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Elizabeth Hankins died in 1985. Thereafter, the Republic filed a petition for escheat against the estate (two parcels of land) of Hankins as it appeared that she died intestate and without any heir. Amada Solano, through her husband, filed an intervention averring that Hankins donated the properties to them. Their intervention was not granted because they cannot present the Deeds of Donation. In 1989, the petition was granted and the estate of Hankins was escheated in favor of the Republic.
In 1997, Solano went to the Court of Appeals to file a petition to have the judgment in the RTC granting the escheat be annulled. Solano is now presenting the deeds of donation which she just recently and finally found.
ISSUE: Whether or not Solano’s petition should prosper.
HELD: No. Sec. 4, Rule 91 is clear that the prescriptive period to file a claim against the escheated estate is five (5) years from the date of judgment.
But Art. 1144 of the Civil Code provides that actions accruing upon a judgment may be brought within ten years from the judgment?
Sec. 4, Rule 91 is an exception.
Is that fair?
Yes. Escheat is a proceeding, unlike that of succession or assignment, whereby the state, by virtue of its sovereignty, steps in and claims the real or personal property of a person who dies intestate leaving no heir. In the absence of a lawful owner, a property is claimed by the state to forestall an open “invitation to self-service by the first comers.” Since escheat is one of the incidents of sovereignty, the state may, and usually does, prescribe the conditions and limits the time within which a claim to such property may be made. The procedure by which the escheated property may be recovered is generally prescribed by statue, and a time limit is imposed within which such action must be brought. In this jurisdiction, claimants to an escheated property must file his claim “within five (5) years from the date of such judgment” otherwise they may lose them forever in a final judgment.
