Short answer. Yes for most community liabilities. If the community property cannot cover them, both spouses become solidarily liable for the unpaid balance with their separate properties. The exception is the paragraph on antenuptial debts, crimes and quasi-delicts, which the rule expressly leaves out.
What the law says
If the community property is insufficient to cover the foregoing liabilities, except those falling under paragraph (9), the spouses shall be solidarily liable for the unpaid balance with their separate properties.
Family Code, Article 94 — Charges on the Community Property. Read the full provision →
Solidary liability means the whole balance, from either of you
The word doing the work is solidarily. It does not mean each spouse owes half. It means a creditor may demand the entire unpaid balance from either one of you, and that spouse must pay it, leaving them to sort out reimbursement from the other afterwards. So the practical exposure is not your notional share of the debt — it is the whole of it. This is a second layer of recovery, and it opens only after community assets have been applied and shown to be insufficient.
The carve-out, and why it exists
The rule expressly excludes the liabilities in paragraph 9 of the same article: antenuptial debts that did not benefit the family, the support of an illegitimate child of either spouse, and liabilities arising from a crime or a quasi-delict. Those are the items the Code already treats as belonging to one spouse personally — the community pays them only when the debtor-spouse has nothing, and books what it pays as an advance against that spouse's share. It would be inconsistent to then let a creditor reach the other spouse's own property for the balance.
Read it as a sequence, not a menu
The article sets an order. A community liability is paid out of community property first. Only if the community property is insufficient does the separate property of the spouses come into it, and even then only for the unpaid balance, and only for liabilities outside paragraph 9. A creditor cannot start with your separate property because it happens to be easier to reach. The insufficiency of the community assets is a condition of the second layer, not a formality to be recited.
What this means if a claim arrives
The first thing to establish is which clause of the article the claim falls under, because that single classification decides whether your own property is exposed at all. A debt contracted during the marriage with the consent of both of you sits squarely inside the solidary rule. Your spouse's pre-marital debt that never benefited the family does not. This is general information about how the Code allocates liability; how a particular claim is characterised will depend on its own facts.
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.
- Philippine National Bank vs. Venancio C. Reyes, Jr, G.R. No. 212483, October 5, 2016 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Family Code, Article 94 — Charges on the Community Property
- Family Code, Article 102 — Liquidating the Absolute Community