Short answer. Only the excess. Where support is given by will or by contract, the amount beyond what legal support requires is subject to levy on attachment or execution. The portion answering to legal support is protected; anything above it is treated as ordinary property.
What the law says
In case of contractual support or that given by will, the excess in amount beyond that required for legal support shall be subject to levy on attachment or execution.
Family Code, Article 208 — Contractual and Testamentary Support. Read the full provision →
Support is protected because of what it is for
Legal support exists to keep a person fed, housed, clothed, treated and schooled. A creditor who could seize it would not merely be collecting a debt; he would be taking the means of subsistence the law obliges someone else to provide. That is why support is placed beyond execution. The protection is tied to the purpose, not to the label, which is exactly why the article draws the line where it does rather than exempting everything a testator chose to call support.
Generosity above the legal measure is not sheltered
A testator may leave far more than the law would require anyone to give, and the article treats the difference honestly. The excess in amount beyond that required for legal support is subject to levy on attachment or execution, because at that point it is a benefit rather than a necessity. So the protection does not scale with the gift. A person left a handsome monthly allowance by will keeps what corresponds to legal support out of a creditor's reach and no more.
Working out where the line falls
This means the question is arithmetical before it is legal: what would legal support amount to in your circumstances? Legal support is measured by the recipient's needs and by the resources of the person obliged, so it is a figure fixed to a situation rather than a fixed sum. Expect a creditor to argue for a low measure and yourself to be asked to justify a higher one, with the ordinary evidence of what living actually costs you — housing, food, medical needs, schooling.
If a levy is attempted
The protection is not self-executing; someone has to raise it. Keep the will or the court's order and whatever document fixes what you receive, together with a clear record of your needs. Note too that the same article treats contractual support alongside testamentary support for this purpose, so an allowance under an agreement is analysed the same way. Where a levy is served, take those papers to a lawyer at once, because the point has to be made against the execution rather than after the money is gone.
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.
- XXX vs. the Court of Appeals, People of the Philippines, and AAA, G.R. No. 261459, May 20, 2024 — read the decision on LawPhil →