Your property at risk

(The Philippine Star) Updated October 20, 2010 12:00 AM/

If you happen to live or own one of those “Old Families” type compound particularly in Metro Manila, you are well advised to check if the land you are living on is part of what was once called “Friar lands”.

If you are, better do everything in your powers to make sure that your property is safe from land grabbers as well as from possible confiscation by the state due to a “historical” technicality.
If you don’t know what “Friar lands” are, well they are part of large tracts of land that used to belong to “Friars” or the Catholic Church as part of their prize for bringing “the Cross and the Sword” to the pagan world.

Once Spain lost out to the Americans in the Philippines, many “Friar lands” were bought by the colonial government and sold to actual tenants and people residing on said lands, in order to reduce the abusive tenancy practices.

According to recent estimates there are 7,494 titled properties that originated from “Friar lands” which have been passed on from generation to generation or sold to private parties.
But due to an extended three-way legal battle and the subsequent Supreme Court decision on the case, all those titles and the properties they represent may end up going back to the government.

The troublesome case involves a 34-hectare property near the Broadcast City that has evolved into a highly priced real estate boomtown for upscale subdivisions. Fighting over the property are three claimants who have gone through various government offices and various courts all the way to the Supreme Court.

At every step and in every court, the battle was about documentation with each claimant presenting what they purported to be the genuine article. In reading details of the case, one would certainly conclude that the case involving the Manotoks, Barque and Manahans would be fantastic as a case for “Forensic law”.

One group claimed that the Republic of the Philippines issued their documents which another questioned since the Republic of the Philippines, did not exist at the time their documents were issued.

Case details even included how pages from a “Liber Defunctorum” were ripped out purportedly to erase any record of existence of one of the original land owners. In case you never studied Latin, Liber Defunctorum means a “Book of deaths”.

But the most “spectacular” part of this case was that 3 parties went to the Supreme Court praying for the court to decide who is the legal owner of the 34 hectare property. But rather than decide on the petitions, the SC effectively confiscated the property and ordered that the land be returned to the Republic of the Philippines!

From the looks of it, The Supreme Court did so because none of the three claimants had a document that was signed by the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, which had authority over the matter back then.

The question now is: how many of the 7,494 existing titles fall under the category of being unsigned by the then Secretary of the Department of Agriculture? If the Supreme Court has now opined that, this can be the basis for reverting “Friar lands” to the state, how difficult or impossible would it now be for the government to contest such estates in order to re-sell those estates?

I never took up any law subject so I won’t even opine on the legal issues of the case, but I am personally disturbed that people even thought of the decision as a Solomonic decision. Far from the fact, the court did not order a partition of the property but a confiscation of property based on a technicality.

But if we were to be technical about the matter, was it wise to revert the property back to the government since it was the government that “sold” or transferred ownership of said “Friar lands” into the hands of tenants or residents?

One would imagine that the property could have been placed under guardianship or some form of escrow until such a time when a full legal forensic study of the matter had been completed.
Now that the 34 hectares is on its way back to the Philippine government, who will then get first crack at buying or applying for ownership of the property? Will the confiscation automatically disqualify any of the claimants from “reacquiring” the said property?

Given the many legal and documentary twists and turns of the case, I have no doubt that if the NBI, the Bureau of Lands and the DOJ got into the picture, those who have been misleading or lying to the court would be found out.

I am also concerned by the thought that through the years, three petitioners have used government resources in pursuit of a claim where presumably only one party is telling the truth. So in this case, there is a possibility that at least two parties have dared to commit a blatant fraud before government agencies, the RTC, the Court of Appeals and last but not the least the Supreme Court.

Shall we now turn a blind eye to such fearless fraud and in the same breath commit the greatest injustice by not seeking out the real truth and the deserving party in all of this?

Of collateral interest would be the discoveries that can be made by a full blown investigation regarding reconstitution of titles particularly in Quezon City, cross claims and legal influence peddling by officers of the courts. Yes it is often preferable to be pragmatic than idealistic, but this is Truth and Justice we are talking about — not just land and titles.