Short answer. One year. Article 1147 requires an action for defamation to be filed within one year. That is the civil claim for damages, and it is one of the shortest periods in the Code, so a slander dealt with slowly is very often a slander that can no longer be sued upon.
What the law says
The following actions must be filed within one year: (1) For forcible entry and detainer; (2) For defamation.
Civil Code, Article 1147 — One-Year Actions. Read the full provision →
The year does not wait for you to decide it was serious
Article 1147 places an action for defamation in the same one-year category as forcible entry and detainer, which tells you how the Code treats it: as something to be raised promptly or not at all. In practice the twelve months are spent hoping the matter dies down, asking for an apology, waiting to see whether the remark spreads or whether the person who said it will take it back. All of that consumes the same period, and none of it stops the counting.
What the civil action is for
It is a claim for damages. Article 2219 lists libel, slander or any other form of defamation among the cases in which moral damages may be recovered, and moral damages are usually the substance of such a claim, because reputation rarely produces receipts. Article 2216 helps here, dispensing with proof of pecuniary loss for moral damages and leaving their assessment to the discretion of the court. What still has to be proved is the utterance, that it reached other people, and the injury it did you.
The criminal side is a separate question
Whether the same words also expose the speaker to criminal liability is governed by other law, with its own requirements and its own periods, and the answer to one does not settle the other. Do not assume that a criminal complaint filed, or a prosecutor consulted, preserves the civil claim this article governs, and do not assume the reverse either. If both are under consideration they should be planned together and early, because the shorter of the two calendars sets the pace for everything else.
Evidence decays faster than the year does
Posts are deleted, group chats are cleared, and witnesses grow reluctant once they realise a case is coming. Capture the material with its surrounding context, the account or number, and the visible date, rather than cropping it down to the offending line. Note who heard or saw it and when. Keep anything showing the consequence — the lost engagement, the withdrawn offer, the treatment you sought. Then see a lawyer well inside the year rather than in the last weeks of it.
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.
- Berteni Cataluña Causing vs. People of the Philippines, G.R. No. 258524, October 11, 2023 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 2219 — When Moral Damages May Be Recovered
- Civil Code, Article 2216 — No Proof of Pecuniary Loss Required