Short answer. Yes. Rule 83, Section 3 of the Rules of Court provides that the widow and the minor or incapacitated children of the deceased shall receive an allowance from the estate during the settlement, under the direction of the court, in such amounts as the law provides. They need not wait for final distribution.
What the law says
The widow and minor or incapacitated children of a deceased person, during the settlement of the estate, shall receive therefrom, under the direction of the court, such allowance as are provided by law.
Rule 83, Section 3 — Allowance to widow and family. Read the full provision →
Who the rule covers
The provision names its beneficiaries precisely: the widow and minor or incapacitated children of a deceased person. Three groups, no more — the surviving spouse, children below the age of majority, and children who are incapacitated regardless of age. Adult, able children are not in the list, and neither are parents, siblings or other dependents of the deceased, however genuine their need. That narrowness is the point: settlement can take years, and the rule exists so that the people the deceased was legally bound to support do not go hungry while the property that would feed them sits frozen in the proceeding. For everyone else, the wait for distribution is the wait.
It is a command, administered by the court
The verb is shall receive, not may — entitlement, not favour. But the same sentence disciplines it twice. The allowance flows under the direction of the court, so the widow does not simply draw on estate funds, and the administrator does not decide alone whether and how much to give; the probate court supervising the settlement directs the payments. And the measure is such allowance as are provided by law — the rule itself fixes no amount, leaving the size of the allowance to the substantive law on support. In practice, that means asking the settlement court to fix and order the allowance, with the family's actual needs and the estate's means before it.
It comes out of the estate, and the estate keeps count
The allowance is paid therefrom — from the estate itself, not from the administrator's pocket and not from any one heir's expected share in particular. It is estate money going out the door before debts are fully settled and before distribution, which is why the court's direction matters: creditors and co-heirs have a stake in how much leaves and when. Expect every peso to pass through the administrator's accounts and to be reckoned with when the estate is finally liquidated and divided. The allowance solves the family's cash-flow problem during settlement; it does not enlarge anyone's ultimate share, and treating it as an untracked draw invites objections later.
How to actually get it moving
If you are a widow or the guardian of the deceased's minor or incapacitated children and the settlement is pending, raise the allowance in that proceeding — a motion addressed to the probate court, since the payments happen under the direction of the court. Come with the two things the court must weigh: the family's recurring needs (food, schooling, medical care, the household's monthly reality) and the estate's ability to carry them (its income-producing assets, cash position and known debts). If an administrator is resisting, remember the entitlement is written as shall receive; the dispute is properly about amount and manner, not about whether the family may be provided for at all.