Short answer. The owner of the property does, in all three of the categories the Civil Code recognises: natural fruits, industrial fruits and civil fruits. Rent is a civil fruit and belongs to the owner unless he has granted the right to it away, which is what a usufruct or a lease of the income does.
What the law says
To the owner belongs: (1) The natural fruits; (2) The industrial fruits; (3) The civil fruits.
Civil Code, Article 441 — Fruits Belong to the Owner. Read the full provision →
One rule covering three kinds of yield
The provision is a single allocation: to the owner belongs the natural, the industrial and the civil fruits. Natural fruits are the spontaneous products of the soil and the young and other products of animals. Industrial fruits are what land produces through cultivation or labour. Civil fruits are the yield a thing produces because of a legal relationship — rents, lease payments, and the like. The point of listing all three is that the answer does not change with the form the income takes. What the property earns follows the property.
Ownership of the thing, not effort on it
The rule allocates fruits by title, which surprises people who did the work. A person who planted, tended and harvested a crop on land that is not his does not become owner of the harvest by virtue of the labour; he has claims arising from the expense and effort, but the fruits are allocated to the owner of the thing that produced them. The same logic runs the other way for civil fruits. Rent is owed to whoever owns the property let out, not to the relative who collected it, managed the tenants or kept the building standing.
Where the rule most often bites
Three situations account for most disputes. Property held in common, where one co-owner collects the rent and treats it as his because he did the collecting. Property sold, where the parties never said who takes the harvest or the rent for the months around the transfer. And property held by someone whose right to hold it has ended, where the income earned during that period has to be accounted for. In each of them the argument is not really about the fruits — it is about who owned the thing at the moment the fruits accrued.
How the default gets displaced
The allocation is the starting position, not an unbreakable one. An owner may separate the income from the thing by contract, and often does: a usufruct gives the fruits to someone other than the owner, an arrangement over the produce assigns the harvest, and a security device may apply the fruits to a debt. What settles a dispute is therefore documentary — the deed, the lease, the terms agreed when the property changed hands, and the dates. If nothing was agreed, the rule in the article decides it, and it decides it in favour of the owner.
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.
- Lorenzo Willy, substituted by his heirs, namely: Felicidad D. Willy, Betty Willy Cadangen, Tony, G.R. No. 207051, December 1, 2021 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Wheelers Club International, Inc. vs. Jovito Bonifacio, Jr, G.R. No. 139540, June 29, 2005 — read the decision on LawPhil →