Lands that are not divided and grandfather died and his 2 children too, only left 6 grandchildren

Hi All lawyers who can give me advice,

Recently my cousins and I are having disputes about the division of a 3 hectares lands that were passed to us by our dead grandfather. His children (our fathers) are all dead as well so only 6 of us (4 children from son1  and 2 children from son 2). Need your advices:

a.) What is the partition as mandated by the philippine law in our situation? is it 3 hectares divided by 2 dead children or 6 live grandchildren?

b.) If one of the grandchildren wants to buy the whole land how can she know the price value? is it from the assessed value?

c.) the only proof we have that the land is own by our grandfather is through a tax declaration under his name. How can we start the partition and making titles?


Please help as we do not want this incident to bring angers and pains to all of us.

Yours trully,

DM Chiong

I'm not a lawyer but I answer anyway

a) (Asuming there are no will.)
Are the wifes of the brothers alive?
If they are not, it's like this:
1. Split into two equal parts.
2. Then each half is splited between each sibbling group.
=The smaller group get 1/4 each. The biger group get 1/8 each.

b) Well. The value is kind of the value what anyone want to buy for and the sellers are prepared to sell for
BUT BIR has an own estimate, which the tax is counted by anyway if the sell price is lower, so you can use that value as a HINT. (SOMETIMES the BIR valuing is rather much different from the sell price, but it can be corect too.) If the BIR value isn't much wrong, you can agree about that price. Then you can blame BIR if anyone will become grumpy later

c) As I wrote, I'm not a lawyer, and on top of that I read mainly business laws. I just HEARED somewhere it has become possible to get property titled for "anyone", but I don't know if that is true.
The law I KNOW, but perhaps it has been replaced:
If the property has been in family almost since WWII and property taxes are paid, then the title can be DEMANDED.
If the property has been in family at least 10 years and property taxes are paid, then the title can be APPLIED to get. (Often approved, but not allways.)
Both cost a fee. It depend of size and location, but it did cost around 3000 - 4000 p per property for some rural land at Cebu island (around 1 - 5 hectares each) a few years ago.

It cost rather much more to get partition, because then a much more detailed survey will be needed. So if one buy whole* then it's cheaper to NOT split the property into different titles, then just sell it and split the money as in p1.

*Or if someone want to keep a part, then split THAT part.