Short answer. No. Civil Code Article 38 states that insanity or imbecility are mere restrictions on capacity to act and do not exempt an incapacitated person from obligations arising from property relations, expressly naming easements as an example. Inheriting land already burdened by an easement carries that obligation regardless of your incapacity.
What the law says
do not exempt the incapacitated person from certain obligations, as when the latter arise from his acts or from property relations, such as easements
Civil Code, Article 38 — Restrictions on Capacity to Act. Read the full provision →
What Article 38 says incapacity is, and is not
Article 38 lists several conditions the law treats the same way: minority, insanity or imbecility, the state of being a deaf-mute, prodigality and civil interdiction are mere restrictions on capacity to act. Calling them restrictions rather than a complete removal of legal personality matters, because it limits what incapacity actually changes. These conditions generally affect a person's ability to enter into new transactions on their own, requiring representation or assistance for many acts, but the article is clear that this limitation is not absolute or unlimited in its effect on every kind of obligation.
Obligations that survive incapacity
The article draws the specific line your question turns on: incapacity does not exempt the incapacitated person from certain obligations, as when the latter arise from his acts or from property relations, such as easements. An easement is a property relation attached to the land itself, not a personal transaction the incapacitated owner had to consciously enter into. Because the obligation runs with the property rather than depending on the current owner's capacity to contract, incapacity does not detach it once the property, and the burden it carries, passes to you.
Why inheritance does not change the analysis
Inheriting land already burdened by an easement puts you in the position of receiving property together with the obligations already attached to it, rather than personally creating a new obligation through an act you would need capacity to perform. Article 38's own example, easements, fits this exactly: the burden exists because of the property's own legal situation, not because of anything the current owner agreed to. Your mental incapacity affects your ability to enter into new contracts and similar acts, but it does not detach an existing property-based obligation like an easement from land you have inherited.
What this does and does not mean for you practically
In practice, this means you cannot rely on your incapacity as a reason to disregard the easement, and someone with the right to enforce it could still hold you, or your property, to that obligation. It does not mean, however, that your incapacity is irrelevant to everything about how you manage the inherited land; acts that require you to actively contract, consent, or otherwise exercise capacity would still be affected by the restrictions Article 38 describes, and would generally need a guardian or other representative on your behalf. The easement itself, though, being a burden that runs with the property, is not one of those acts.
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.
- Eduardo B. Olaguer vs. Emilio Purugganan, Jr., et al, G.R. No. 158907, February 12, 2007 — read the decision on LawPhil →