Necesito Law

15/08/2026

Authority to manage is not authority to sell.
Under _Article 1878 of the Civil Code_, an agent needs a special power for the serious acts: selling or encumbering immovable property and other acts of strict dominion, accepting or repudiating an inheritance, making a gift, acting as guarantor, compromising or submitting to arbitration, leasing real property for more than one year, and borrowing money for the principal.
For land there is a harder rule. _Article 1874_ provides that when a sale of a piece of land or any interest in it is through an agent, the authority must be in writing, otherwise the sale is void. Article 1358 requires such acts to appear in a public instrument, which is why they are notarised.
What to check before relying on an SPA:
• The specific act. It must expressly cover the sale, or include it as a necessary part of what is authorised. General management wording is not enough.
• The form. In writing, notarised, and if signed abroad, apostilled or authenticated at the Philippine Embassy or Consulate. Since March 2025, under the _Rules on Electronic Notarization_, an electronic notary here may also notarise for a principal abroad, but only where that principal is *physically inside a Philippine embassy or consular office* and an officer there confirms it. It is not notarisation from your living room.
• That it is still alive. An SPA can be revoked, and agency is generally extinguished by the death of the principal.
For general information only. This is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a lawyer.
Email [email protected] or visit necesitolaw.com if you would like your documents reviewed.
Necesito Law Office & Notary
Atty. Pierre Joseph B. Necesito
Roll of Attorneys No. 86671
General Luna, Siargao and Cebu
[email protected] | necesitolaw.com

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11/08/2026

A relative abroad wants you to sell the family lot for them. They email a letter saying you are authorised to handle their properties. That letter, on its own, cannot sell land.

The Civil Code separates ordinary authority from authority to do something serious with somebody else's property. Article 1878 lists the acts an agent cannot do unless a special power says so, and the list is long: selling or encumbering immovable property and other acts of strict dominion, accepting or repudiating an inheritance, making a gift, binding the principal as guarantor or surety, entering into a compromise or submitting to arbitration, leasing real property for more than one year, and borrowing money in the principal's name. Article 1874 then adds a hard rule for land. When a sale of a piece of land or any interest in it is made through an agent, the agent's authority must be in writing, otherwise the sale is void. Not voidable. Void. Article 1358 requires acts creating or transmitting real rights over immovable property to appear in a public instrument, which is why these documents are notarised.

Three things to check before you rely on an SPA:

1. Read it for the specific act. Authority to administer, manage, collect rent, or look after property is not authority to sell. The power must expressly mention the sale, or include it as a necessary part of what is authorised. Broad, comfortable-sounding language is the most common defect.

2. Check the form. It should be in writing, notarised, and where it was signed abroad, apostilled or authenticated at the Philippine Embassy or Consulate, depending on whether that country is a party to the Apostille Convention. Since 9 March 2025, under the Rules on Electronic Notarization (A.M. No. 24-10-14-SC), an electronic notary here may also notarise for a principal who is abroad, but the conditions are strict: the principal must be physically inside a Philippine embassy, consular office, or honorary consul's office, must pan the video to show it, and a designated officer there must confirm their presence. This is not notarisation from your living room in Dubai, and anyone telling you otherwise has read the headline rather than the rule. A photocopy emailed from overseas is not the document either; it is a picture of one.

3. Check that it is still alive. An SPA can be revoked, and agency is generally extinguished by the death of the principal. Ask when it was executed, whether it has been revoked, and whether the principal is living. For registered land, check the title for any annotation of the SPA or of its revocation.

The point of all this is not paperwork for its own sake. If the authority fails, the sale of land fails with it, and the buyer is left suing the person who signed rather than owning the land.

If you want us to look at your documents properly, email [email protected] or visit necesitolaw.com to arrange a consultation.

For general information only. This is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a lawyer.

Necesito Law Office & Notary
Atty. Pierre Joseph B. Necesito
Roll of Attorneys No. 86671
General Luna, Siargao and Cebu
[email protected] | necesitolaw.com

08/08/2026

You can incorporate alone in the Philippines. Since the Revised Corporation Code, you no longer need to find four other names to sign the papers.

Republic Act No. 11232 introduced the One Person Corporation in Title XIII, Chapter III. Only a natural person, a trust, or an estate may form one. The single stockholder is the sole director and the president of the corporation.

The form is not open to everyone. Banks and quasi-banks, preneed, trust and insurance companies, public and publicly listed companies, and non-chartered government-owned and controlled corporations may not incorporate as One Person Corporations. And a natural person licensed to exercise a profession may not organise a One Person Corporation for the purpose of exercising that profession, except as otherwise provided under special laws. Doctors, engineers and architects hoping to place their practice inside an OPC should read that limitation carefully before spending on registration.

Three obligations follow immediately after incorporation, and they are the ones most often missed.

Within fifteen days from the issuance of the certificate of incorporation, the One Person Corporation must appoint a treasurer, a corporate secretary, and any other officers it considers necessary. The Commission must then be notified within five days from the appointment. And the single stockholder may not be appointed as the corporate secretary, which means at least one other person has to be brought in and has to consent.

The single stockholder must also designate a nominee and an alternate nominee, who take the place of the single stockholder as director and manage the corporation's affairs in the event of the stockholder's death or incapacity.

Three things this means in practice:

Diarise the fifteen-day and five-day windows on the day the certificate is issued. These are short, they run from a date you will not control, and a missed appointment is a housekeeping defect that follows the company.

Choose the nominee and alternate nominee deliberately and get their written consent. This is succession planning for the business, not a form-filling exercise, and it is the provision that makes the OPC survive its founder.

Separation is what protects you. Keep company money in company accounts, keep proper books and minutes, and comply with the reportorial requirements. The corporate form gives limited liability, but a company run out of a personal wallet invites arguments about whether the separation was ever real.

If you want us to look at your documents properly, email [email protected] or visit necesitolaw.com to arrange a consultation.

For general information only. This is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a lawyer.

Necesito Law Office & Notary Atty. Pierre Joseph B. Necesito Roll of Attorneys No. 86671 General Luna, Siargao and Cebu [email protected] | necesitolaw.com

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08/08/2026

Someone is occupying your property and will not leave. Which case you file depends on how they got there, and in either case the clock is one year.

Rule 70 of the Rules of Court gives two summary remedies, and they are not interchangeable.

Forcible entry applies where possession was taken by force, intimidation, threat, strategy or stealth. The occupant's possession was unlawful from the very beginning. The one-year period is counted from the date of entry, or where the entry was by stealth, from the date the owner discovered it.

Unlawful detainer applies where possession began lawfully, under a lease or by the owner's tolerance, and later became unlawful. Here the one-year period is counted from the last demand to vacate.

Both fall within the exclusive original jurisdiction of the Metropolitan, Municipal, Municipal Trial Court in Cities and Municipal Circuit Trial Courts, regardless of the assessed value of the property or the amount of unpaid rent claimed. Both now proceed under the Rules on Expedited Procedures in the First Level Courts, A.M. No. 08-8-7-SC, which took effect on 11 April 2022 and applies to cases filed from that date.

Choosing the wrong one is not a technicality that gets corrected along the way. The complaint must allege the facts that fit the remedy chosen, and a complaint that pleads tolerance where the facts show stealth, or the reverse, is vulnerable from the first pleading.

Three things this means in practice:

Write down the date, now, while it is fresh. Ejectment lives or dies on when and how the occupant got in. Photographs with dates, messages, and the names of anyone who saw it are worth more than a recollection given a year later.

Put the demand to vacate in writing and keep proof that it was received. In unlawful detainer the period runs from the last demand, so the demand is not a formality, it is the trigger.

Ejectment decides physical possession only. It does not settle ownership. Winning gets the occupant out; it does not quiet your title, and a separate action may still be needed.

Past the one year, ejectment is no longer the remedy and a different, slower action applies. That is why the first conversation about an occupant should happen early rather than after a year of hoping the problem resolves itself.

If you want us to look at your documents properly, email [email protected] or visit necesitolaw.com to arrange a consultation.

For general information only. This is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a lawyer.

Necesito Law Office & Notary Atty. Pierre Joseph B. Necesito Roll of Attorneys No. 86671 General Luna, Siargao and Cebu [email protected] | necesitolaw.com

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08/08/2026

A foreign national can own a condominium unit in the Philippines. Land is a different question, and the reason sits in the Constitution.

Article XII, Section 7 of the 1987 Constitution reserves private land to Filipino citizens and to corporations at least sixty percent Filipino-owned, save in cases of hereditary succession. That is the starting point, and it is why the answer for land and the answer for a condominium unit are not the same.

Republic Act No. 4726, the Condominium Act, works within that limit. Section 5 allows transfer of a unit to a person who is not a Filipino citizen where the transfer will not cause foreign interest in the condominium corporation to exceed forty percent of the capital stock. Two points are consistently misunderstood.

First, the forty percent is a cap on the project, not on the buyer. A foreign buyer owns one hundred percent of the unit purchased. What is capped is how much of the condominium corporation, which holds the land and the common areas, may be in foreign hands in total.

Second, the cap binds at the moment of transfer. Once a project sits at the limit, a further transfer to a foreign buyer cannot be validly registered, regardless of what a brochure or a broker says.

On long-term leases, Republic Act No. 12252 and its implementing rules, effective 4 January 2026, set a minimum investment of five million United States dollars for tourism projects, with at least seventy percent infused within three years of signing the lease. That route is built for registered investment projects. It is not a general path for an individual buying a holiday property.

Three things this means in practice:

Ask the developer or the condominium corporation, in writing, for the current foreign ownership percentage before any money moves. A verbal assurance is worth nothing if the transfer cannot be registered.

Read the master deed and the declaration of restrictions. That is where the unit's share in the common areas and the land is defined, along with use restrictions that often surprise buyers.

Structuring around the limits carries its own exposure. Commonwealth Act No. 108, the Anti-Dummy Law, reaches arrangements that place a Filipino name on paper over a foreign beneficial owner. Get the structure reviewed before it is built, not after.

If you want us to look at your documents properly, email [email protected] or visit necesitolaw.com to arrange a consultation.

For general information only. This is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a lawyer.

Necesito Law Office & Notary Atty. Pierre Joseph B. Necesito Roll of Attorneys No. 86671 General Luna, Siargao and Cebu [email protected] | necesitolaw.com

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08/08/2026

A notarised document is not a court's stamp of truth. It proves who signed, not that what they wrote is true. That distinction decides a surprising number of cases.

Under the 2004 Rules on Notarial Practice (A.M. No. 02-8-13-SC), notarisation converts a private document into a public one. The certificate of acknowledgment is prima facie evidence of the ex*****on of the instrument. It is evidence that the persons named signed it and acknowledged it as their free act. It is not evidence that every statement inside is correct.

So a notarised deed of sale helps prove that the parties executed the deed. If the real fight is whether the price was ever paid, the deed will not answer that. Receipts, bank records and witnesses will.

Two requirements do most of the protective work. The signatory must personally appear before the notary at the time of notarisation. And the signatory must either be personally known to the notary or be identified through competent evidence of identity as defined in the Rules. A document notarised without personal appearance is defective, and a defectively notarised instrument can be treated as a mere private writing, which strips away the very advantage the parties were paying for.

On the digital side, the Supreme Court promulgated the Rules on Electronic Notarization (A.M. No. 24-10-14-SC) on 4 February 2025. Those Rules cover electronic documents and electronic notaries public. They supplement rather than replace the 2004 Rules. Notarisation of paper documents bearing handwritten signatures continues to be governed by the 2004 Rules.

Three things this means in practice:

Appear in person. If someone offers to have a document notarised while the signatory is elsewhere, that is not a convenience, it is a defect waiting to be raised against you.

Bring current identification. Competent evidence of identity is required unless the notary personally knows you. An expired ID is a common and avoidable reason to be turned away.

Do not rely on the red ribbon and the seal to fix a bad agreement. Notarisation does not cure a contract that is void, forged or entered into by fraud, and it does not prove payment. Keep your receipts and records separately and safely.

If you want us to look at your documents properly, email [email protected] or visit necesitolaw.com to arrange a consultation.

For general information only. This is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a lawyer.

Necesito Law Office & Notary Atty. Pierre Joseph B. Necesito Roll of Attorneys No. 86671 General Luna, Siargao and Cebu [email protected] | necesitolaw.com

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06/08/2026

Two buyers. One piece of land. A signed deed each. Under Philippine law, the one who paid first does not automatically win.

Article 1544 of the Civil Code settles a double sale, meaning the same property sold by the same seller to two or more buyers. For immovable property the order is fixed:

First, ownership belongs to the buyer who in good faith first recorded the sale in the Registry of Property. If nobody registered, it belongs to the buyer who in good faith was first in possession. If there is neither registration nor possession, it belongs to the buyer who presents the oldest title, again in good faith.

Good faith runs through every step. It means the buyer did not know of the earlier sale. It is lost by actual knowledge, and it is also lost by constructive notice: an adverse annotation on the title, a stranger openly occupying the land, or any circumstance that would put a careful buyer on inquiry. A buyer who registers first but already knew about the earlier sale does not win the race. He was never in the race.

Three things this means in practice:

Register immediately. A deed that is signed, notarised and then left in a drawer protects nothing against a later buyer who walks it to the Registry of Deeds. Speed of registration, not date of signing, is what Article 1544 measures.

Get a certified true copy of the title directly from the Registry of Deeds, dated close to signing, and read the back page. Annotations are where earlier claims, mortgages and adverse claims live. The owner's duplicate the seller hands you may not show what the Registry shows.

Go to the land and ask who is there and on what basis. Visible possession by someone other than the seller is notice in law. If you buy anyway, you are unlikely to be heard later to say you did not know.

Losing the race under Article 1544 does not leave a buyer with nothing. It leaves him with claims against the seller rather than the land. That is a much worse position, and it is usually avoidable with a title check and prompt registration.

If you want us to look at your documents properly, email [email protected] or visit necesitolaw.com to arrange a consultation.

For general information only. This is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a lawyer.

Necesito Law Office & Notary Atty. Pierre Joseph B. Necesito Roll of Attorneys No. 86671 General Luna, Siargao and Cebu [email protected] | necesitolaw.com

Philippine lawyer and notary public handling property and land disputes, estate settlement, foreign investment compliance, and immigration. Offices in Cebu and General Luna, Siargao.

05/08/2026

When a parent dies without a will, the family does not always need a court case. Rule 74 of the Rules of Court allows the heirs to settle the estate among themselves. The shortcut is real, and so are its conditions.

Under Section 1 of Rule 74, extrajudicial settlement is available only where the deceased left no will, left no outstanding debts, and the heirs all agree. The heirs must be of legal age, or minors must be represented by their judicial or legal representatives. The agreement is put into a public instrument, meaning a notarised deed, and filed with the Register of Deeds. Where there is only one heir, that heir may execute an affidavit of self-adjudication instead.

Two features catch families out.

The first is publication. The fact of the extrajudicial settlement must be published in a newspaper of general circulation once a week for three consecutive weeks. This is the substitute for the supervision a probate court would otherwise give.

The second is the two-year window. Under Section 4, the distributed estate remains answerable for two years to an heir who was left out or a creditor who was not paid. Real property distributed stays charged with that liability for the full two years, and where personal property is involved a bond may be required. This is why buyers of inherited land look at the date of the settlement and the annotation on the title.

Three things this means in practice:

If there is a will, or there are unpaid debts, or a single heir refuses to sign, extrajudicial settlement is not available. The estate goes to court settlement instead. Signing anyway does not make the problem disappear, it stores it up.
Leaving out an heir does not make the deed safe. Section 1 is explicit that the settlement is not binding on a person who did not take part or had no notice. A quiet settlement among the cooperative heirs is the single most common defect we see in inherited land.
Signing the deed does not by itself transfer the title. Tax clearance with the Bureau of Internal Revenue and registration with the Register of Deeds are separate steps, and each has its own requirements. Plan for the full sequence, not just the signing.

If you want us to look at your documents properly, email [email protected] or visit necesitolaw.com to arrange a consultation.

For general information only. This is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. For your specific situation, consult a lawyer.

Necesito Law Office & Notary
Atty. Pierre Joseph B. Necesito
Roll of Attorneys No. 86671
General Luna, Siargao and Cebu
[email protected] | necesitolaw.com

Send a message to learn more

10/04/2026

Tax Credit -BIR

01/04/2026

Necesito Law Office will be back on the 6th. A blessed Holy Week to all. For urgent matters, please message our whatsapp at 09942041912