action or at any time before entry of judgment, so it is not something that waits until a case is decided. Its purpose is stated in the same sentence: the property is attached as security for the satisfaction of any judgment that may be recovered. Attachment does not transfer the property to the creditor and it does not pay the debt. It holds the asset so that a judgment, if one comes, does not arrive to find nothing left. A related ground covers a debtor who is removing or disposing of property with the same fraudulent intent.