ESPINO V. VICENTE (Donation)

492 SCRA 330
June 22, 2006

Facts: Petitioner’s parents Emerenciana and Doroteo were owners of 2 untitled parcels of land, a portion of which they sold to a Marissa Delos Santos in 1995. Sometime in 1996, their nephew’s wife Emma made Emerenciana and Petitioner Marcelina sign a document to be used in titling the properties in their name. Being both illiterate, they did not know that the document they signed was actually a Deed of Donation in favour of Emma.

Issue: Whether the assailed deed of donation enjoys the legal presumption of due execution and validity

Held: A donation is an act of liberality whereby a person disposes gratuitously a thing or a right in favour of another, who accepts it. Like any other contract, an agreement of the parties is essential. Consent in contracts presupposes the following requisites:

1. It should be intelligent, or with an exact notion of the matter to which it refers;
2. It should be free;
3. It should be spontaneous.

The parties’ intention must be clear and the attendance of a vice of consent, like in any other contract, renders the donation voidable.

It is evident that fraud attended the act of respondent Emma when she procured the signatures of Marcelina and Emerenciana. There is fraud when through insidious words or machinations of one of the contracting parties, the other is induced into a contract which without them, he would have agreed to. When one of the parties is unable to read, or if the contract is in a language not understood by him, and mistake or fraud is alleged, the person enforcing the contract must show that the terms thereof have been fully explained to the former.