Valera Vs Inserto

Valera vs.
Inserto
149 Scra 533
Facts:
In the proceedings for the settlement of the intestate estate of the decedent spouses, Rafael
Valera and
Consolacion Sarrosa in which Eumelia Cabado and Pompiro Valera had been appointed
administrators the heirs of a deceased daughter of the spouses, Teresa Garin, filed a motion
asking that the Administratrix, Cabado, be declared in contempt for her failure to render an
accounting of her administration. Cabado replied that no accounting could be submitted
unless Jose Garin, Teresa's husband and the movant heirs' father, delivered to the
administrator an 18hectare fishpond belonging to the estate and she in turn moved for the
return thereof to the estate, so that it might be partitioned among the decedents' heirs. Jose
Garin opposed the plea for the fishpond's return to the estate, asserting that the property was
owned by his children and this was why it had never been included in any inventory of the
estate.
The Court, presided over by Hon. Judge Midpantao Adil, viewed the Garin Heirs' motion for
contempt, as well as Cabado's prayer for the fishpond's return to the estate, as having given
rise to a claim for the recovery of an asset of the estate within the purview of Section 6, Rule
87 of the Rules of Court.
Judge Adil ruled that an implied trust had been created, obligating Teresa Garin's heirs to
restore the property to the Valera Spouses' Estate, in accordance with Articles 1453 and 1455
of the Civil Code. It made clear however that the hearing on the matter was meant "merely to
determine whether or not the fishpond should be included as part of the estate and whether or
not the person holding it should be made to deliver and/or return ** (it) to the estate. And so it
was emphasized in another Order that:
**(i)t is never the intendment of this court to write a finish to the issue of ownership
of the fishpond in dispute. The movants may pursue their claim of ownership over
the same in an ordinary civil action. Meanwhile, however, it is the finding of this
probate court that the fishpond must be delivered to the estate.
Clearly, there is no incompatibility between the exercise of the power of this probate
court under Section 6 in relation to Section 7, both of Rule 87, and the contention of
the movants that the proper forum to settle the issue of ownership should be in a
court of general jurisdiction.
Judge Adil afterwards granted the administrators' motion for execution of the order pending
appeal, and directed the sheriff to enforce the direction for the Garin Heirs to reconvey the
fishpond to the estate. The corresponding writ was served on Manuel Fabiana, the supposed
encargado or caretaker. Voicing no objection to the writ, and declaring to the sheriff that he
was a mere lessee, Fabiana voluntarily relinquished possession of the fishpond to the sheriff.
The latter, in turn, delivered it to the administrators.
Later however, Fabiana filed a complaintinintervention with the Probate Court seeking
vindication of his right to the possession of the fishpond, based on a contract of lease between
himself, as lessee, and Jose Garin, as lessor. But Judge Adil dismissed his complaint.
Fabiana thereupon instituted a separate action for injunction and damages, with application for
a preliminary
injunction. Judge Inserto (presiding judge) issued a temporary restraining order enjoining
estate administrators from disturbing Fabiana in the possession of the fishpond, as lessee.
Issue:
1. Whether or not the probate court has jurisdiction to decide the ownership of the
fishpond.
2. Who has the primary jurisdiction to decide the issue of ownership? The probate court
or the court where the separate action were filed?
Rulings:
1. No. settled is the rule that a Court of First Instance (now Regional Trial Court), acting as a
Probate Court, exercises but limited jurisdiction, and thus has no power to take cognizance of
and determine the issue of title to property claimed by a third person adversely to the
decedent, unless the claimant and all the Other parties having legal interest in the property
consent, expressly or impliedly, to the submission of the question to the Probate Court for
adjudgment, or the interests of third persons are not thereby prejudiced, the reason for the
exception being that the question of whether or not a particular matter should be resolved by
the Court in the exercise of its general jurisdiction or of its limited jurisdiction as a special court
(e.g., probate, land registration, etc., is in reality not a jurisdictional but in essence of
procedural one, involving a mode of practice which may be waived.
The facts obtaining in this case, however, do not call for the application of the exception to the
rule. As already earlier stressed, it was at all times clear to the Court as well as to the parties
that if cognizance was being taken of the question of title over the fishpond, it was not for the
purpose of settling the issue definitely and permanently, and writing "finis" thereto, the
question being explicitly left for determination "in an ordinary civil action," but merely to
determine whether it should or should not be included in the inventory. This function of
resolving whether or not property should be included in the estate inventory is, to be sure, one
clearly within the Probate Court's competence, although the Court's determination is only
provisional in character, not conclusive, and is subject to the final decision in a separate action
that may be instituted by the parties. The same norm governs the situation contemplated in
Section 6, Rule 87 of the Rules of Court, expressly invoked by the Probate Court in justification
of its holding a hearing on the issue arising from the parties' conflicting claims over the
fishpond. The examination provided in the cited section is intended merely to elicit evidence
relevant to property of the decedent from persons suspected of having possession or
knowledge thereof, or of having concealed, embezzled, or conveyed away the same. Of course,
if the latter lays no claim to the property and manifests willingness to tum it over to the estate,
no difficulty arises; the Probate Court simply issues the appropriate direction for the delivery of
the property to the estate. On the other hand, if the third person asserts a right to the property
contrary to the decedent's, the Probate Court would have no authority to resolve the issue; a
separate action must be instituted by the administrator to recover the property.
Parenthetically, in the light of the foregoing principles, the Probate Court could have admitted
and taken cognizance of Fabiana's complaint in intervention after obtaining the consent of all
interested parties to its assumption of jurisdiction over the question of title to the fishpond, or
ascertaining the absence of objection thereto. But it did not. It dismissed the complaint in
intervention instead. And all this is now water under the bridge.
2. Since, too, both the Probate Court and the estate administrators are one in the recognition
of the proposition that title to the fishpond could in the premises only be appropriately
determined in a separate action, the actual firing of such a separate action should have been
anticipated, and should not therefore have come as a surprise, to the latter. And since
moreover, implicit in that recognition is also the acknowledge judgment of the superiority of
the authority of the court in which the separate action is filed over the issue of title, the estate
administrators may not now be heard to complain that in such a separate action, the court
should have issued orders necessarily involved in or flowing from the assumption of that
jurisdiction. Those orders cannot in any sense be considered as undue interference with the
jurisdiction of the Probate Court. Resulting from the exercise of primary jurisdiction over the
question of ownership involving estate property claimed by the estate, they must be deemed
superior to otherwise contrary orders issued by the Probate Court in the exercise of what may
be, regarded as merely secondary, or provisional, jurisdiction over the same question.

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