SC: Courts may determine if party is alive or dead in ejectment cases

The Supreme Court (SC) has ruled that courts may determine whether a party is alive or dead in an ejectment case when necessary to resolve who has the right to possess a property.

The Court clarified, however, that such a finding is only provisional and applies solely to the ejectment case.

In a decision penned by Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo dated 20 April 2026, the SC First Division denied the appeal filed by Belinda E. Soriano and her relatives in an ejectment case filed against them by Antonio V. Estrella.

Estrella claimed ownership of a property in Quezon City where Soriano and her relatives lived with his permission.

After they refused his 2012 demand to vacate the property so he could renovate it, Estrella filed an unlawful detainer case, a type of ejectment proceeding used to recover possession of property from occupants whose stay was initially lawful but later became unauthorized.

Soriano and her relatives argued that the case should be dismissed because Estrella supposedly lacked the legal capacity to sue, claiming he had died in 1990. They presented his death certificate as evidence.

Both the Metropolitan Trial Court and Regional Trial Court sided with Soriano and her relatives, ruling that courts must recognize the death certificate unless it is properly canceled.

The Court of Appeals (CA), however, reversed the lower courts, finding that the death certificate was contradicted by several pieces of evidence, including Estrella’s valid driver’s license, the defendants’ own admission that he was the registered owner of the property and a criminal complaint they had filed against him in 2013.

The SC affirmed the CA’s ruling.

It clarified that while the proper remedy to cancel a death certificate or correct an entry in the civil registry is to file a petition for cancellation, this does not prevent a court hearing an ejectment case from provisionally determining whether a party is alive or dead when necessary to resolve the issue of possession.

The SC emphasized that ejectment cases are summary proceedings intended to promptly resolve disputes over the physical possession of property.

Requiring the parties to first secure the cancellation of Estrella’s death certificate would defeat this purpose, it said.

The Court stressed that a determination on whether a party is alive or dead in an ejectment case is limited to establishing that party’s legal capacity to sue and right to physical possession of the property.

The SC found that Estrella had successfully overcome the presumption created by his death certificate.

The parties themselves acknowledged that the Estrella who filed the case was the same person named as the owner on the property title. Soriano and her relatives also never claimed that he was an impostor or disputed his identity.

This, along with Estrella’s living presence, established his legal capacity to sue, the Court said.

The SC also ruled that the requirements for unlawful detainer had been met.

Soriano and her relatives initially had lawful possession of the property, but their possession became unlawful when Estrella demanded that they vacate and they refused. He subsequently filed the case within the one-year period required by law.