The rule, in the Code's own words
Two provisions carry almost all the weight. Article 16 of the Civil Code:
Article 16. Real property as well as personal property is subject to the law of the country where it is situated.
However, intestate and testamentary successions, both with respect to the order of succession and to the amount of successional rights and to the intrinsic validity of testamentary provisions, shall be regulated by the national law of the person whose succession is under consideration, whatever may be the nature of the property and regardless of the country wherein said property may be found.
And Article 1039:
Article 1039. Capacity to succeed is governed by the law of the nation of the decedent.
Notice what the second paragraph of Article 16 gives up. It does not matter that the land is in Batangas, that the bank is on Ayala Avenue, or that the will was signed in Manila. Succession follows the person, not the property.
Four questions, handed over
In Bellis v. Bellis (G.R. No. L-23678, June 6, 1967, En Banc), the Supreme Court set out exactly what the two articles transfer to the decedent's national law:
Article 16, par. 2, and Art. 1039 of the Civil Code, render applicable the national law of the decedent, in intestate or testamentary successions, with regard to four items: (a) the order of succession; (b) the amount of successional rights; (e) the intrinsic validity of the provisions of the will; and (d) the capacity to succeed.
(The lettering of the third item is as it appears in the published text.) Everything outside that list stays Philippine: which court has jurisdiction, how the will is proved here, how the estate tax is computed and paid, how a title is transferred at the Registry of Deeds. Bellis also disposed of the argument that Philippine public policy overrides the rule. Article 17's third paragraph, on prohibitive laws, is not an exception to Article 16 — the Court traced the legislative history to show that Congress deliberately made the second paragraph of Article 16 stand on its own.
A foreigner cannot choose Philippine law in his will
This comes up constantly in planning conversations, and the answer has been the same for a century. Amos Bellis had executed two wills, one for Texas and one for the Philippines. The Court's response, adopting Miciano v. Brimo, 50 Phil. 867:
Assuming that such was the decedent's intention in executing a separate Philippine will, it would not alter the law, for as this Court ruled in Miciano v. Brimo, 50 Phil. 867, 870, a provision in a foreigner's will to the effect that his properties shall be distributed in accordance with Philippine law and not with his national law, is illegal and void, for his national law cannot be ignored in regard to those matters that Article 10 — now Article 16 — of the Civil Code states said national law should govern.
A separate Philippine will is still worth having — it keeps the local assets in one instrument and makes the Philippine proceeding cleaner. What it cannot do is change which law decides who inherits.
When "national law" points back at us: renvoi
Two complications sit on top of the rule. First, "national law" may not mean a country at all. In Aznar v. Garcia (G.R. No. L-16749, January 31, 1963, En Banc), the Court held there is no single American law governing testamentary provisions, each state of the Union having its own private law applicable to its citizens only, so the national law of a Californian could refer to nothing but the private law of California. The same reasoning applies wherever succession is governed at a sub-national level.
Second, that foreign law may include a conflicts rule that sends the question straight back. Edward Christensen was a California citizen domiciled in the Philippines, and California's own rule referred the succession of a decedent domiciled elsewhere to the law of that domicile. The Court refused to bounce it back:
The court of the domicile can not and should not refer the case back to California; such action would leave the issue incapable of determination because the case will then be like a football, tossed back and forth between the two states, between the country of which the decedent was a citizen and the country of his domicile.
So Philippine law applied, and the acknowledged natural child kept her legitime. That is renvoi, and it matters for exactly one profile: the long-staying expat whose citizenship and domicile are in different places. Bellis confined the doctrine to that situation — Amos Bellis was both a national and a domiciliary of Texas, so no reference back could arise. If nobody proves the foreign conflicts rule, Bellis says it is not presumed different from ours.
What this means in practice
For an American, Japanese or German decedent's Philippine estate, the work runs in this order. Fix the citizenship at the date of death, with documents. Identify the precise legal unit whose law is the national law — a country, or a state within it. Then obtain that law in a form a Philippine court can receive and put it in evidence, together with proof of how it applies to these heirs.
We do not tell clients what German or Japanese succession law provides. We are not admitted there, and a Philippine court would not take our word for it in any case: foreign law does not prove itself here. What we do is identify the question, arrange the proof, and put it before the court properly — because the alternative is the outcome in Ancheta v. Guersey-Dalaygon (G.R. No. 139868, June 8, 2006), where the administrator of an American decedent's estate relied on the presumption that Maryland law matched ours, Philippine law was applied by default, and the Supreme Court held decades later that this amounted to extrinsic fraud and let the decree of distribution be annulled. The presumption is not a shelter. It is the trap.
Frequently asked questions
My father was a German citizen who lived in Cebu for twenty years. Whose law applies to his estate?
His national law governs the order of succession, the amount of successional rights, the intrinsic validity of his will and capacity to succeed, under Article 16 and Article 1039 of the Civil Code. We will not tell you what that law provides, because a Philippine court will not accept our word for it either. It has to be proved in the case with an official publication or the testimony of someone competent to speak to it. Where his national law contains a conflicts rule pointing back to the law of his domicile, Philippine law can apply instead.
Can a foreigner just write in a Philippine will that Philippine law should apply?
No. In Bellis v. Bellis (G.R. No. L-23678, June 6, 1967) the Supreme Court, adopting Miciano v. Brimo, held that a provision in a foreigner's will distributing property under Philippine law rather than his national law is illegal and void. Executing a separate will for the Philippine assets does not change the governing law either.
What does national law mean for an American decedent?
State law, not a general American law. In Aznar v. Garcia (G.R. No. L-16749, January 31, 1963) the Court held that because each state of the Union has its own private law applicable to its citizens, the national law referred to in Article 16 can only be the law of the particular state. So the first question is which state, and the second is what that state's law says, proved as a fact.
What happens if nobody proves the foreign law?
The Philippine court applies Philippine law by default, and that default can be expensive. In Ancheta v. Guersey-Dalaygon (G.R. No. 139868, June 8, 2006) the ancillary administrator failed to put the law of Maryland in evidence, the trial court applied Philippine rules to an American decedent's estate, and the Supreme Court held that the failure amounted to extrinsic fraud, allowing a long-final decree of distribution to be annulled.