Balbin v. Register of Deeds of Ilocos Sur

Balbin v. Register of Deeds of Ilocos Sur

G.R. No. L-20611 May 8, 1969

FACTS: On November 15, 1961 petitioners presented to the register of deeds of Ilocos Sur a duplicate copy of the registered owner's certificate of title (OCT No. 548) and an instrument entitled "Deed of Donation inter-vivos," with the request that the same be annotated on the title. Under the terms of the instrument sought to be annotated one Cornelio Balbin, registered owner of the parcel of land described in OCT No. 548, appears to have donated inter-vivos an undivided two-thirds portion thereof in favor of petitioners. 

The register of deeds denied the requested annotation for being “legally defective or otherwise not sufficient in law.”

It appears that previously annotated in the memorandum of encumbrances on the certificate are three separate sales of undivided portions of the land earlier executed by Cornelio Balbin in favor of three different buyers. Mainly because these three other co-owner's copies of the certificate of title No. 548 had not been presented by petitioners, the Register of Deeds refused to make the requested annotation. Unsatisfied, petitioners referred the matter to the Commissioner of Land Registration, who subsequently upheld the action of the Register of Deeds in a resolution dated April 10, 1962. Hence, this petition.

ISSUE: Whether or not the petitioners should present the other three duplicate copies of the certificate of title, coming from the previous sales, before the register of deeds annotate their transaction.

HELD: Yes. Section 55 of Act 496, which provides that "the production of the owner's duplicate certificate of title whenever any voluntary instrument is presented forregistration shall be conclusive authority from the registered owner to the register of deeds to make a memorandum of registration in accordance with such instrument” obviously assumes that there is only one duplicate copy of the title in question, namely, that of the registered owner himself, such that its production whenever a voluntary instrument is presented constitutes sufficient authority from him for the register of deeds to make the corresponding memorandum of registration. In the case at bar, the three other copies of the title were in existence, presumably issued under section 43 of Act 496. As correctly observed by the Land Registration Commissioner, petitioners' claim that the issuance of those copies was unauthorized or illegal is beside the point, its legality being presumed until otherwise declared by a court of competent jurisdiction. There being several copies of the same title in existence, it is easy to see how their integrity may be adversely affected if an encumbrance, or an outright conveyance, is annotated on one copy and not on the others. The law itself refers to every copy authorized to be issued as a duplicate of the original, which means that both must contain identical entries of the transactions, particularly voluntary ones, affecting the land covered by the title. If this would not be followed, if different copies were permitted to carry differing annotations, the whole system of Torrens registration would cease to be reliable.