Short answer. Yes. Article 985 puts parents and ascendants next in line after children, and says so to the exclusion of collateral relatives. Brothers and sisters are collaterals, so while a parent of the deceased is living they receive nothing from an intestate estate, however close they were to him.
What the law says
In default of legitimate children and descendants of the deceased, his parents and ascendants shall inherit from him, to the exclusion of collateral relatives.
Civil Code, Article 985 — Parents and Ascendants Inherit Next. Read the full provision →
Exclusion, not merely priority
The phrase that does the work is to the exclusion of collateral relatives. Intestate succession is not a division among everyone related to the deceased in proportion to closeness; it works in classes, and a class that is present shuts out the classes below it entirely. Siblings, nephews, nieces, uncles and aunts are all collaterals. So long as a parent or a grandparent survives, none of them inherits — not a reduced share, not a token, nothing. That is why an apparently modest question about order turns out to decide the whole estate.
Where the ascendants themselves sit in order
The parents come first among ascendants. Article 987 provides that in default of the father and mother the nearest ascendants in degree inherit, dividing per capita among those of equal degree in the same line, and where they are of different lines but equal degree, one-half goes to the paternal and the other half to the maternal side. So a surviving mother excludes all four grandparents, and if no parent survives, the grandparents on both sides divide by line before dividing within it. Degree of relationship, not affection or dependence, governs throughout.
The heirs who do share with you
Exclusion of collaterals does not mean you take everything. A surviving spouse concurs with the ascendants and takes one-half of the estate, the ascendants receiving the other half between them. Illegitimate children of your son also concur, dividing the inheritance with the ascendants and taking one-half of the estate whatever their number and whatever the number of ascendants. And if your son left any child at all, legitimate or illegitimate, that child's class comes ahead of yours. The siblings, though, remain excluded in every one of these combinations.
What to establish first
Two facts settle the distribution: whether your son left any descendant, and whether the marriage subsisted at his death. Get the birth records of any child claimed to be his, and his marriage certificate, before anything is signed. Note too that this order governs only intestate succession — if he left a valid will, it directs the free portion, and your entitlement as a compulsory heir is your legitime rather than the intestate share. Whether a will exists is therefore the first question, not an afterthought.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 985 — Parents and Ascendants Inherit Next
- Civil Code, Article 987 — Nearer Ascendants Exclude the Rest
- Civil Code, Article 997 — Spouse With Parents or Ascendants
- Civil Code, Article 991 — Ascendants and Illegitimate Children