Garcia mulls revival of old civil code provision

CEBU, Philippines - A measure reviving the system of "conjugal partnership of gains" in the old civil code as basis for the property relations between husband and wife has been approved on third and final reading in the House of Representatives.

House Bill 1288 authored by Deputy Speaker for the Visayas Pablo Garcia seeks to amend Article 75 of the Family Code of the Philippines, was created by Executive Order 209 by then president Corazon Aquino in June 18, 1987.

Garcia said Article 75 states that prior to the marriage or civil union, the future spouses may enter into a contract, agree on the regime of absolute community, conjugal partnership of gains, complete separation of property or any other regime.

In the absence of a premarital agreement, or when the regime agreed upon is void, the system of absolute community of property shall govern, Garcia said still citing Article 75.

Under Garcia’s bill, the system of conjugal partnership of gains (CPG) shall be revived as the basis for the property relations of husband and wife, replacing the system of absolute community of property in the absence of an agreement prior to the marriage.

"The CPG is about property relations between the spouses, under which the spouses place in a common fund the proceeds, products, fruits and income from their separate properties and those acquired by either or both spouses through their efforts or by chance," Garcia said.

The bill is similar to the provision under Republic Act 386 or the old Civil Code of the Philippines which was enacted into law in June 18, 1949.

"The system of conjugal partnership of gains, adopted for over four decades, before it was amended to absolute community of property in the Family Code of 1987, has been generally accepted, practiced, and firmly established in the country's marital institutions," Garcia said.

According to Garcia, the system of absolute community would appear to be the most ideal type of mode of property relations between spouses because it impresses and projects an image of an all for one and one for all attitude for the marital partnership.

Garcia said the system of absolute community partakes the kind of property relations whereby both spouses, upon entering marriage, shall become owners in common of all properties they had previously owned individually prior to their marriage.

"It, however, fails to consider the vagaries of life, the idiosyncrasies of people, and that spouses, as human beings, are only too prone to human weaknesses and errors," Garcia said.

Garcia said the provision suffers from a legal flaw which in all probability can be attributed to inadvertence.

"The system of absolute community had failed to take into consideration other provisions of the Civil Code which, in certain unique instances, become interrelated because they involve a common subject matter: property," Garcia said.

Under the system of absolute community, Garcia said all property owned by the respective spouses prior to the marriage become by operation of law common property of the marriage, including properties inherited under circumstances where the obligation under the reserva troncal obtains.

The reserva troncal is a special rule designed primarily to assure the return of the reservable property to the third degree relatives belonging to the line from which the property originally came and avoid its being dissipated by the relatives of the inheriting ascendant. – (FREEMAN)