Case Digest: Related Case under Article 29 of Family Code (Deloria vs. Felix)

ARSENIO DE LORIA AND RICARDA DE LORIA, PETITIONERS

VS.

FELIPE APELAN FELIX, RESPONDENT.

G. R. No. L-9005 June 20, 1958

BENGZON, J.:

Facts: Matea and Felipe lived together as wife and husband without the benefit of the marriage. They acquired properties but had no children. Matea became seriously ill. Knowing her critical condition, two young ladies of legal age fetched Father Gerardo Bautista, Catholic parish priest of Pasay. Respondent and Matea’s marriage was under articulo mortis.

Petitioners compelled respondent to render an accounting and to deliver the properties left by the deceased. They were grandchildren of Adriana de la Cruz, sister of Matea, and claim to be the only surviving forced heirs of the latter.

The petitioners' contention of invalidity of marriage rests on these propositions:

(a) There was no "marriage contract" signed by the wedded couple the witnesses and the priest, as required by section 3 of the Marriage Law; and

(b) The priest filed no affidavit, nor recorded the marriage with the local civil registry.

Issue: Whether the failure of Fr. Bautista to send copies of the certificate of marriage in question to the Local Civil Registrar would render the said marriage invalid.

Held: No. The mere fact that the parish priest who married the petitioners’ natural father and mother, while the latter was in articulo mortis, failed to send a copy of the marriage certificate to the municipal secretary, does not invalidate said marriage, since it does not appear that in the celebration thereof all requisites for its validity were not present, the forwarding of a copy of the marriage certificate not being one of the requisites.

The widower, needless to add, has better rights to the estate of the deceased than the plaintiffs who are the grandchildren of her sister Adriana. In the absence of brothers or sisters and of nephews, children of the former. The surviving spouse shall succeed to the entire estate of the deceased.