VITUG vs CA
188 SCRA 755
FACTS: This case is a chapter in an earlier suit decided by this Court involving the
probate of the two wills of the late Dolores Luchangco Vitug, who died in New York,
U. S.A. naming private respondent Rowena Faustino-Corona executrix. In said
decision, the court upheld the appointment of Nenita Alonte as co-special
administrator of Mrs. Vitugs estate with her (Mrs. Vitugs) widower, petitioner
Romarico G. Vitug, pending probate.
Romarico G. Vitug filed a motion asking for authority from the probate court to sell
certain shares of stock and real properties belonging to the estate to cover allegedly
his advances to the estate, plus interests, which he claimed were personal funds. As
found by the CA the alleged advances were spent for the payment of estate tax,
deficiency estate tax, and increment thereto.
Rowena Corona opposed the motion to sell on the ground that the same funds
withdrawn were conjugal partnership properties and part of the estate, and hence,
there was allegedly no ground for reimbursement. She also sought his ouster for
failure to include the sums in question for inventory and for concealment of funds
belonging to the estate.
Vitug insists that the said funds are his exclusive property having acquired the same
through a survivorship agreement executed with his late wife and the bank.
The trial courts upheld the validity of such agreement.
On the other hand, the CA held that the survivorship agreement constitutes a
conveyance mortis causa which did not comply with the formalities of a valid will
as prescribed by Article 805 of the Civil Code, and secondly, assuming that it is a
mere donation inter vivos, it is a prohibited donation under the provisions of Article
133 of the Civil Code.
ISSUE: W/N the survivorship agreement between the spouses Vitug constitutes a
donation?
HELD: NO. The conveyance in question is not, first of all, one of mortis causa,
which should be embodied in a will. A will has been defined as a personal, solemn,
revocable and free act by which a capacitated person disposes of his property and
rights and declares or complies with duties to take effect after his death. In other
words, the bequest or device must pertain to the testator. In this case, the monies
subject of savings account No. 35342-038 were in the nature of conjugal funds In
the case relied on, Rivera v. Peoples Bank and Trust Co., we rejected claims that a
survivorship agreement purports to deliver one partys separate properties in favor
of the other, but simply, their joint holdings.
There is no showing that the funds exclusively belonged to one party, and hence it
must be presumed to be conjugal, having been acquired during the existence of the
marital relations.
Neither is the survivorship agreement a donation inter vivos, for obvious reasons,
because it was to take effect after the death of one party. Secondly, it is not a
donation between the spouses because it involved no conveyance of a spouses
own properties to the other.
It is also our opinion that the agreement involves no modification petition of the
conjugal partnership, as held by the Court of Appeals, by mere stipulation and
that it is no cloak to circumvent the law on conjugal property relations. Certainly,
the spouses are not prohibited by law to invest conjugal property, say, by way of a
joint and several bank account, more commonly denominated in banking parlance
as an and/or account. In the case at bar, when the spouses Vitug opened savings
account No. 35342-038, they merely put what rightfully belonged to them in a
money-making venture. They did not dispose of it in favor of the other, which would
have arguably been sanctionable as a prohibited donation.
The conclusion is accordingly unavoidable that Mrs. Vitug having predeceased her
husband, the latter has acquired upon her death a vested right over the amounts
under savings account No. 35342-038 of the Bank of America. Insofar as the
respondent court ordered their inclusion in the inventory of assets left by Mrs. Vitug,
we hold that the court was in error. Being the separate property of petitioner, it
forms no more part of the estate of the deceased.
