Short answer. Yes. Under a conjugal partnership, what either spouse obtains from labour, industry, work or profession is partnership property. Your salary is not yours to keep separately merely because you earned it, and the same is true of your spouse's — the fund is fed by both regardless of the gap between them.
What the law says
Those obtained from the labor, industry, work or profession of either or both of the spouses
Family Code, Article 117 — What Are Conjugal Partnership Properties. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Those acquired by onerous title during the marriage at the expense of the common fund, whether the acquisition be for the partnership, or for only one of the spouses
Family Code, Article 117 — What Are Conjugal Partnership Properties. Read the full provision →
What the law says
The fruits, natural, industrial, or civil, due or received during the marriage from the common property, as well as the net fruits from the exclusive property of each spouse
Family Code, Article 117 — What Are Conjugal Partnership Properties. Read the full provision →
Earnings are named, not implied
Article 117 lists the conjugal properties, and the second item is those obtained from the labor, industry, work or profession of either or both of the spouses. There is no threshold, no exception for the spouse who earns more, and no distinction between employment and self-employment: professional fees, commissions, bonuses and business income all sit in the same category as a monthly salary. Nor does it matter which account the money lands in. Depositing your pay in an account in your name alone changes the record-keeping, not the character of the money. The provision is about the source of the money, not its destination.
What your salary then buys
The consequence runs one step further, and it is the step people miss. Because the salary is partnership money, anything bought with it is bought at the expense of the common fund and is conjugal too — the article says so of property acquired by onerous title during the marriage, whether the acquisition be for the partnership, or for only one of the spouses. A car registered to you, a condominium unit in your name, shares in your name: if the purchase price came from earnings during the marriage, the label on the asset does not make it yours.
What is not swept in
The partnership takes what the marriage produces, not what each spouse already had. Property brought into the marriage stays exclusive, and so does what a spouse inherits or receives by donation. But their fruits are shared: the article claims the net fruits from the exclusive property of each spouse, so rent from a building you owned before the wedding goes into the fund even though the building does not. Winnings from gambling or betting are conjugal as well, while the losses, the article says, are borne exclusively by the loser-spouse.
Where it matters, and what to keep
This is not an argument about the household budget; it surfaces at liquidation and when creditors come. If the marriage ends, the salary-funded assets are counted in the mass to be divided regardless of whose name they carry, and a spouse who spent years assuming otherwise starts the accounting from the wrong number. Keep payslips, tax returns and the account statements showing where earnings went, together with the purchase documents for anything significant — the dispute is always about which peso bought which asset, and the answer is in the bank record. Under absolute community the answer is the same, by a shorter route.
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.
- Noel Buenaventura vs. Court of Appeals, et al, G.R. No. 127358, March 31, 2005 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Government Service Insurance System vs. Milagros O. Montesclaros, G.R. No. 146494, July 14, 2004 — read the decision on LawPhil →