GR 28838; (August, 1976) (Digest)
G.R. No. L-28838 August 31, 1976
AQUILINO DE LA CERNA and APOLINARIO DE LA CERNA, plaintiffs-appellants, vs. LOURDES DE LA CERNA and MIGUEL DE LA CERNA, defendants-appellees.
FACTS
The case involves a parcel of land in Davao City originally owned by the spouses Narciso de la Cerna and Eladia Bustamante. Upon Narciso’s death in 1945, his surviving wife Eladia and their two children, Lourdes and Melecio, executed an Extra-Judicial Partition on August 26, 1946, adjudicating the property among themselves as co-owners. This deed was registered on September 4, 1946, leading to the issuance of a new Transfer Certificate of Title (TCT No. 2583) in their names. Subsequently, in 1949, Melecio ceded his share to Lourdes, resulting in TCT No. T-1995 being issued solely in Lourdes’s name.
On February 27, 1967, Aquilino and Apolinario de la Cerna filed an action for partition and reconveyance against Lourdes. They claimed to be children of Narciso from a prior marriage and thus co-heirs entitled to a share of the property. The defendants, in their answers, raised affirmative defenses including prescription, asserting that the cause of action had long elapsed. The trial court conducted a preliminary hearing specifically on this defense of prescription.
ISSUE
Whether the action for partition and reconveyance filed by the appellants had already prescribed.
RULING
Yes, the action had prescribed. The Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of the case. The legal logic centers on the conclusive effect of registration and the commencement of the prescriptive period. The registration of the Extra-Judicial Partition on September 4, 1946, constituted constructive notice to the whole world of its contents and, critically, of the repudiation of any implied trust or fiduciary relationship between the parties. By this act, the appellees effectively set up a title adverse to the appellants. The prescriptive period for filing an action began to run from this date of registration and issuance of the new title.
The Court clarified that regardless of whether the action is characterized as one based on fraud (prescribing in four years from discovery) or on an implied constructive trust (prescribing in ten years from repudiation), the complaint filed in 1967 was indisputably barred. More than twenty years had elapsed from the 1946 registration. The appellants’ claim of fraud in the execution of the partition was immaterial, as the registration itself was deemed constructive discovery of any such fraud for prescription purposes. Consequently, the right to seek reconveyance was extinguished by the lapse of time.