Can the widow and children draw support from the estate while the liquidation drags on for years?

The gap the rule exists to fill

A liquidation can take years, and during it the family's assets are tied up in a mass nobody has yet divided. The article refuses to let the household go without in the meantime. Support shall be given — the wording is mandatory, not permissive — and it runs from the inventory until what belongs to them is delivered, so the entitlement ends with actual delivery of their shares rather than with a decision on paper. The longer the proceeding drags, the longer the support continues, which is the opposite of the incentive people expect.

It is an advance against the share

The second half of the sentence is the one to read twice. What is deducted is that amount received for support which exceeds the fruits or rents pertaining to them. So a family living off the income the property actually generates — the rents, the harvest, the interest — takes nothing from anyone's share. It is the excess over that income, the part that eats into capital, that comes back off the recipient's portion at distribution. A widow who drew heavily for years from a mass producing little income should expect her eventual share to be smaller by the difference.

Who may draw, and on what basis

The article names the surviving spouse and the children, and each is supported in their own right, not through the other. That matters where the family is not living together, or where a child is being cared for by someone else. It matters too that the deduction is individual: what is set against a person's share is what that person received, so the accounting cannot be done as a single household figure if the shares are to come out right. Keeping the record by recipient from the beginning avoids an argument at the end.

Document the fruits, not just the withdrawals

Because the deduction is measured against the income the property produced, the fruits have to be counted as carefully as the payments. Keep the lease agreements and rent receipts, the records of any farm or business income, and bank interest — that figure is what shelters the family's drawings from deduction. Alongside it, record each amount released for support, to whom and when. Where a liquidation has already run for years without such records, reconstructing both sides is the first task, and it is easier now than at distribution.

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.

• Heirs of Jose Sy Bang, Heirs of Julian Sy and Oscar Sy vs. Rolando Sy, et al, G.R. No. 114217, October 13, 2009 — read the decision on LawPhil →
• Hilario M. Ruiz, et al. vs. Court of Appeals, et al, G.R. No. 118671, January 29, 1996 — read the decision on LawPhil →

Related provisions

• Family Code, Article 133 — Support During Liquidation