Legal right

Dear Atty. Peachy,

My wife and I have been living in our rented apartment for about five (5) years now. We love our place because the neighborhood is nice and it is near to our place of work. The owner of our apartment recently passed away and left three (3) heirs. One of the heirs, who live just right across our apartment, approached me and my wife about buying the apartment that we have been renting from his father. We have actually been saving up for our own place and the price floated to us by our neighbor seems very reasonable. We, however, want to know if we are talking to the right person before handing our life savings to him. Does our neighbor have the legal right to sell the apartment to us? What do we need to do to ensure that his siblings will not go after the property after the sale?

Dear Nathan,

Even if there is already a willing buyer, the heirs cannot sell the property or transfer the property in the name of the buyer if the title has not yet been transferred under their names. When a person passes away, his property is not automatically owned by his heirs. All his properties become part of his estate. It must first be determined who deserves to inherit from him, how much inheritance will each of his heirs gets and how much needs to be paid to the government and other people. The process to determine all these things and eventually transfer the properties from the estate of a deceased person to the heirs is called estate settlement.

In the Philippines, no properties left behind by a deceased person can pass on to his heirs unless the deceased’s estate is settled, either judicially or extrajudicially. The estate is usually settled by identifying and gathering all the properties and assets left behind by the deceased, paying off all debts and liabilities that the deceased may have, and distributing the remaining properties to the lawful heirs.

Your neighbor cannot sell the apartment left by his deceased father to you until the estate of his deceased father, which includes the subject apartment, has been settled. As far as the titles and documentation are concerned, the owner of the apartment is still his father who died and not yet him or his siblings.

After the estate is settled, you will now be able to identify the rightful owner of the apartment. If the siblings end up as coowners of the apartment based on the settlement of the estate, all the heirs must agree to sell their respective shares in the apartment to you and sign a joint deed of sale. Your neighbor can only sell his share of the inherited property and such parts as are transferred to him. Thus, all the heirs must agree to sell their respective shares in the apartment and sign a joint deed of sale.