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Case flow
IN THE MATTER OF THE TESTATE ESTATE OF THE LATE JOSEFA
VILLACORTE. CFI – Celso Icasiano filed a petition for probate of a will and be
CELSO ICASIANO, petitioner-appellee, appointed as executor thereof.
vs. Opposition – Natividad & Enrique Icasiano (children of testatrix)
NATIVIDAD ICASIANO and ENRIQUE ICASIANO, oppositors-appellants. Amended Supplemental Petition – Celso submitted a duplicate copy of
the will.
CFI – Admitted the probate of the will and its duplicate; Celso as
executor.
FACTS
Oct 1958. The case began as a petition for the allowance and admission to probate of Exhibit "A" as the alleged will of Josefa, and for the
appointment of petitioner Celso as executor. Natividad filed her opposition; and asked to have herself appointed as a special administrator. CFI
issued an order appointing the Philippine Trust Company as special administrator. Enrique also filed a manifestation adopting Natividad's opposition.
March 1959. Celso commenced introduction of evidence but later on filed a motion for the admission of an amended and supplemental petition,
alleging that the decedent left a will executed in duplicate with all the legal requirements, which he allegedly found only on or about May 26, 1959.
CFI admitted the will and its duplicate to probate.
Hence, this appeal by the oppositors claiming that such order is contrary to law and evidence. They introduced expert testimony that the signatures
of the testatrix in the duplicate are not genuine.
(In issue) The records show that the original has five pages, and while signed at the end and in every page, it does not contain the signature of one
of the attesting witnesses (Atty. Jose V. Natividad) on page three unlike the duplicate which is signed by the testatrix and her three attesting
witnesses in each and every page. Witness Jose V. Natividad testified that he may have lifted two pages instead of one when he signed the same
affirmed that page three (3) was signed in his presence.
ISSUE
Whether or not the failure of one of the subscribing witnesses to affix his signature to a page is sufficient to deny probate of the wil
RULING
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, holding that both the will and its duplicate are valid in all respects.
The failure Atty. Natividad to sign page three (3) was entirely through pure oversight is shown by his own testimony as well as by the duplicate copy
of the will, which bears a complete set of signatures in every page. The text of the attestation clause and the acknowledgment before the Notary
Public likewise evidence that no one was aware of the defect at the time. Therefore, Atty. Natividad’s failure to sign page 3 of the original through
mere inadvertence does not affect the will’s validity.
Impossibility of substitution of this page is assured not only the fact that the testatrix and two other witnesses did sign the defective page, but also by
its bearing the coincident imprint of the seal of the notary public before whom the testament was ratified by testatrix and all three witnesses
The law should not be so strictly and literally interpreted as to penalize the testatrix on account of the inadvertence of a single witness over whose
conduct she had no control, where the purpose of the law to guarantee the identity of the testament and its component pages is sufficiently attained,
no intentional or deliberate deviation existed, and the evidence on record attests to the full observance of the statutory requisites.
This would not be the first time that this Court departs from a strict and literal application of the statutory requirements, where the purposes of the law
are otherwise satisfied. Thus, despite the literal tenor of the law, this Court has held that a testament, with the only page signed at its foot by testator
and witnesses, but not in the left margin, could nevertheless be probated (Abangan vs. Abangan, 41 Phil. 476); and that despite the requirement for
the correlative lettering of the pages of a will, the failure to mark the first page either by letters or numbers is not a fatal defect (Lopez vs. Liboro, 81
Phil. 429). These precedents exemplify the Court’s policy to require satisfaction of the legal requirements in order to guard against fraud and bad
faith but without undue or unnecessary curtailment of the testamentary privilege.
DOCTRINE
The law should not be so strictly and literally interpreted as to penalize the testatrix on account of the inadvertence of a single witness over whose
conduct she had no control, where the purpose of the law to guarantee the identity of the testament and its component pages is sufficiently attained,
no intentional or deliberate deviation existed, and the evidence on record attests to the full observance of the statutory requisites
