Short answer. Yes. The Civil Code requires co-heirs to reimburse one another in the partition for the income and fruits each has received from estate property. Rent is income, so the heir who collected it must bring it into the accounting — though he is credited in turn for what he properly spent on the property.
What the law says
In the partition the co-heirs shall reimburse one another for the income and fruits which each one of them may have received from any property of the estate, for any useful and necessary expenses made upon such property, and for any damage thereto through malice or neglect.
Civil Code, Article 1087 — Reimbursing Income and Fruits. Read the full provision →
The accounting runs in three directions
Article 1087 of the Civil Code does not simply order one heir to hand money over. It sets up a mutual reckoning inside the partition itself, covering three things at once. First, the income and fruits any heir received from estate property — rent, harvests, produce, interest. Second, the useful and necessary expenses that heir made on the property — real property tax, repairs to keep the building standing, insurance, the cost of collecting the rent. Third, damage through malice or neglect — the value lost because a co-heir let the property deteriorate or wasted it. The heir who collected rent is a debtor on the first count and may well be a creditor on the second.
What this means for the heir who held the property
He is not automatically a wrongdoer, and it is worth saying so plainly if the family is already at odds. Before partition the heirs own the estate in common; one of them managing a building and receiving its rent is ordinary, not theft. What the law will not allow is for him to keep the fruits as though the property were already his alone. So the practical outcome is rarely that he pays over every peso collected. It is that the gross rents go on one side of the ledger, his documented necessary and useful outlays go on the other, and the net is charged against his share when the estate is divided.
The proof problem, and who has it
Years of collection are usually years of poor records, and this is where these disputes are actually decided. Ask for the lease contracts, the receipts issued to tenants, the bank statements into which rent was deposited, the tax declarations and real property tax receipts, and the invoices for any repair claimed. An heir who administered the property and received its income can be required to render an accounting of it; an heir who claims an expense must be able to show it. Note also what the article does not reach: it settles claims between co-heirs over estate property. Debts owed to the estate by outsiders, and the estate's own creditors, are separate matters.
Raising it the right way
Raise the accounting during the partition, not after it. An extrajudicial settlement or a deed of partition signed without any reference to the rents can be read as closing the matter, and heirs are routinely asked to sign such a deed at a family meeting with no time to read it. Do not sign one you do not understand, and do not accept a share described only as a fraction without seeing the figures behind it. If the heir in possession refuses to account, partition can be pursued judicially and the accounting sought in the same action. To have the documents and the arithmetic reviewed, you can book a consultation with us.