Short answer. In substance, yes — the illegitimate child's legitime is half a legitimate child's. Article 895 states that proportion, though it reaches it through the old sub-classes of illegitimate children that the Family Code has since abolished. The half is measured against a legitimate child's share, not against the whole estate.
What the law says
shall consist of one-half of the legitime of each of the legitimate children or descendants
Civil Code, Article 895 — Legitime by the Old Sub-Classes. Read the full provision →
Half of a share, not half of the estate
The ratio the article fixes is one-half of the legitime of each of the legitimate children or descendants. Read that slowly, because the usual mistake is to halve the wrong number. Under Article 888 the legitimate children's legitime is one-half of the estate, divided among them; the illegitimate child then takes half of what one of them receives out of that half. Where a man leaves three legitimate children and one illegitimate child, each legitimate child's legitime is one-sixth of the estate, so the illegitimate child's legitime is one-twelfth — not half of the estate, and not half of what the legitimate children hold between them.
Why the article names three kinds of illegitimate child
The text as enacted graded illegitimate children: acknowledged natural children, natural children by legal fiction, and everyone else, whose legitime it puts at four-fifths of an acknowledged natural child's. Those categories turned on whether the parents could have married at conception, and they no longer operate — the Family Code collapsed them into the single status of illegitimate child. What survives is the ratio in the first sentence, which is why practitioners cite this article for the half while ignoring the labels attached to it. If an older will or an old family settlement uses the sub-class wording, that is where it came from.
The half is a floor, and it is drawn from the free portion
A legitime is a minimum, not a ceiling. Nothing stops a parent from leaving an illegitimate child more than the half out of the disposable portion, and many wills do. What the parent cannot do is leave less, or nothing. The other half of the same rule cuts the other way: the illegitimate child's legitime is taken from the part of the estate the testator could otherwise have given away, and it must fit inside that part after the surviving spouse's own legitime has been satisfied in full. The legitimate children's half is never touched to pay it.
What actually decides the case
In most disputes the fraction is not the fight — filiation is. The share exists only if the child's relationship to the deceased is established, so the birth certificate, any instrument in which the parent admitted the child, school and baptismal records naming the parent, and correspondence or support payments are what a lawyer will want to see first. Where the free portion is too small to cover every illegitimate child's legitime, the shares are scaled down proportionally rather than paid in full to the first claimant, so the number of recognised children matters as much as the arithmetic.
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.
- Elenita V. Macalinao, Kenneth V. Macalinao and Kristel V. Macalinao vs. Cerina, A.K.A. Cerena N. Macalinao and Cindy N. Ma, G.R. No. 250613, April 3, 2024 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Daniel Rivera and Elpidio Rivera vs. Flora P. Villanueva, Ruperto Pacheco, Virgilio Pacheco, G.R. No. 197310, June 23, 2021 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Eloy Imperial vs. Court of Appeals & Cesar Villalon, etc., et al, G.R. No. 112483, October 8, 1999 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 895 — Legitime by the Old Sub-Classes
- Civil Code, Article 888 — Legitime of Legitimate Children