Short answer. Yes. When a co-owner sells their share to someone outside the co-ownership, the remaining co-owners may redeem it from the buyer. Where the price of the sale was grossly excessive the redeemer pays only a reasonable one, and if several want to redeem they do so in proportion to their shares.
What the law says
A co-owner of a thing may exercise the right of redemption in case the shares of all the other co-owners or of any of them, are sold to a third person.
Civil Code, Article 1620 — Co-Owner's Right of Legal Redemption. Read the full provision →
What the law says
If the price of the alienation is grossly excessive, the redemptioner shall pay only a reasonable one.
Civil Code, Article 1620 — Co-Owner's Right of Legal Redemption. Read the full provision →
The right exists to keep strangers out
A co-ownership only works if the co-owners can live with one another, and a share sold to an outsider drops a stranger into decisions about a house or a farm that a family has shared for decades. Article 1620 answers that by letting a co-owner buy the outsider out: a co-owner of a thing may exercise the right of redemption in case the shares of all the other co-owners or of any of them, are sold to a third person. The redeeming co-owner is not asking a court to undo the sale. They are stepping into it, paying the price and taking the share the outsider bought.
It only bites when the buyer is a third person
The condition is that the share went to a third person, meaning someone outside the co-ownership. A sale by one co-heir to another co-heir does not open the right, because nobody new has come in, and this is the point on which most attempted redemptions fail. Look carefully at who actually signed as buyer, not at who paid. Where a co-owner buys through a spouse, a company or a nominee, who the outsider really is becomes a question of fact, and it is fought on documents rather than on family understanding of what happened.
The price, and prices that are grossly excessive
Redemption is at the price of the sale, which cuts both ways: a share sold cheaply is cheap to redeem, and one sold dearly is dear. The safeguard is that if the price of the alienation is grossly excessive, the redemptioner shall pay only a reasonable one, so a seller and a buyer cannot defeat redemption by writing an inflated figure into the deed. Where several co-owners want in, they redeem in proportion to the shares they respectively hold in the property, rather than the first to move taking the whole of it.
The clock is the part that catches people
The right is real but short-lived. Article 1623 gives thirty days, counted from written notice by the seller, and a co-owner who spends those weeks trying to raise money or persuade relatives to join usually finds the right gone before the money arrives. So the moment you learn a share has been sold, establish whether written notice from the seller exists and what date it bears, get a certified copy of the deed from the registry, and work out the price and your proportionate part of it. Decide within days, not months.
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.
- Sps. Amado & Milagros Tino, et al. vs. Nellie Manzano, G.R. No. 132102, May 19, 1999 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Sps. Rosario vs. Court of Appeals & Lourdes Villahermosa, et al, G.R. No. 127005, July 19, 1999 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Marcelino Tan, Etb al. vs. Jose Renato Lim, et al, G.R. No. 128004, September 29, 1998 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Antonio, Jr. and Rafael Azurin vs. Carlito Chua, G.R. No. 259662, April 23, 2025 — read the decision on LawPhil →