Recognition and support in one action

The Family Code mandates parents to give support to their children. Courts, in fact, are saddled with cases wherein mothers, on behalf of their children, ask the court to require their husbands, the fathers of their children, to give support. Once the cause is established, the court orders the respondent fathers to mandatorily provide support, under pain of contempt.

But, of course, before a mother can seek support for her child, she must first establish that the parent from whom she is seeking relief is indeed the father of the child. Without this link, courts naturally cannot compel the respondent.

Thus, in one case, the Court of Appeals, after the trial court dismissed the mother’s petition for support, sustained the lower court’s dismissal. It decreed that the mother should have first instituted an independent action to establish paternity and filiation before she, acting for her daughter, could file for support.

And rightly so, precisely because it must first be proven that the respondent in a support case is indeed the father of the minor. In this case, the alleged parent totally denied being the child’s father. The issue brought before the Supreme Court on further appeal was whether it was necessary to institute an independent action for paternity and filiation before a support action could be maintained. This issue was resolved by the Highest Court in the negative, likening support cases to inheritance cases:

“The question whether a person in the position of the present plaintiff can in any event maintain a complex action to compel recognition as a natural child and at the same time to obtain ulterior relief in the character of heir is one which in the opinion of this court must be answered in the affirmative, provided always that the conditions justifying the joinder of the two distinct causes of action are present in the particular case.

“In other words, there is no absolute necessity requiring that the action to compel acknowledgment should have been instituted and prosecuted to a successful conclusion prior to the action in which that same plaintiff seeks additional relief in the character of heir. Certainly, there is nothing so peculiar to the action to compel acknowledgment as to require that a rule should be here applied differently from that generally applicable in other cases. xxx

“Although the instant case deals with support rather than inheritance, as in Tayag, the basis or rationale for integrating them remains the same. Whether or not respondent Martin is entitled to support depends completely on the determination of filiation. A separate action will only result in a multiplicity of suits, given how intimately related the main issues in both cases are. To paraphrase Tayag, the declaration of filiation is entirely appropriate to these proceedings.

“Indeed, an integrated determination of filiation is ‘entirely appropriate’ to the action for support filed by petitioner Richelle for her child. An action for support may very well resolve that ineluctable issue of paternity if it involves the same parties, is brought before a court with the proper jurisdiction, prays to impel recognition of paternal relations, and invokes judicial intervention to do so.

“This does not run afoul of any rule. To the contrary, and consistent with Briz v. Briz, this is in keeping with the rules on proper joinder of causes of action. This also serves the interest of judicial economy, avoiding multiplicity of suits and cushioning litigants from the vexation and costs of a protracted pleading of their cause.

“Thus, it was improper to rule here, as the Court of Appeals did, that it was impossible to entertain the petitioner’s child’s plea for support without her and the petitioner first surmounting the encumbrance of an entirely different judicial proceeding.”

The facts and quoted portion of the decision are from Richelle P. Abella, for and on behalf of her minor daughter, Marl Jhorylle Abella v. Policarpio Cabanero (G.R. No. 206647, 9 August 2017).