Short answer. When someone dies without a valid will, Philippine law itself decides who inherits and how much, a process called intestate succession. Which relatives inherit, and in what shares, depends on who survives, such as a spouse, children, parents, or siblings, and is worked out under the Civil Code's rules on legal succession, not by agreement among the family.
What the law says
Legal or intestate succession takes place
Civil Code, Article 960 — When Intestate Succession Applies. Read the full provision →
What the law says
If a person dies without a will, or with a void will, or one which has subsequently lost its validity
Civil Code, Article 960 — When Intestate Succession Applies. Read the full provision →
This is called legal or intestate succession
Article 960 of the Civil Code sets out exactly when the law's own rules take over. Legal or intestate succession takes place in four situations. The most familiar is the first: If a person dies without a will, or with a void will, or one which has subsequently lost its validity. But the same rules also apply when a will exists yet fails to name an heir for all of the estate, so that intestate succession fills in only the leftover property; when a condition attached to naming an heir never happens, the named heir dies before the testator, or the heir repudiates the inheritance with no substitute in place; or when the person named as heir is legally incapable of inheriting.
Who actually inherits depends on which relatives survive
Article 960 establishes when the law's succession rules apply, but it does not by itself say who receives what — that depends on which relatives survive the deceased. The Civil Code lays out a specific order among relatives elsewhere, covering categories such as a surviving spouse, children and other descendants, parents and other ascendants, siblings, and more distant relatives, generally giving the closer relatives priority over the more distant ones. Because the actual result changes completely depending on which combination of relatives is left behind, and the specific shares each category receives sit in other provisions beyond what is covered here, giving a single answer without knowing exactly who survived would be misleading rather than helpful.
Why this matters in practice
Because intestate succession is triggered automatically once one of the situations in Article 960 exists, a family does not need to draft any special document to make it apply — but that also means no one gets to choose who inherits or in what proportion outside of what the law itself provides. If you are trying to work out who inherits after a death with no will, or a will that turned out to be invalid, the decisive questions are which relatives are still living, how closely each is related to the deceased, and whether any of the other triggers under Article 960, such as an incapable or repudiating heir, apply to the estate in question.
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.
- In the matter of the petition for the probate of the will of Consuelo, G.R. No. 204793, June 8, 2020 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Hilarion, Jr. and Enrico Orendain, represented by Fe Orendain vs. Trusteeship of the Estate of Doña Margarita Rodriquez, G.R. No. 168660, June 30, 2009 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Alberto Herbon, et al. vs. Leopoldo T. Palad, G.R. No. 149542, July 20, 2006 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Lourdes L. Dorotheo vs. Court of Appeals, et al, G.R. No. 108581, December 8, 1999 — read the decision on LawPhil →