Wrong action

Can the issue of the validity of marriage and the legitimacy and filiation of a child be resolved in a petition for correction of entries in the civil registry? This is the question raised in this case of Marcia.

Marcia married Juan on March 4, 1978. During their marriage, they begot three children: John, Jimmy and Janet. After 25 years of marriage, Juan died in a vehicular accident while travelling abroad.

When his remains were brought back here, one of those who went to his wake was a woman with a boy in tow. She introduced herself as Lani and the boy as Juanito. Lani told Marcia that Juanito was the son of Juan.

Thus, after the wake and the burial, Marcia immediately verified Lani’s claim by inquiring into Juanito’s record of birth. She indeed found out that Juanito was born on January 1, 1996 with Lani listed as the mother and Juan as the father, and that the boy was acknowledged by Juan as his son on January 13, 1996 and then legitimated by virtue of the subsequent marriage of Lani and Juan on April 22, 1998 as confirmed by a copy of the marriage contract which she also obtained.

Hence on December 23, 2005, Marcia and her children John and Janet who were already of legal age, filed before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) a petition against Lani and the guardians of Juanito, to correct the entries in Juanito’s birth record with the local civil registrar under Rule 108 of the Rules of Court. Marcia contended that Juanito could not have been legitimated by the supposed marriage between Juan and Lani because the same was bigamous since Juan was still married to her. She thus prayed for: (1) the correction of entries in Juanito’s birth record with respect to his legitimation, his father’s name, his acknowledgment and his use of Juan’s surname; (2) a directive to Lani and the guardians of Juanito to submit the latter to DNA testing so as to determine his paternity and filiation; and (3) the declaration of nullity of Juanito’s legitimation and of Juan and Lani’s marriage on the ground that it is bigamous.

In an order dated September 6, 2007, the RTC however dismissed the petition holding that in a special proceeding for the correction of entry, it is not acting as a Family Court under the Family Code and therefore has no jurisdiction over the petition to annul the marriage of Juan and Lani, to impugn the legitimacy of Juanito and order his DNA testing. Hence, the RTC said that the controversy should be ventilated in an ordinary adversarial action.

Marcia and her children however maintained that their main cause of action is for the correction of entries in Juan’s birth records and that in doing so the court can pass upon the validity of the marriage and questions on legitimacy which are merely incidental thereto. Were they correct?

No. In a special proceeding for correction of entries in the civil registry under Rule 108, the trial court has no jurisdiction to nullify marriages and rule on the legitimacy and filiation of a child. The proceeding contemplated in said rule may generally be used only to correct clerical, spelling, typographical and other innocuous error.  A clerical error is one which is visible to the eyes or obvious to the understanding, an error made by a clerk or a transcriber, a mistake in copying or writing; or a harmless change such as a correction of name that is clearly misspelled or of a statement of the occupation of the parent. Substantial or contentious alterations may be allowed only in adversarial proceedings, in which all interested parties are impleaded and due process is properly served.

In this case, Marcia and her children seek to declare as void the marriage of Juan and Lani for being bigamous and impugn Juanito’s filiation in connection with which they also ask the Court that Juan undergo DNA test. These causes of action are not governed by Rule 108. They can be questioned only in a direct action seasonably filed by the proper party and not through a collateral attack such as this petition filed by Marcia and her children. They are governed by A.M. No. 02-11-10-SC which took effect on March 15, 2003 and Article 171 of the FC respectively; hence the petition should be filed in a Family Court. This is the ruling in the case of Barza et.al, vs. City Civil Registrar of Himamaylan, Negros Occidental et. al, G.R. 181174, December 4, 2009).

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