Philippine law has no formal “expungement” statute that erases a criminal case from court or NBI records. What people usually need instead is to resolve an NBI clearance “hit” tied to an old, dismissed, or acquitted case, which mainly costs the standard clearance fee plus the cost of securing certified court documents — typically a modest, manageable amount rather than a fixed government charge.
Philippine law does not have an “expungement” statute the way courts in the United States do — there is no single petition that erases a case from a court’s docket or deletes it from the National Bureau of Investigation’s database. What actually exists is a handful of narrower remedies: resolving an NBI “hit” tied to an old, dismissed, or acquitted case (which mostly costs the standard clearance fee plus the cost of gathering court documents), restoring civil rights lost after a conviction through final discharge from probation or executive clemency, and, for children in conflict with the law, statutory confidentiality of their records. None of these carries a dedicated government “expungement fee” — the real cost is almost always in securing certified documents and, where the matter is contested, a lawyer’s professional fees.
Why There Is No Real “Expungement” Law in the Philippines
People often search for this term after watching how criminal records work abroad, where certain convictions or arrests can be formally sealed or destroyed after a waiting period. The Philippines has nothing directly equivalent. A criminal case, once filed and decided, remains part of the permanent judicial record of the court that handled it and part of the National Bureau of Investigation’s database, regardless of whether the outcome was a conviction, an acquittal, or a dismissal. There is no general law instructing courts or the NBI to delete or destroy those records after some number of years.
What changes is not the existence of the record but its legal effect and its visibility. An acquittal or a dismissal means the person is not guilty in the eyes of the law and should not appear in a clearance as having an unresolved case; a conviction followed by completed probation or a pardon restores rights that were lost, even though the conviction itself remains part of the record. Understanding this distinction is the key to knowing which remedy actually applies to a given situation, and therefore what it will realistically cost.
Resolving an NBI Clearance “Hit” From an Old, Dismissed, or Acquitted Case
The most common reason people search for how to “expunge” a record is that an NBI clearance application comes back flagged — commonly called a “hit” — because the applicant’s name matches or resembles a name in the NBI’s database of case records, even though the underlying case was dismissed, resulted in acquittal, or actually belongs to a different person entirely. This is not necessarily a criminal record at all; it simply means the system found something that needs to be manually verified before a clean clearance can be released.
To resolve a hit tied to a case that is genuinely over, the applicant typically needs to bring certified true copies of the relevant court documents — the order of dismissal, the certificate of finality, or the judgment of acquittal — to the NBI so its verification personnel can confirm the case no longer poses an issue. Where the hit is simply a case of a similar name (a common problem given how many Filipinos share surnames and even full names), the applicant may instead need to establish that they are not the person named in the flagged record, sometimes with a certification from the court or prosecutor’s office involved.
Cost-wise, this route does not carry a separate “expungement” charge. The applicant pays the regular NBI clearance fee, which the NBI adjusts from time to time and which varies by transaction type and payment channel, plus modest charges for certified true copies of court records (set by the clerk of court where the case was filed) and, if needed, notarization of any supporting affidavit. The main cost in practice is time and legwork — tracking down the old case records, especially if the case was handled years ago in a different city.
Restoring Rights After Conviction: Probation and Pardon
For someone who was actually convicted, the closest thing Philippine law offers to relief is not erasure but restoration of rights. Under the Probation Law (Presidential Decree No. 968), once a probationer completes the period of probation and is given final discharge by the court, that discharge operates to restore all civil rights lost or suspended as a result of the conviction and fully discharges any fine imposed for the offense. The conviction itself is not deleted from the record, but the legal disabilities that came with it — such as certain civil and political rights — are lifted.
For a conviction where probation was never available or already served without probation, the remaining avenue is executive clemency — an absolute pardon granted by the President. A pardon can restore civil and political rights lost by reason of the conviction, and an absolute pardon in particular is understood to remove the disqualifications that would otherwise attach, though again it does not physically delete the case from judicial or NBI records; what it changes is the person’s legal standing going forward. Applying for pardon is handled through the Board of Pardons and Parole and generally requires proof the sentence (or parole or probation period) has been fully served, along with clearances and supporting documents; there is no fixed government fee for the pardon application itself, but applicants typically incur costs for notarization, certified documents, and clearances gathered from multiple agencies.
Sealed Records for Children in Conflict with the Law
The one area where Philippine law does impose real confidentiality on criminal-type records is for minors. Under the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act (Republic Act No. 9344), all records and proceedings involving a child in conflict with the law, from initial contact until final disposition of the case, are considered privileged and confidential. The public is excluded from the proceedings, and the records cannot be disclosed to anyone for any purpose except to determine eligibility for suspended sentence or probation, or to enforce civil liability arising from the case. Law enforcement agencies are required to maintain separate blotters for these cases and to use coding systems that conceal the child’s identity. Just as important, records of a child in conflict with the law generally cannot be used against that person in later proceedings if they offend again as an adult, except when doing so would actually benefit them and with their written consent. This is the closest Philippine law comes to something like a sealed or protected record.
What This Means for Your Wallet
Because there is no dedicated expungement proceeding, there is no single fee schedule to point to. In practice, the realistic cost buckets are: the standard NBI clearance fee, a modest amount that varies by transaction type and channel and that the NBI adjusts from time to time, for anyone simply trying to clear a hit; per-page charges for certified true copies of court orders, judgments, or certificates of finality, which are set by the clerk of court and are typically modest; notarial fees for any affidavit needed to support the request; and, if the matter requires filing something with a court (for example, asking a court to issue a certificate of finality it never issued, or seeking clarification of an old case), attorney’s fees, which vary depending on the lawyer and the complexity of tracking down old records. For a straightforward hit caused by mistaken identity or an old, clearly dismissed case, total out-of-pocket costs often stay modest. Cases requiring a lawyer to chase down decades-old records across different courts, or a formal pardon application, cost meaningfully more and take considerably longer.
When You Actually Need a Lawyer
Many hit-resolution cases can be handled directly with the NBI once the right documents are in hand, especially where the case record is recent and easy to trace. A lawyer becomes genuinely useful when the case is old and the records are hard to locate, when the court that handled the original case no longer has an easily retrievable file, when there is a real dispute about whether the hit actually belongs to the applicant, or when the goal is restoring rights after an actual conviction through probation discharge or a pardon application, since those routes involve dealing directly with courts or the Board of Pardons and Parole rather than simple administrative verification.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a law in the Philippines called an Expungement Law? No, there is no Philippine statute that erases or destroys a criminal case record; what exists instead are narrower remedies like clearing an NBI hit tied to a dismissed or resolved case, restoring civil rights after probation, or executive clemency for a conviction.
My case was dismissed years ago but still shows as a hit on my NBI clearance, what do I do? Bring certified true copies of the court's dismissal order or certificate of finality to the NBI so its verification personnel can confirm the case is resolved; this usually only costs the regular clearance fee plus the cost of the certified documents.
Does completing probation erase my criminal record? No, the conviction remains part of the record, but under the Probation Law, final discharge after completing probation restores the civil rights that were lost or suspended because of the conviction.
Can a presidential pardon remove my case from my NBI or court record? An absolute pardon restores civil and political rights lost because of a conviction, but it does not physically delete the case from judicial or NBI records; the case remains on record even though the legal disabilities are lifted.
This commentary is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For guidance specific to your situation, please consult a licensed attorney.
Because there is no single expungement proceeding, the fastest path is almost always figuring out which specific remedy actually fits the situation, then gathering the right documents for that one.