Short answer. Yes, but only as a starting point. The Rules presume that things a person possesses, or exercises acts of ownership over, are owned by that person. It is a disputable presumption: satisfactory only while uncontradicted, and it gives way to evidence showing who the true owner is.
What the law says
that things which a person possesses, or exercises acts of ownership over, are owned by him or her
Rule 131, Section 3 — Disputable presumptions. Read the full provision →
What the law says
The following presumptions are satisfactory if uncontradicted, but may be contradicted and overcome by other evidence
Rule 131, Section 3 — Disputable presumptions. Read the full provision →
What the presumption says
Section 3 of Rule 131 lists the presumptions that operate in Philippine courts without anyone having to prove them, and one of them attaches to possession. The Rules presume that things which a person possesses, or exercises acts of ownership over, are owned by him or her. Two situations are covered, not one. Physical possession is the obvious case. The second, exercising acts of ownership, reaches a person who deals with property as an owner would, which can matter where the thing is not something anyone physically holds day to day.
Disputable means it can be beaten
The heading of the section is doing real work. These are disputable presumptions, and the opening sentence states the standard: they are satisfactory if uncontradicted, but may be contradicted and overcome by other evidence. So the presumption is not a finding of ownership and it is not close to conclusive. It decides the question only where nothing is offered against it. Once evidence of title, of purchase, or of the circumstances in which the other person came to hold the thing is before the court, the presumption stops carrying the issue on its own.
What it does to the burden
The practical effect is about who has to move first. Someone in possession does not have to begin by proving how the thing came to be his. The person disputing it is the one who has to produce something. That is why documents matter so much in this kind of dispute: receipts, registration papers, deeds, delivery records, messages arranging a loan of the item. None of that is required by the presumption itself, which is precisely why the party contradicting the presumption is the one who needs it.
The other half of the same clause
The clause has a branch that runs the opposite way. Before stating the ownership presumption, it provides that a person found in possession of a thing taken in the doing of a recent wrongful act is presumed to be the taker and the doer of the whole act. The word otherwise separates the two. So possession does not always point toward ownership under this rule. Where the thing was recently taken in a wrongful act, the same fact of possession is read against the possessor instead, and that branch too is disputable.