Short answer. Yes — equally, unless your marriage settlements say otherwise. Article 106 divides the net gains equally between the spouses on dissolution. The catch is the word net: only gains are split, so each spouse's own capital property comes back to them first and is not part of the division.
What the law says
place in a common fund the proceeds, products, fruits and income from their separate properties and those acquired by either or both spouses through their efforts or by chance
Family Code, Article 106 — What the Conjugal Partnership of Gains Is. Read the full provision →
What the law says
the net gains or benefits obtained by either or both spouses shall be divided equally between them, unless otherwise agreed in the marriage settlements
Family Code, Article 106 — What the Conjugal Partnership of Gains Is. Read the full provision →
What goes into the common fund
Article 106 describes the partnership as one where the spouses place in a common fund the proceeds, products, fruits and income from their separate properties and those acquired by either or both spouses through their efforts or by chance. Read that list carefully. The separate properties themselves stay separate; what enters the fund is what they produce — rent, harvests, dividends, interest. Alongside it goes everything earned by effort, which is salaries and business income, and everything acquired by chance, which is where winnings and similar windfalls sit. The fund is the yield of the marriage, not its capital.
Equal, and equal regardless of who earned it
On dissolution the net gains or benefits obtained by either or both spouses shall be divided equally between them, unless otherwise agreed in the marriage settlements. Equally means equally: the spouse who earned nothing during the marriage takes the same half as the spouse whose salary filled the fund, and the division does not vary with contribution, fault or need. The only lawful departure named in the article is a different arrangement in the marriage settlements, and settlements are made before the wedding — an agreement reached afterwards, however sincere, does not change the regime.
Net gains is a smaller number than people expect
Two subtractions stand between the fund and the halves. The partnership's own obligations are paid out of the partnership first, and each spouse's exclusive property is restored before anything is divided. What is left is the gain, and half of it is the share. This is why a spouse who brought a house, a farm or a business into the marriage does not have to give up half of it — that property was never a gain, only its fruits were — and why a marriage that consumed everything it produced can dissolve with almost nothing to divide despite years of good income.
Know which regime you are actually under
Before any of this applies, check that the conjugal partnership is your regime at all. Marriages celebrated without a valid marriage settlement under the present law fall under absolute community, which splits the whole mass rather than the gains — a different and usually larger division. Couples assume the older, more familiar conjugal partnership because their parents were under it. So the first documents are the marriage certificate, its date, and the marriage settlement if one exists, followed by an inventory separating what each spouse brought in from what the marriage produced. Getting that wrong at the start makes every later calculation wrong too.
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.
- Emilio, G.R. No. 183053, October 10, 2012 — read the decision on LawPhil →