[ G.R. No. L-2396. December 11, 1950 ] 87 Phil. 692
[ G.R. No. L-2396. December 11, 1950 ]
IN THE MATTER OF THE PETITION FOR THE PROBATE OF THE WILL OF THE DECEASED PABLO M. ROXAS. NATIVIDAD I. VDA. DB ROXAS, PETITIONER AND APPELLANT, VS. MARIA ROXAS ET AL., OPPOSITORS AND APPELLEES. D E C I S I O N
PARAS, J.:
Pablo Roxas died in the municipality of Bulacan, Province of Bulacan, on July 14, 1946. On August 10, 1946, Natividad Icasiano (the widow) filed in the Court of First Instance of Bulacan a petition for the probate of a will alleged to have been left by Pablo Roxas, devising all his properties to Natividad Icasiano and Reynaldo Roxas (an adulterous son). The will is typewritten and worded in Tagalog and the attesting witnesses are Jacinto Y. Enriquez, Fortunato R. Gupit and Martin Rodrigo. The will is dated, in the body, January 1, 1945. No date is given in the attestation clause. An opposition was filed by Maria Roxas and Pedro Roxas (sister and brother of Pablo Roxas) on the ground that the alleged will was not executed and attested as required by law, and that, in any event, it was intended as a mere formal request which was, however, subsequently revoked as shown by the fact that it was crumpled with intent to destroy. Upon motion for bill of particulars filed by the petitioner (Natividad Icasiano), the oppositors (Maria and Pedro Roxas) alleged that the will is vitiated by the following formal defects: “(a) The alleged last will and testament was not attested and subscribed by three or more credible witnesses in the presence of the testator and of each other; (b) The testator and the instrumental witnesses did not sign the only page of the will on the left margin, nor was the page numbered in letters on the upper part of the sheet; (c) The attestation clause does not state that the alleged witnesses thereto witnessed and signed the will in the presence of the testator and of each other.” After trial, the Court of First Instance of Bulacan rendered a decision disallowing the probate of the will. The lower court concluded that the body of the will was typewritten and signed by the testator on a date or occasion different from and anterior to the date or occasion when the attestation clause was typewritten and signed by the attesting witnesses, with the result that the will was not signed by the testator in the presence of the witnesses, and by the latter in the presence of the testator and of each other, as required in section 618 of Act No. 190 as amended by Act No. 2645. This conclusion was motivated by the following circumstances enumerated in the decision: “(a) That the paper on which the alleged will, Exhibit D, is written has been folded and crumpled; (b) That the body of the will was typewritten before the signature of Pablo M. Roxas had been affixed thereon and before it had been folded and crumpled; (c) That after it had been folded and crumpled, it was smoothened in order to eliminate or minimize as much as possible the folds and wrinkles, preparatory, to the writing of the attestation clause on the same typewriter which was used in typewriting the body of the will; (d) That the attestation clause was typewritten, single space, and a deliberate effort was exerted to make it appear that it was written by the testator himself at the same time with the body thereof, but the tell-tale letter ‘o’ and the inequality of the marginal alignments of both the body and the attestation clause have betrayed the vain effort; (e) That the texture and fiber of the paper on the portion on which the signature of the attesting witnesses were affixed had been disturbed and affected by the interval of time and the ordinary exposure of the paper to the atmosphere between the signing of the testator and the attesting witnesses, which fact is revealed by the greater penetrations of the ink in the signature of Pablo M. Roxas; (f) That had the testator and the attesting witnesses signed on the same occasion, the probability was that one or two fountain pens only should have been used instead of three as testified to unanimously by the expert witnesses both for the proponent and the oppositors.” The petitioner has appealed. Her counsel insist that the testimony, unanimous in all essential points, of the three attesting witnesses should be given controlling weight. Counsel for oppositors, upon the other hand, argue that the testimony of Maria Roxas, in conjunction with the opinions of experts, should prevail. The testimony of Fortunato Gupit, Jacinto Y. Enriquez and Martin Rodrigo (the attesting witnesses) tends to show that they were in the house of Rosario Vda. de Icasiano (mother-in-law of Gupit) in barrio Sta. Ana, municipality of Bulacan, Province of Bulacan, on January 1, 1945. Between two and three in the afternoon Pablo Roxas showed up and, approaching Gupit who was then reading a book, asked him to go to the sala with Roxas. The latter got from his hip pocket a folded sheet of paper (the will here in question) and asked Gupit to read it. In the meantime Roxas proceeded to the dining hall where a mahjong game was being played and called Enriquez and Rodrigo who thereupon went to the sala and were asked to read the will previously handed to Gupit. Roxas then made the request for the three to act as witnesses. Roxas, using his fountain pen, signed it in the presence of Gupit, Enriquez and Rodrigo. Gupit then signed with his own pen and, noticing that the ink in his signature was spreading, asked for a blotter. Roxas got a blotter from a nearby writing desk and gave it to Gupit who accordingly applied it. Enriquez and Rodrigo, using the pen of Gupit, took their turns in signing the will, the blotter being also applied. Thereafter, Roxas refolded the document and inserted the same in his hip pocket. Fortunato A. Gupit is a certified public accountant. He is the dean of the College of Business Administration and the comptroller of the Arellano University. Jacinto Y. Enriquez comes from a distinguished family in Bulacan and is a student in the University of Santo Tomas. Martin Rodrigo is a businessman and landowner. Gupit is the husband of a half-sister of the petitioner; Enriquez is a second cousin of petitioner; and Rodrigo is the husband of a deceased cousin of the petitioner. The testimony of oppositor Maria Roxas tends to show that on December 30, 1944, Pablo Roxas asked from her a sheet of typewriting paper. At about one in the afternoon of January 1, 1945, Pablo Roxas came back to the house of Maria and showed the will in question signed by Pablo, clean and uncrumpled, and without any attestation clause. Pablo executed the will as it was shown to Maria, as a mere ruse to make the petitioner continue loving Reynaldo Roxas (adulterous son of Pablo Roxas). Two handwriting experts (Amadeo M. Cabe and Jose C. Espinosa) were employed by the oppositors and their testimony tends to support the theory that the body of the will up to the signature of Pablo Roxas was typewritten on a plain sheet of paper; that the sheet was subsequently removed from the typewriter and signed by the testator; that the sheet, after being crumpled and folded, was reinserted in the typewriter for the insertion of the attestation clause which was signed afterwards by the three attesting witnesses. This expert opinion is based more or less on the circumstances enumerated in the appealed decision hereinbefore quoted, except that while the trial court observed that there are “greater penetrations of the ink in the signature of Pablo M. Roxas,” Espinosa and Cabe found that there is greater diffusion of ink in the signatures of the attesting witnesses. After a careful examination of the record in the light of the contentions of the parties, we have no hesitancy in holding that the appealed decision is erroneous. This case is one in which the will is couched in a language known and spoken by the testator and the signature of the testator and the signatures of the three attesting witnesses are admittedly genuine. Such being the situation, the question that arises, far from requiring the intervention of experts, is one merely of credibility of witnesses. In our opinion, the testimony of the three attesting witnesses—confirmatory of the due execution of the will—deserves full credit, not only because of their qualifications (hereinbefore pointed out) but because their reputation for probity has not been impeached. The fact that they may have some relationship with the petitioner is not sufficient to warrant the belief that they did not tell the truth. The law, in the first place, does not bar relatives either of the testator or of the heirs or legatees from acting as witnesses. In the second place, in the normal course of things and to be sure that the witnesses would not let the beneficiaries down, the testator may be inclined to employ, as attesting witnesses, relatives of such beneficiaries, if not wholly disinterested persons. In the third place, under the will, Reynaldo Roxas (adulterous son of Pablo Roxas) is named a legatee on equal footing with the petitioner, and the attesting witnesses are not related whatsoever with him. In the fourth place, whereas the three attesting witnesses have no direct interest in the subject matter of the will, oppositor Maria Roxas, like the other oppositor Pedro Roxas, is an intestate heir of Pablo Roxas and, therefore, naturally interested in having the probate of said will disallowed. Ordinarily, the findings of fact of a trial court, because of the benefit of having seen and heard the witnesses, are entitled to great weight. But, in this case, the lower court relied on the conclusions of experts, and this is obvious from (1) its recital of the circumstances that led it to believe that the will was not executed in accordance with law, and (2) its failure to analyze the oral evidence. It is alleged that the testator had another adulterous child (Aida), sister of Reynaldo, and it is unnatural that he would have failed to provide for said child, if not for his brother and sister (herein oppositors) in the will, if the testator really intended to dispose of his properties under said will. This is again a mere conjecture which should not prevail over the testimony of the attesting witnesses, not to mention the fact that there is nothing in the record to show conclusively that the testator ever admitted that Aida is another adulterous child, coupled with the circumstance that the latter did not live with the testator. As to the omission of the herein oppositors, there might have been a reason known only to the testator why they should be excluded, or why they need no participation. That the will in question was written on poor kind of stationery, or that it was not prepared by a lawyer or notary public, or that no copies were made, is of no moment. It should be borne in mind that the will was executed in January, 1945, when everything was practically in confusion due to the impending battles for the liberation of the Philippines, and when paper supply was almost exhausted. Aside from the fact that a will need not be prepared by or acknowledged before a notary public, it is not improbable that the testator, before the date of the will in question, had prepared or seen previous wills and therefore was familiar with its wording and legal formalities, and that due to the abnormal time he undertook to prepare said will without the aid of a lawyer or notary public and without making copies thereof. We do not venture to impute bias to the experts introduced during the trial, but we hasten to state that the positive testimony of the three attesting witnesses ought to prevail over the expert opinions which cannot be mathematically precise, but which, on the contrary, are “subject to inherent infirmities.” In the instant case, it is significant that while Amadeo M. Cabe observed that four different fountain pens were used in signing the will, Jose C. Espinosa was unable to determine whether the same pen was used for all the signatures. Upon the other hand, Prof. H. Otley Beyer believes that one pen was used for the testator’s signature, and another pen for the signatures of the witnesses. Too much emphasis and effort, through experts Cabe and Espinosa, had been placed on the supposition that after the body of the will had been typewritten, the sheet was removed from the machine and, after having been folded and crumpled, it was replaced in the typewriter for the insertion of the attestation clause. The law does not require that the will should be written in one continuous act; and the supposition does not necessarily, much less conclusively, prove that the signing was not done on one occasion. For the difference in the ink diffusions and penetrations between the signatures of the testator and those of the three attesting witnesses may not be due solely to the folding and crumpling of the sheet on which the will is written, but on such other factors as class of ink, class of pens, habit of writing, condition of paper, and the use of blotter. Speculations on these matters should give way to the positive declarations of the attesting witnesses. The law impliedly recognizes the almost conclusive weight of the testimony of attesting witnesses when it provides that “if the will is contested, all the subscribing witnesses present in the Philippines and not insane, must be produced and examined, and the death, absence, or insanity of any of them must be satisfactorily shown to the court.” (Section 11, Rule 77, Rules of Court.) The contention made by the appellees in their opposition that the will was revoked by the testator when he crumpled the same, requires no serious consideration, in view of their failure to show that the crumpling was caused with the intention to revoke. Appellees’ reference to other formal defects of the will (other than that hereinbefore disposed of) also needs no inquiry, because it is not pressed herein. Wherefore, the appealed judgment is reversed and the will in question is hereby declared probated. So ordered, with costs against the appellees. Feria, Bengzon, Tuason, Jugo, and Bautista Angelo, JJ., concur.