Short answer. Between yourselves, each bears family expenses in proportion to income — or to the market value of your separate properties if income is insufficient. Towards creditors it is different: your liability for family expenses is solidary, so one spouse can be sued for the whole.
What the law says
Both spouses shall bear the family expenses in proportion to their income, or, in case of insufficiency or default thereof, to the current market value of their separate properties. The liabilities of the spouses to creditors for family expenses shall, however, be solidary.
Family Code, Article 146 — Sharing Family Expenses; Solidary Liability to Creditors. Read the full provision →
Separate property does not mean separate households
The first thing the article settles is that a regime of separation does not release either spouse from the cost of the family. Both are bound, and the sharing is in proportion to their income — not equally, and not according to who happens to hold the chequebook. The spouse earning three times as much bears three times the share. Where income is insufficient or a spouse defaults, the measure shifts to the current market value of their separate properties, which reaches the spouse who is asset-rich and income-poor and cannot simply plead a small salary.
Solidary is the word that costs money
The second sentence changes the audience. Proportionality governs between the spouses; towards creditors the liability is solidary, which means the creditor may demand the whole obligation from either spouse without dividing it and without suing both. A shop, a school or a hospital owed for a family expense need not work out anyone's income share. It can present the entire bill to whichever spouse is easier to reach — commonly the one with a steady job or a traceable account — and that spouse must pay it in full.
Paying more than your share is not the end of it
The two rules fit together rather than contradicting each other. A spouse compelled to pay the whole of a family expense has satisfied the creditor, but as between the spouses the proportional rule still governs, so what she paid above her own share is recoverable from the other. That is why the paying spouse should keep the receipt and a record of what was paid for. Without it, a reimbursement claim years later becomes an argument about whether the expense was a family expense at all.
The limit is the phrase 'family expenses'
Solidary liability attaches only to family expenses — the cost of the household, its support, its ordinary needs. A purely personal debt of one spouse is not converted into a joint one by the fact of marriage, and a creditor invoking this article has to bring the obligation within the phrase. So when a demand arrives, the first question is what the debt was actually for, and the documents behind it are what answers it. That is the point at which advice is worth taking, before anything is acknowledged in writing.
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.
- Lincoln L. Yao vs. Honorable Norma C. Perello, et al, G.R. No. 153828, October 24, 2003 — read the decision on LawPhil →