Lapuz-Sy vs Eufemio

Lapuz-Sy vs. Eufemio

43 SCRA 177

FACTS:

Carmen Lapuz-Sy filed a petition for legal separation against Eufemio Eufemio on August 1953.  They were married civilly on September 21, 1934 and canonically after nine days.  They had lived together as husband and wife continuously without any children until 1943 when her husband abandoned her.  They acquired properties during their marriage.  Petitioner then discovered that her husband cohabited with a Chinese woman named Go Hiok on or about 1949.  She prayed for the issuance of a decree of legal separation, which among others, would order that the defendant Eufemio should be deprived of his share of the conjugal partnership profits. 

Eufemio counterclaimed for the declaration of nullity of his marriage with Lapuz-Sy on the ground of his prior and subsisting marriage with Go Hiok.  Trial proceeded and the parties adduced their respective evidence.  However, before the trial could be completed, respondent already scheduled to present surrebuttal evidence, petitioner died in a vehicular accident on May 1969.  Her counsel duly notified the court of her death.  Eufemio moved to dismiss the petition for legal separation on June 1969 on the grounds that the said petition was filed beyond the one-year period provided in Article 102 of the Civil Code and that the death of Carmen abated the action for legal separation.  Petitioner’s counsel moved to substitute the deceased Carmen by her father, Macario Lapuz. 

ISSUE: Whether the death of the plaintiff, before final decree in an action for legal separation, abate the action and will it also apply if the action involved property rights.

HELD:

An action for legal separation is abated by the death of the plaintiff, even if property rights are involved. These rights are mere effects of decree of separation, their source being the decree itself; without the decree such rights do not come into existence, so that before the finality of a decree, these claims are merely rights in expectation. If death supervenes during the pendency of the action, no decree can be forthcoming, death producing a more radical and definitive separation; and the expected consequential rights and claims would necessarily remain unborn.

The petition of  Eufemio for declaration of nullity is moot and academic and there could be no further interest in continuing the same after her demise, that automatically dissolved the questioned union.  Any property rights acquired by either party as a result of Article 144 of the Civil Code of the Philippines 6 could be resolved and determined in a proper action for partition by either the appellee or by the heirs of the appellant.