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FIRST DIVISION, G.R. No. 181174, December 4, 2009, MA. CRISTINA TORRES BRAZA, PAOLO JOSEF T. BRAZA and JANELLE ANN T. BRAZA, Petitioners, vs. THE CITY CIVIL REGISTRAR OF HIMAMAYLAN CITY, NEGROS OCCIDENTAL, minor PATRICK ALVIN TITULAR BRAZA, represented by LEON TITULAR, CECILIA TITULAR and LUCILLE C. TITULAR, Respondents.
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The petition fails. In a special proceeding for correction of entry under Rule 108 (Cancellation or Correction of Entries in the Original Registry), the trial court has no jurisdiction to nullify marriages and rule on legitimacy and filiation.
Rule 108 of the Rules of Court vis a vis Article 412 of the Civil Code[4] charts the procedure by which an entry in the civil registry may be cancelled or corrected. The proceeding contemplated therein may generally be used only to correct clerical, spelling, typographical and other innocuous errors in the civil registry. A clerical error is one which is visible to the eyes or obvious to the understanding; an error made by a clerk or a transcriber; a mistake in copying or writing, or a harmless change such as a correction of name that is clearly misspelled or of a misstatement of the occupation of the parent. Substantial or contentious alterations may be allowed only in adversarial proceedings, in which all interested parties are impleaded and due process is properly observed[5].
The allegations of the petition filed before the trial court clearly show that petitioners seek to nullify the marriage between Pablo and Lucille on the ground that it is bigamous and impugn Patrick’s filiation in connection with which they ask the court to order Patrick to be subjected to a DNA test.
Petitioners insist, however, that the main cause of action is for the correction of Patrick’s birth records[6] and that the rest of the prayers are merely incidental thereto.
Petitioners’ position does not lie. Their cause of action is actually to seek the declaration of Pablo and Lucille’s marriage as void for being bigamous and impugn Patrick’s legitimacy, which causes of action are governed not by Rule 108 but by A.M. No. 02-11-10-SC which took effect on March 15, 2003, and Art. 171[7] of the Family Code, respectively, hence, the petition should be filed in a Family Court as expressly provided in said Code.
It is well to emphasize that, doctrinally, validity of marriages as well as legitimacy and filiation can be questioned only in a direct action seasonably filed by the proper party, and not through collateral attack such as the petition filed before the court a quo.
Petitioners’ reliance on the cases they cited is misplaced.
Cariño v. Cariño was an action filed by a second wife against the first wife for the return of one-half of the death benefits received by the first after the death of the husband. Since the second wife contracted marriage with the husband while the latter’s marriage to the first wife was still subsisting, the Court ruled on the validity of the two marriages, it being essential to the determination of who is rightfully entitled to the death benefits.
In Lee v. Court of Appeals, the Court held that contrary to the contention that the petitions filed by the therein petitioners before the lower courts were actions to impugn legitimacy, the prayer was not to declare that the petitioners are illegitimate children of Keh Shiok Cheng as stated in their records of birth but to establish that they are not the latter’s children, hence, there was nothing to impugn as there was no blood relation at all between the petitioners and Keh Shiok Cheng. That is why the Court ordered the cancellation of the name of Keh Shiok Cheng as the petitioners’ mother and the substitution thereof with “Tiu Chuan” who is their biological mother. Thus, the collateral attack was allowed and the petition deemed as adversarial proceeding contemplated under Rule 108.
In Republic v. Kho, it was the petitioners themselves who sought the correction of the entries in their respective birth records to reflect that they were illegitimate and that their citizenship is “Filipino,” not Chinese, because their parents were never legally married. Again, considering that the changes sought to be made were substantial and not merely innocuous, the Court, finding the proceedings under Rule 108 to be adversarial in nature, upheld the lower court’s grant of the petition.
It is thus clear that the facts in the above-cited cases are vastly different from those obtaining in the present case.
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