My father acknowledged an illegitimate child in his will and then revoked the will — does that acknowledgment still stand?

Recognition and the will are treated as separate acts

Article 834 states the rule plainly: the recognition of an illegitimate child does not lose its legal effect, even though the will wherein it was made should be revoked. Even though your father put the acknowledgment inside the will, the law does not treat the acknowledgment as merely one clause that rises or falls with the rest of the document. Revoking the will destroys the testamentary dispositions it contained, but the acknowledgment of the child is carved out and continues to stand on its own.

Why the law separates recognition from testamentary dispositions

A will's dispositions of property are naturally revocable, since a testator is free to change his mind about who inherits what, up until his death. Recognition of a child, however, is a statement of an actual, existing fact: that the child is the testator's own. Once truthfully acknowledged, that fact does not become untrue simply because the testator later changes his testamentary plans. The law reflects this difference by making the child's status independent of whatever happens afterward to the document in which the acknowledgment happened to appear.

What this means for the child's status

Because the acknowledgment survives the revocation, the child recognized in your father's will remains legally acknowledged as his illegitimate child, regardless of what happened to the rest of the will's provisions. This status carries its own consequences separate from testamentary succession, including rights the law attaches specifically to being a recognized child, which are not undone just because your father decided the will itself should no longer take effect.

What this means for settling the estate

Since the acknowledgment survives the revoked will, that child's status as your father's recognized illegitimate child needs to be accounted for when the estate is eventually settled, even though the will that once named them is no longer in force and the estate may now pass through intestate succession or a later valid will. Treating the revocation as having erased the acknowledgment along with everything else in the document would misstate what Article 834 actually protects.

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.

• Alejandra Arado, et al. vs. Anacleto Alcoran and Elenette Sunjaco, G.R. No. 163362, July 8, 2015 — read the decision on LawPhil →

Related provisions

• Civil Code, Article 834 — Recognition of a Child Survives Revocation