Eleosida v.

Civil Registrar of Quezon City (1)

Doctrine:
Rule 108 of the Revised Rules of Court provides the procedure for cancellation or
correction of entries in the civil registry. The proceedings under said rule may either be summary
or adversary in nature. If the correction sought to be made in the civil register is clerical, then the
procedure to be adopted is summary. If the rectification affects the civil status, citizenship or
nationality of a party, it is deemed substantial, and the procedure to be adopted is adversary. If all
the procedural requirements under Rule have been followed, it was therefore erroneous for the
trial court to dismiss the petition motu propio without allowing the petitioner to present evidence
to support her petition.

Republic v. Kho (2)

Doctrine:
The enactment in March 2001 of Republic Act No. 9048, otherwise known as An Act
Authorizing the City or Municipal Civil Registrar or the Consul General to Correct A Clerical or
Typographical Error In An Entry and/or Change of First Name or Nickname in the Civil Register
Without Need of Judicial Order, has been considered to lend legislative affirmation to the
judicial precedence that substantial corrections to the civil status of persons recorded in the civil
registry may be effected through the filing of a petition under Rule 108.When all the procedural
requirements under Rule 108 are thus followed, the appropriate adversary proceeding necessary
to effect substantial corrections to the entries of the civil register is satisfied.

In re: Petition for change of name of Julian Lin Carulasan Wang (3)

Doctrine:
The registered name of a legitimate, legitimated and recognized illegitimate child
contains a given name, a middle name and a surname.
Before a person can be authorized to change his name given him either in his
certificate of birth or civil registry, he must show proper or reasonable cause, or any
compelling reason which may justify such change. Otherwise, the request should be
denied.
fThat the continued use of a middle name would cause confusion and difficulty does
not constitute proper and reasonable cause to drop it from one's registered complete
name.

Braza v. Civil Registrar of Negros Occidental (4)

Doctrine:
Rule 108 of the Rules of Court vis-a-vis Article 412 of the Civil Code 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.

Silverio v. Republic (5)

Doctrine:
 There are no laws authorizing the change of entry of sex and first name through the
intervention of sex reassignment surgery. Article 376 of the Civil Code as amended by RA 9048
(Clerical Error Law), together with Article 412 of the same Code, change of name or sex in the
birth certificate is allowed by the courts so long as clerical or typographical errors are involved.

Republic v. Cagandahan (6)

Doctrine:
The Court considered the compassionate calls for recognition of the various degrees of
intersex as variations which should not be subject to outright denial. SC is of the view that
where the person is biologically or naturally intersex the determining factor in his gender
classification would be what the individual, having reached the age of majority, with good reason
thinks of his/her sex. As in this case, respondent, thinks of himself as a male and considering
that his body produces high levels of male hormones, there is preponderant biological support for
considering him as being a male. Sexual development in cases of intersex persons makes the
gender classification at birth inconclusive. It is at maturity that the gender of such persons, like
respondent, is fixed.

Republic v. Uy (7)

Doctrine:
Remedial Law; Cancellation or correction of entries in the civil registry. It is clear from
the foregoing discussion that when a petition for cancellation or correction of an entry in the civil
register involves substantial and controversial alterations, including those on citizenship,
legitimacy of paternity or filiation, or legitimacy of marriage, a strict compliance with the
requirements of Rule 108 of the Rules of Court is mandated. If the entries in the civil register
could be corrected or changed through mere summary proceedings and not through appropriate
action wherein all parties who may be affected by the entries are notified or represented, the door
to fraud or other mischief would be set open, the consequence of which might be detrimental and
far reaching.
Service of summons as a requisite of due process. The fact that the notice of hearing was
published in a newspaper of general circulation and notice thereof was served upon the State will
not change the nature of the proceedings taken. A reading of Sections 4 and 5, Rule 108 of the
Rules of Court shows that the Rules mandate two sets of notices to different potential oppositors:
one given to the persons named in the petition and another given to other persons who are not
named in the petition but nonetheless may be considered interested or affected parties. Summons
must, therefore, be served not for the purpose of vesting the courts with jurisdiction but to
comply with the requirements of fair play and due process to afford the person concerned the
opportunity to protect his interest if he so chooses.

Fujiji v. Marinay (8)

Doctrine:
Recognition of foreign judgment declaring nullity of marriage A recognition of a
foreign judgment is not an action to nullify a marriage. It is an action for Philippine courts to
recognize the effectivity of a foreign judgment, which presupposes a case which was already
tried and decided under foreign law. Article 26 of the Family Code further confers jurisdiction
on Philippine courts to extend the effect of a foreign divorce decree to a Filipino spouse without
undergoing trial to determine the validity of the dissolution of the marriage. The second
paragraph of Article 26 of the Family Code provides that [w]here a marriage between a Filipino
citizen and a foreigner is validly celebrated and a divorce is thereafter validly obtained abroad by
the alien spouse capacitating him or her to remarry, the Filipino spouse shall have capacity to
remarry under Philippine law.
Republic v. Olaybar (9)

Doctrine:
A fictitious marriage is one where there is no marriage ceremony as required by Article
3(3) of the Family Code which requires [a] marriage ceremony which takes place with the
appearance of the contracting parties before the solemnizing officer and their personal
declaration that they take each other as husband and wife in the presence of not less than two
witnesses of legal age. Although Article 3(3) is found under the formal requisites of marriage, a
marriage lacking a marriage ceremony also lacks the essential requisite of [c]onsent freely
given in the presence of the solemnizing officer under Article 2(2) of the Family Code. Athough
it is stated in Article 4 of the Family Code that [t]he absence of any of the essential or formal
requisites shall render the marriage void ab initio, fictitious marriages have sometimes been
viewed by jurisprudence differently from void marriages. For instance, in Morigo vs People (GR
145226, 2004), the Supreme Court said that [t]he mere private act of signing a marriage contract
bears no semblance to a valid marriage and thus, needs no judicial declaration of nullity.
Likewise in the recent case of Republic vs Olaybar (G.R. No. 145226, February 06, 2004), the
Supreme Court stated that for a fictitious marriage, there [is] no marriage to speak of.

If a marriage contract is registered, as the marriage involved in the Olaybar case, Section
23 Rule 132 of the Rules on Evidence considers its registration as evidence, even against a third
person, of the fact which gave rise to their execution and of the date of the latter, that is,
evidence of the fact of marriage and of the date of the latter. The presumption that the law gives
to the registration of a marriage contract goes hand in hand with the dissent of Alex Reyes J in
People vs Mendoza (G.R. No. L-5877 September 28, 1954) where he stated that it is not for the
spouses to judge whether that marriage was void or not. That judgment is reserved to the courts,
and the need of preventing collusion between the alleged parties to the marriage. Indeed, if
parties to a marriage recorded in the civil register are allowed to falsely claim in any collateral
action (a Rule 108 proceeding being traditionally viewed as a collateral action) that their
marriage was fictitious there being no marriage ceremony, this might open the door to fraud and
collusion between these parties because of the lack of anti-collusion mechanisms that, on the
other hand are found in the rules governing direct actions to nullify marriages (A.M. No. 02-11-
10-SCand Article 48 of the Family Code for instance requires the public prosecutor to determine
if collusion exists between the parties; this requirement is not found in Rule 108). Certainly, the
prevention of collusion is an important consideration even when the marriage is alleged to be
fictitious understandably because [m]arriage is a special contract of permanent union
between a man and a woman entered into in accordance with law for the establishment of
conjugal and family life. It is the foundation of the family and an inviolable social institution
whose nature, consequences, and incidents are governed by law and not subject to stipulation:
Article 1 Family Code.

Onde v. Civil Registrar of Las Pias (10)

Doctrine:
No entry in a civil register shall be changed or corrected without a judicial order, except
for clerical or typographical errors and change of first name or nickname, the day and month in
the date of birth or sex of a person where it is patently clear that there was a clerical or
typographical error or mistake in the entry, which can be corrected or changed by the concerned
city or municipal civil registrar or consul general in accordance with the provisions of this Act
and its implementing rules and regulations.

Under R.A. No. 9048, jurisdiction over applications for change of first name is now
primarily lodged with administrative officers. The intent and effect of said law is to exclude the
change of first name from the coverage of Rules 103 (Change of Name) and 108 (Cancellation or
Correction of Entries in the Civil Registry) of the Rules of Court, until and unless an
administrative petition for change of name is first filed and subsequently denied. The remedy
and the proceedings regulating change of first name are primarily administrative in nature, not
judicial. In Republic v. Cagandahan, we said that under R.A. No. 9048, the correction of clerical
or typographical errors can now be made through administrative proceedings and without the
need for a judicial order. The law removed from the ambit of Rule 108 of the Rules of Court the
correction of clerical or typographical errors. Thus, petitioner can avail of this administrative
remedy for the correction of his and his mother's first name.