My father acknowledged a child outside marriage in a will that he later revoked — does revoking the will also erase that acknowledgment?

One document, two different kinds of act

Article 834 is a single sentence: The recognition of an illegitimate child does not lose its legal effect, even though the will wherein it was made should be revoked. The reason it works this way is that a will can carry two quite different things. Its dispositions are provisional by nature — Article 828 lets the testator revoke them at any time before his death, and until he dies nobody has received anything. An acknowledgment is not provisional. It is a statement that a child is his, and a man who says that in a signed instrument has admitted a fact about the past which tearing up the paper cannot unmake.

What survives and what does not

Draw the line carefully, because it disappoints in one direction and helps in the other. Any legacy, devise or share the revoked will gave the child is gone; that was a disposition and it went with the will. What survives is status, and status is the more valuable of the two. A recognised child is a compulsory heir, and the Code protects compulsory heirs against the testator's own arrangements — Article 1080 allows a partition made by the decedent himself only insofar as such partition shall be respected, insofar as it does not prejudice the legitime of the compulsory heirs. The share itself depends on which relatives survive and on the marital property regime being liquidated first.

How the will was revoked makes no difference

Article 830 allows revocation by implication of law, by a later will or writing executed as a will, or by burning, tearing, cancelling or obliterating the will with the intention of revoking it. Article 834 is not limited to any of them, and its wording — even though the will wherein it was made should be revoked — takes them all in. So a later will that expressly revokes the earlier one does not withdraw the acknowledgment either, and neither would a change of heart, a new family, or an estrangement. The article exists precisely because those are the circumstances in which the attempt is made.

The practical problem the law cannot solve

The rule is one thing, proving it is another. Where the will was revoked by physical destruction, the very document that recorded the acknowledgment may no longer exist, and the child is left asserting a recognition contained in a paper nobody can produce. So the priority is evidence: locate any copy the drafter or notary kept, keep photographs or fragments, identify the witnesses who read or signed it, and note the date. Bring all of that, together with whatever civil registry records exist for the child, to whoever advises the family before the estate is settled.

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
• Civil Code, Article 828 — A Will Is Always Revocable
• Civil Code, Article 830 — The Three Ways to Revoke
• Civil Code, Article 1080 — Partition by the Decedent Himself