Dear PAO,
My status in my birth certificate is legitimated.
However, I was told that I am not qualified for legitimation because my
father was married to someone else when I was born. Am I not qualified
for legitimation? If not, how can I cancel my legitimation? Can I ask
for assistance from your office?
R.O.
Dear R.O.,
Legitimation is defined as a remedy by means of which, those who in fact
were not born in wedlock and should, therefore, be considered
illegitimate, are, by fiction, considered legitimate, it being supposed
that they were born when their parents were already validly married.
There are two requisites in order for a child to be legitimated. These
are the following: 1) the parents of the illegitimate child were not
under any legal impediment to marry each other except the legal
impediment of minority; and 2) subsequent valid marriage between the
parents of the illegitimate child (Section 1, RA 9858).
Hence, you are not qualified for legitimation because your father has
the legal impediment of an existing marriage when you were born.
In
order to cancel your status as a legitimated child, you shall need to
file a petition for cancellation of legitimation before the Regional
Trial Court of the place where your birth certificate was registered
(Section 1, Rule 108, Rules of Court). Since this is an adversarial
proceeding, you shall need to make as parties to your petition the civil
registrar and all persons who have or claim any interest which would be
affected by the cancellation of your legitimation (Section 3, id.).
Upon filing of your petition, the court shall, by an order, fix the time
and place for the hearing of your petition and cause reasonable notice
thereof to be given to the parties named in your petition. It shall also
cause the order to be published once a week for three (3) consecutive
weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the province (Section 4,
id.). After hearing, the court may either dismiss your petition or issue
an order granting the cancellation of your legitimation. In either
case, a certified copy of the judgment shall be served upon the civil
registrar where your birth certificate was registered who shall annotate
the same in his record (Section 7, id.).
Our Office extends free
legal assistance to the filing of petition for cancellation before our
courts. This is pursuant to our mandate to represent, free of charge,
indigents, and other persons qualified for legal assistance in all
civil, criminal, labor, administrative and other quasi-judicial cases
where, after due evaluation, it is determined that the interest of
justice will be served thereby (Section 1, PAO Operations Manual).
However, in order to become our client, you need to pass the merit and
indigency tests as mandated by the PAO Law and our operations manual. A
case shall be considered meritorious, if an assessment of the law and
evidence on hand, discloses that the legal services of the office will
assist, or be in aid of, or in the furtherance of justice, taking into
consideration the interests of the party and those of society (Section
2, PAO Operations Manual). A client shall be considered an indigent if
his net income does not exceed: P14,000.00 if residing in Metro Manila;
P13,000.00 if residing in other cities; and P12,000.00 if residing in
all other places (Section 3, PAO Operations Manual).
We hope that
we were able to answer your queries. Please be reminded that this advice
is based solely on the facts you have narrated and our appreciation of
the same. Our opinion may vary when other facts are changed or
elaborated.
source: Manila Times' Column of Atty. Persida Acosta
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