Short answer. Equal shares. Article 1790 provides that unless there is a stipulation to the contrary, the partners shall contribute equal shares to the capital of the partnership. So if your agreement is silent on the amounts, the law presumes every partner puts in the same, and the burden is on anyone claiming otherwise.
What the law says
Unless there is a stipulation to the contrary, the partners shall contribute equal shares to the capital of the partnership.
Civil Code, Article 1790 — Equal Contributions Presumed. Read the full provision →
The default is equality
When partners agree to go into business but never write down how much each will put in, Article 1790 fills the gap. Unless there is a stipulation to the contrary, the partners shall contribute equal shares to the capital of the partnership. The law's assumption is equality: absent an agreed split, every partner is taken to have undertaken the same capital contribution as the others. This is a sensible default — if the partners had meant unequal shares, that is the sort of thing they would ordinarily have said. So silence is read as a promise of parity.
It is a default, not a rule
The equality presumption yields entirely to what the partners actually agreed. The article opens with unless there is a stipulation to the contrary, so any agreement fixing different contributions — one partner puts in twice what another does, or contributes property while another contributes cash — governs over the default. Partnerships are frequently built on exactly such unequal contributions, and nothing in this article discourages that. What the article does is decide the case the partners left open. If the contract addresses the amounts, this provision never comes into play; it only speaks where the partners did not, supplying the term they omitted rather than overriding one they wrote.
Capital is not the same as profit share
One distinction is worth keeping clear. This article is about contributions to capital — what each partner pays into the business — not about how profits and losses are divided. Those are governed by separate rules, and equal capital does not automatically mean the partners bear losses or take profits equally, nor does an unequal capital contribution by itself fix the profit ratio. So even under the default of equal capital, the partners should still be clear about the sharing of profits and losses, because the two questions are answered by different provisions and can come out differently.
Write down the numbers
The way to avoid all of this is simply to state the contributions. If the partners are to put in different amounts, or contribute different kinds of things — money, property, or industry — say so in the agreement, with the figures. If they genuinely intend equal shares, saying that too costs nothing and removes any doubt. Where the contract is silent, do not assume the arrangement you had in your head; the law will assume equality, and a partner who wanted to put in less, or claims another agreed to put in more, will be arguing against the default with the burden on him.
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.
- Ernesto Pideli vs. People of the Philippines, G.R. No. 163437, February 13, 2008 — read the decision on LawPhil →