Short answer. Yes — every owner may fence his land, but not in a way that defeats an easement already on it. Article 430 grants the right and limits it in the same sentence. If your neighbour has a right of way, your fence has to leave that passage usable.
What the law says
Every owner may enclose or fence his land or tenements by means of walls, ditches, live or dead hedges, or by any other means without detriment to servitudes constituted thereon.
Civil Code, Article 430 — Right to Enclose. Read the full provision →
The right and its limit sit in the same sentence
Article 430 provides that every owner may enclose or fence his land or tenements by means of walls, ditches, live or dead hedges, or by any other means without detriment to servitudes constituted thereon. The permission is broad — the listed means are examples, closed off with any other means, so the Code is not prescribing hollow blocks over hedges. The whole of the restriction is in the last four words. You may shut your land in; you may not use the enclosure to extinguish a burden the land was already carrying when you enclosed it.
What the neighbour can and cannot demand
An easement holder is entitled to the burden he actually has, not to an open boundary. If a right of way exists, the fence must leave that way passable — in practice by building around it or by putting a gate on the line it crosses — but you are not obliged to leave the rest of the perimeter open, nor to give a wider or more convenient route than the one that was constituted. Equally, the neighbour cannot be shut out and told to sue about it later. The right is on the land now, and a fence that blocks it is a wrong done today.
"Constituted" is the word that decides the argument
Two mistakes run in opposite directions here. The first is assuming an easement dies with a change of owner: it does not, because it burdens the land itself, and a buyer who never saw the annotation still takes the property subject to what was validly established on it. The second is assuming that any long-standing habit is an easement. A neighbour who has crossed your yard for years by your parents' tolerance may have nothing at all. What matters is whether a right was actually constituted — by agreement, by annotation on the title, or by a court — not how familiar the practice has become.
What to settle before the posts go in
Pull a certified true copy of your title and read the encumbrances on it, then look at the approved subdivision plan for any road lot or right of way that runs across your boundary. Have a geodetic engineer do a relocation survey so the fence sits on your own line and not a metre into the neighbour's — an encroachment discovered after the wall is up is an expensive thing to argue about. If a passage does cross the property, put the gate arrangement in writing with the neighbour before you build, and keep the plan and the survey with the title.
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.
- North Greenhills Association, Inc. vs. Atty. Narciso Morales, G.R. No. 222821, August 9, 2017 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Spouses Abraham and Melchora Ermino vs. Golden Village Homeowners Association, Inc., Represented By Leticia C. Inukai, G.R. No. 180808, August 15, 2018 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Aneco Reality and Dev't Corp. vs. Landex Development Corp, G.R. No. 165952, July 28, 2008 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Spouses Cristino, et al. vs. Court of Appeals, et al, G.R. No. 116100, February 9, 1996 — read the decision on LawPhil →