Short answer. Under Article 966, you count one degree for each generation, excluding the starting ancestor. In the direct line you ascend to the common ancestor; in the collateral line you go up to the common ancestor and then down to the relative. A child is one degree from a parent, and a person is two degrees from a brother.
What the law says
In the line, as many degrees are counted as there are generations or persons, excluding the progenitor
Civil Code, Article 966 — Counting the Degrees. Read the full provision →
One degree for each generation
Degrees measure how closely two people are related, and in intestate succession they help decide who inherits and who is excluded. Article 966 gives the basic count: In the line, as many degrees are counted as there are generations or persons, excluding the progenitor. In plain terms, you count each step from one generation to the next as one degree, and you do not count the starting ancestor himself. This produces a simple, objective number for any pair of relatives. That number matters because, as a rule, a relative in a nearer degree is preferred over one more remote when the estate is distributed among relatives of the same class.
Counting in the direct line
The direct line joins people who descend one from another — parent, child, grandparent, grandchild. Here, the article says, ascent is made to the common ancestor. Applying the count, the child is one degree removed from the parent, two degrees from the grandfather, and three from the great-grandparent. Each generation you step through adds a degree. This makes the direct line the most straightforward to compute: simply count the generations between the two people. Because descendants and ascendants stand in the direct line, these degrees are central to working out the order in which children, parents and grandparents are called to inherit.
Counting in the collateral line
Collateral relatives share a common ancestor but do not descend one from another — brothers, uncles, cousins. For them the method has two legs: ascent is made to the common ancestor and then descent is made to the person with whom the computation is to be made. You go up from one relative to the shared ancestor, then down to the other, counting every step. So a person is two degrees from his brother (up to the parent, down to the brother), three from an uncle who is his father's brother, and four from a first cousin. The up-and-down path is what distinguishes collateral counting from the direct line.
Why the count matters in succession
Degrees are a tool, not the whole of inheritance law. The count tells you proximity, and in intestate succession proximity generally governs — nearer relatives exclude more distant ones within the applicable order. But the rule of degrees works alongside other principles, such as the rules on who is called first (descendants, then ascendants, then collaterals) and the right of representation, which can let more distant relatives step into a nearer position in defined cases. So use Article 966 to fix the number of degrees accurately, then apply it within the broader order of intestate succession rather than treating the count as the final answer by itself.
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.
- Ofelia Hernando Bagunu vs. Pastora Piedad, G.R. No. 140975, December 8, 2000 — read the decision on LawPhil →