Short answer. No. Under Article 821 of the Civil Code, any person not domiciled in the Philippines is disqualified from acting as a witness to a will executed here, regardless of nationality. The same article also disqualifies anyone convicted of falsification, perjury, or false testimony. A will attested by a disqualified witness risks being denied probate.
What the law says
The following are disqualified from being witnesses to a will: (1) Any person not domiciled in the Philippines; (2) Those who have been convicted of falsification of a document, perjury or false testimony.
Civil Code, Article 821 — Who Cannot Be a Witness. Read the full provision →
Domicile, not nationality, controls
Article 821 disqualifies any person not domiciled in the Philippines from witnessing a will executed here. The disqualification turns on domicile, meaning the place a person has established as a permanent home with the intent to remain, not on citizenship or mere physical presence. A Filipino citizen who has made a foreign country his permanent home can be disqualified even while holding a Philippine passport, while a foreign national genuinely domiciled in the Philippines is not barred on this ground alone. Simply visiting or temporarily staying in the country does not establish the domicile the article requires, so a foreign tourist or short-term expatriate cannot cure the defect merely by being physically present at the signing.
The second disqualifying ground: certain convictions
The same article separately disqualifies those who have been convicted of falsification of a document, perjury or false testimony. This ground has nothing to do with where the witness lives; it exists because a will depends on its witnesses' truthfulness in attesting that the testator signed freely and in their presence. Someone with a conviction for lying under oath or falsifying a document has already shown the kind of dishonesty the law is guarding against, so the disqualification applies even to a person permanently domiciled in the Philippines who otherwise meets every other qualification to witness a will.
Why the witnessing requirement is strict
A will, particularly one that requires attesting witnesses, relies on those witnesses to later confirm that the testator was of sound mind, signed voluntarily, and that the document offered for probate is the very one actually executed. A witness who could not credibly serve that role, whether because distance makes them hard to reach or because their word has already been discredited by a conviction, undermines the safeguard witnessing exists to provide. That is why the law does not merely prefer qualified witnesses but disqualifies these two categories outright, regardless of how trustworthy the individual may seem in the particular case.
What using a disqualified witness risks
If a will is attested by someone falling into either disqualified category, the instrument may end up short of the number of qualified witnesses the law requires, exposing it to challenge once it is presented for probate. Anyone preparing a will with overseas relatives, friends, or colleagues in mind as witnesses should confirm beforehand that each one is genuinely domiciled in the Philippines and carries no disqualifying conviction, rather than discovering the defect only after the testator has died, when the will is already being contested and the testator can no longer simply sign it again with proper witnesses.