Conditional

This is a tale of two marriages entered into by a man. Both marriages, however, are valid and legal because they were contracted in succession, after the first one had been dissolved by the death of the first wife.

During his first marriage, Carling and his first wife purchased a property in a Quezon City subdivision. The contract he signed was a lease and conditional sale agreement under which Carling as lessee-vendee would pay a monthly rental of P290 for 20 years. In the lease agreement, the lessor-seller transferred only the temporary use and enjoyment of the house and lot for residential purposes. It was provided further in the agreement that if at the expiration of the lease period, the lessee-vendee (Carling) should have fully and faithfully complied with all the obligations stipulated, the lessor-vendor would immediately sell, transfer and convey to him the property subject of the agreement. Four years later, his first wife by whom he had three children, died. The widower Carling continued to pay for the house and lot. Eight years later, he remarried Bessie. Thereafter, payment of the house and lot was made out of the conjugal funds of the second marriage. Four years later, Nimfa, one of Carling’s daughters by his first marriage, built a house at the back portion of the premises at the behest of Carling. Nimfa thus offered to continue paying the monthly rental until the full lease amounts had been fully paid. Upon such full payment the lessor-seller executed in favor of Carling the Deed of Absolute Sale over the premises and the next day, he donated all his rights, title and interest over the lot and bungalow thereon to Nimfa. A controversy arose when Carling died. However his wife Bessie, with whom he begot two children, claimed that the property was acquired during the second marriage when the final deed of sale was executed. Therefore it should be their conjugal property. Nimfa, on the other hand, contended that the property was acquired during the marriage of her mother and father when the lease and conditional sale agreement was signed by Carling. Is Nimfa correct?

No. The agreement entered into by Carling during his first marriage to Nimfa’s mother is in the nature of a contract to sell as contradistinguished from the contract of sale. In a contract to sell or conditional sale, ownership is not transferred upon delivery of the property but upon full payment of the purchase price. Compliance with the stipulated payments is a suspensive condition, the failure of which prevents the obligation of the vendor to convey title from acquiring binding force. So what was vested in the conjugal partnership of the first marriage was merely the beneficial title. It was only upon full payment of the amortizations (lease rentals) that Carling acquired ownership. And this was during his second marriage. So the property belongs to the conjugal partnership of the second marriage. Bessie would get 1/2 of the property and the other half to be divided between her and her two children at 1/6 each. But she must reimburse the amount advanced by the first conjugal partnership and by Nimfa. Furthermore, Nimfa was the exclusive owner of the house she erected on the lot over which she had all the rights of a builder in good faith. This was the ruling in Jovellanos vs. Court of Appeals, 210 SCRA 126.

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