Short answer. Yes. Under the Civil Code, agency ends automatically the moment the corporation or firm that was principal or agent is dissolved, without any court order or added step. Dissolution sits alongside revocation, withdrawal, death, insanity, and insolvency as one of six ways the law treats an agency relationship as simply stopping.
What the law says
the dissolution of the firm or corporation which entrusted or accepted the agency
Civil Code, Article 1919 — Modes of Extinguishing Agency. Read the full provision →
Why corporate dissolution ends the agency
Agency is a relationship between a specific principal and a specific agent, and a corporation or firm is itself the legal person holding that role, not the individuals who happen to staff it. The Civil Code lists the dissolution of the firm or corporation which entrusted or accepted the agency as one of the modes that extinguishes agency by itself, alongside revocation, withdrawal, death, civil interdiction, insanity, and insolvency. No notice, filing, or court order is needed to trigger it. Once the corporate principal or the corporate agent legally ceases to exist, the authority tied to that entity ends with it, because there is no longer a legal person capable of holding or exercising that authority.
It applies whichever side dissolves
The rule reads either way. If you appointed a corporation or partnership as your agent and that entity is dissolved, its authority to represent you ends the moment dissolution takes effect, and anyone who continues to accept its instructions on your behalf does so without your backing. The same is true in reverse: if you are a corporation acting as principal and you dissolve, every agency you had created also ends automatically, whether or not anyone remembered to say so in writing.
The other ways an agency can end
Dissolution is only one of several automatic triggers. The same article also extinguishes agency by revocation, by the agent's own withdrawal, by the death, civil interdiction, insanity, or insolvency of either principal or agent, by the accomplishment of the purpose the agency was created for, and by the expiration of the period fixed for it. None of these require a lawsuit to take effect; they operate as soon as the triggering fact occurs, and it is the underlying fact, not paperwork, that a court would later be asked to confirm if the parties disagree about when it happened.
Acts done after dissolution
Because the extinguishment is automatic, anything purportedly done in the dissolved entity's name as agent after the dissolution date is, in principle, done without authority. A third party dealing with what it believes is still an active agent should not assume the relationship survives a dissolution it has not verified. Whether a particular transaction can still bind anyone depends on facts this general answer cannot supply, including whether the other side had notice of the dissolution and whether anyone with actual authority ratified what was done.
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.
- Spouses Feliciana and Angel Cesa vs. Spouses Elisa Montano Brucelas and David Brucelas, G.R. No. 255564, March 5, 2025 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Marcelino E. Lopez, et al. vs. The Hon. Court Appeals and Primex Corporation/Marcelino E. Lopez, et al. vs. The Honorable Court of Appeals and Primex Corporation, G.R. No. 163959 / G.R. No. 177855, August 1, 2018 — read the decision on LawPhil →