Short answer. Six months from the death, if no judicial settlement of the estate is instituted. Where an estate proceeding is filed, the community property is liquidated in that same proceeding. Miss the six months without liquidating and any disposition or encumbrance of that community property is void.
What the law says
Upon the termination of the marriage by death, the community property shall be liquidated in the same proceeding for the settlement of the estate of the deceased.
Family Code, Article 103 — Liquidation on Death; the Six-Month Rule. Read the full provision →
What the law says
If upon the lapse of the six months period, no liquidation is made, any disposition or encumbrance involving the community property of the terminated marriage shall be void.
Family Code, Article 103 — Liquidation on Death; the Six-Month Rule. Read the full provision →
Two routes, and the deadline attaches to only one
Article 103 gives the surviving spouse a choice made mostly by circumstance. If a judicial settlement of the estate is instituted, the community property shall be liquidated in the same proceeding for the settlement of the estate of the deceased — one case, one accounting, and no separate clock. If no such proceeding is instituted, the survivor must liquidate either judicially or extra-judicially within six months from the death of the deceased spouse. Extra-judicial liquidation is the common path where the family agrees and the estate is straightforward, and it is the path with the deadline on it.
What happens when the six months pass
The sanction is unusually blunt: if upon the lapse of the six months period, no liquidation is made, any disposition or encumbrance involving the community property of the terminated marriage shall be void. Not voidable, not merely irregular — void, and the article draws no exception for a buyer who paid in good faith. In practice this is what surfaces years later at a registry or a bank, when the survivor tries to sell or mortgage property that was never liquidated and finds that the sale cannot be registered and the title cannot be cleaned up without going back to the beginning.
The deadline does not liquidate anything by itself
Nothing happens automatically at six months except the disability. The property is not divided, title does not move, and the heirs' shares are not fixed; what changes is that the survivor can no longer deal with the property at all. Liquidation still has to be done — inventory, payment of the community's debts, return of exclusive property, division of the net remainder — and it still has to be done afterwards, only now with a gap in the record that anyone examining the title will find. Doing it late is possible; doing it never is what creates unsellable land.
Start from the death certificate and the inventory
The date on the death certificate starts the six months, so that is the first document. Then the inventory: what the couple owned, which items were community and which exclusive, and what the community owed. If the estate is contested, or an heir is a minor, or there is real disagreement about what belongs in the mass, the judicial route is the one that will actually finish. If the family is in agreement, the extra-judicial route is faster — but it is the one with the deadline attached, and a surviving spouse who is thinking about remarrying has a further reason not to let it pass.
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.
- Heirs of the Late Apolinario Caburnay, et al. vs. Heirs of Teodulo Sison, namely, G.R. No. 230934, December 2, 2020 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Heirs of Protacio Go and Marta Barola, namely: Leonor Go, et al. vs. Ester L. Servacio and Rito B. Go, G.R. No. 157537, September 7, 2011 — read the decision on LawPhil →