Icasiano v. Icasiano Digest

Icasiano vs. Icasiano
G.R. No. L-18979 June 30, 1964


Facts:
1. Celso Icasiano, filed a petition for the probate of the will of Josefa Villacorte and for his appointment as executor thereof. It appears from the evidence that the testatrix died on September 12, 1958. She executed a will in Tagalog, and through the help of her lawyer, it was prepared in duplicates, an original and a carbon copy.

2. On the day that it was subscribed and attested, the lawyer only brought the original copy of the will while the carbon duplicate (unsigned) was left in Bulacan. One of the witnesses failed to sign one of the pages in the original copy but admitted he may have lifted 2 pages simultaneously instead when he signed the will. Nevertheless, he affirmed that the will was signed by the testator and other witnesses in his presence.

Issue: Whether or not the failure of one of the subscribing witnesses to affix his signature to a page is sufficient to deny probate of the will

RULING: No, the failure to sign was entirely through pure oversight or mere inadvertence. Since the duplicated bore the required signatures, this proves that the omission was not intentional. Even if the original is in existence, a duplicate may still be admitted to probate since the original is deemed to be defective, then in law, there is no other will bu the duly signed carbon duplicate and the same can be probated.

The law should not be strictly and literally interpreted as to penalize the testatrix on account of the inadvertence of a single witness over whose conduct she has no control of. Where the purpose of the law is to guarantee the identity of the testament and its component pages, and there is no intentional or deliberate deviation existed.

Note that this ruling should not be taken as a departure from the rules that the will should be signed by the witnesses on every page. The carbon copy duplicate was regular in all respects.