Short answer. Yes. A child entrusted with administering a parent's property must be given a reasonable monthly allowance, not less than what the owner would have paid a stranger doing the same work. The net proceeds still belong to you as owner unless you grant them to him.
What the law says
The child shall be given a reasonable monthly allowance in an amount not less than that which the owner would have paid if the administrator were a stranger, unless the owner, grants the entire proceeds to the child.
Family Code, Article 227 — Property the Child Is Entrusted to Administer. Read the full provision →
Ownership is not affected by who manages
The article starts from the obvious point and then adds the unobvious one. Where parents entrust the management of their property to an unemancipated child, the net proceeds of such property shall belong to the owner — the rent is yours, and your son does not acquire an interest in the building by running it. What he acquires is a right to be paid for the running of it. Administration and ownership are kept apart, which is the same distinction the Code draws whenever one person manages another's property.
The measure is what a stranger would cost
The benchmark is deliberately external: not less than that which the owner would have paid if the administrator were a stranger. So the allowance is not set by what the household can spare, nor by what a parent thinks a teenager needs, nor by pocket money already given for other reasons. It is what an unrelated property manager doing that work would have been paid. That figure is a floor, not a ceiling, and it is expressed as a monthly allowance, which implies it is paid as the work is done rather than settled at some future point.
Or give him the whole of it
The article leaves the parent a cleaner alternative: the owner may grant the entire proceeds to the child, in which case the question of an allowance falls away. That is a real choice with real consequences, since the proceeds of a rental property will usually exceed what a manager's wage would be. Some families prefer it precisely because it avoids having to price the work. It should be a decision made deliberately and recorded, not something that happens by drift because nobody ever discussed money.
It is not an advance on his inheritance
The closing sentence forecloses an argument that would otherwise surface at the parent's death: what is given, in whole or in part, is not charged to the child's legitime. Siblings cannot later treat the years of allowance or the granted proceeds as a slice already taken from his share of the estate. He earned it. Keep the arrangement documented all the same — what was entrusted, what was paid, and on what footing — because an undocumented family arrangement is the kind of thing that becomes a dispute after a funeral.
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.
- Ma. Dulce C. Fernandez vs. Enrique C. Fernandez, G.R. No. 266145, August 19, 2024 — read the decision on LawPhil →