Balus v. Balus
G.R. No. 168970 January 15, 2010
Herein petitioner and respondents are the children of the deceased Rufo Balus who died on July 6, 1984. In 1979, Rufo mortgaged his land as security for a loan he obtained from the Rural Bank. When he failed to pay, the same was foreclosed and was subsequently sold to the Bank as the sole bidder. A new title then was issued in favor of the bank.
In 1989, petitioner and respondents executed an Extrajudicial Settlement of Estate adjudicating to each of them a specific one-third portion of the subject property. Three years after the execution of the Extrajudicial Settlement, respondents bought the subject property from the Bank. Hence, a new title was issued to them. Meanwhile, petitioner continued possession of the subject lot. In 1995, respondents filed a Complaint for Recovery of Possession against petitioner for his refusal to surrender the property.
The RTC then ordered the respondents to execute a Deed of Sale in favor of the petitioner, with respect to his one-third share in the property in question, presently possessed by him, and described in the deed of partition. It held that the right of petitioner to purchase from the respondents his share in the disputed property was recognized by the provisions of the Extrajudicial Settlement of Estate, which the parties had executed before the respondents bought the subject lot from the Bank.
The CA however ruled otherwise and ordered petitioner to surrender possession. It held that when petitioner and respondents did not redeem the subject property within the redemption period and allowed the consolidation of ownership and the issuance of a new title in the name of the Bank, their co-ownership was extinguished.
ISSUE: Whether co-ownership between the parties over the subject property persisted even after the lot was purchased by the Bank and title thereto transferred to its name, and even after it was eventually bought back by the respondents from the Bank.
No. The rights to a person’s succession are transmitted from the moment of his death. In the present case, since Rufo lost ownership of the subject property during his lifetime, it only follows that at the time of his death, the disputed parcel of land no longer formed part of his estate to which his heirs may lay claim. Stated differently, petitioner and respondents never inherited the subject lot from their father.
Petitioner and respondents, therefore, were wrong in assuming that they became co-owners of the subject lot. Thus, any issue arising from the supposed right of petitioner as co-owner of the contested parcel of land is negated by the fact that, in the eyes of the law, the disputed lot did not pass into the hands of petitioner and respondents as compulsory heirs of Rufo at any given point in time. Moreover, there is nothing in the subject Extrajudicial Settlement to indicate any express stipulation for petitioner and respondents to continue with their supposed co-ownership of the contested lot.
On the contrary, a plain reading of the provisions of the Extrajudicial Settlement would not, in any way, support petitioner’s contention that it was his and his sibling’s intention to buy the subject property from the Bank and continue what they believed to be co-ownership thereof. In the first place, as earlier discussed, there is no co-ownership to talk about and no property to partition, as the disputed lot never formed part of the estate of their deceased father.
