Support for illegitimate or nonmarital children, A176 Family Code
Article 176. Illegitimate children x x x shall be entitled to support in conformity with this Code. x x x (As amended by R.A. 9255)
Abella v. Cabañero, G.R. No. 206647, August 9, 2017, Per Leonen, J.:
• The obligation to give support shall only be demandable from the time the person entitled to it needs it for maintenance, but it shall not be paid except from the date of judicial or extrajudicial demand.Support pendente lite may also be claimed, in conformity with the manner stipulated by the Rules of Court.
• An illegitimate child, “conceived and born outside a valid marriage,” as is the admitted case with petitioner’s daughter, is entitled to support.To claim it, however, a child should have first been acknowledged by the putative parent or must have otherwise previously established his or her filiation with the putative parent.” When “filiation is beyond question, support [shall then follow] as [a] matter of obligation.”
• The judicial remedy to enable this is an action for compulsory recognition.Filiation proceedings do not merely resolve the matter of relationship with a parent but also secure the legal rights associated with that relationship: citizenship, support, and inheritance, among others.
• The paramount consideration in the resolution of questions affecting a child is the child’s welfare,and it is “[t]he policy of the Family Code to liberalize the rule on the investigation of the paternity and filiation of children, especially of illegitimate children.”Nevertheless, in keeping with basic judicial principles, the burden of proof in proceedings seeking to establish paternity is upon the “person who alleges that the putative father is the biological father of the child.”Likewise, a liberal application of rules should not be “without prejudice to the right of the putative parent to claim his or her own defenses.”
• [A]n integrated determination of filiation is “entirely appropriate” to the action for support filed by petitioner Richelle for her child. An action for support may very well resolve that ineluctable issue of paternity if it involves the same parties, is brought before a court with the proper jurisdiction, prays to impel recognition of paternal relations, and invokes judicial intervention to do so. This does not run afoul of any rule. To the contrary, and consistent with Briz v. Briz, this is in keeping with the rules on proper joinder of causes of action. This also serves the interest of judicial economy —avoiding multiplicity of suits and cushioning litigants from the vexation and costs of a protracted pleading of their cause.
