Property

Concept of Property

Property, in civil law, refers to things or rights that are susceptible of appropriation and can form part of a person's patrimony. The Civil Code treats as property all things which are or may be the object of appropriation, whether immovable or movable. The idea is not limited to physical objects; patrimonial rights, credits, shares, intellectual creations, easements, and other valuable interests may be property when the law allows them to be owned, transferred, burdened, or enforced.

A thing becomes property in the legal sense when it can be placed under juridical control. Physical existence alone is not enough. A thing that cannot be appropriated, cannot be individualized, or is legally withdrawn from private dealings may exist in fact but not operate as private property. Conversely, an incorporeal right may be property although it has no physical form, because the law gives it economic value and recognizes a holder who may assert it against others.

Property is the object over which real rights may exist. Ownership is the most complete real right, but it is not the only relation that the law recognizes. Usufruct, possession, easements, mortgages, pledges, leases, and other juridical relations may attach to property, each conferring a defined power or advantage over the thing or right involved. The nature of the property often determines the form, enforceability, registration, remedies, and limitations of these relations.

Things and Rights as Objects of Property

The Civil Code uses property in a broad patrimonial sense. Corporeal things are property when they are perceptible objects capable of legal control, such as land, buildings, machinery, vehicles, crops, animals, money, and goods. Incorporeal rights are property when they have economic value and may be asserted, assigned, encumbered, or transmitted, such as credits, shares of stock, intellectual property rights, hereditary rights after the opening of succession, and real rights over another's property.

The distinction between a thing and a right matters because civil law often treats them differently. A parcel of land is a corporeal immovable, while a mortgage over that land is an incorporeal real right. A certificate of stock is a document, but the shareholder's participation in the corporation is an incorporeal property right. A promissory note is a movable instrument, while the credit it evidences is an incorporeal right of action.

Property also has a public dimension. The law protects private dominion, but it does not treat property as an absolute island of individual will. Ownership and other property rights are exercised within the limits of law, public order, morals, good customs, and the rights of others. The Constitution recognizes private property, but it also permits regulation, taxation, eminent domain upon just compensation, and restrictions flowing from the social function of property.

Legal Requisites of Property

For an object to be property, it must generally have utility, individuality, and susceptibility of appropriation. Utility means that the object or right can satisfy a human need or economic interest. Individuality means that it can be identified or separated from the undifferentiated mass of things. Susceptibility of appropriation means that it can be placed under the control of a person or juridical entity without violating law or public policy.

These requisites explain why some things cannot be privately owned even if they are useful. The open sea, air in its natural state, sunlight, and similar common things may be used by persons, but they are not normally the objects of exclusive private dominion. Once a naturally common resource is captured, contained, reduced to possession, or regulated into an appropriable form, the law may recognize a property relation over the specific portion or product involved.

Individuality is especially important for obligations involving generic things. A seller may bind himself to deliver a generic object, but ownership over a particular thing does not pass until the object is identified, segregated, or delivered according to law. Until individualization occurs, the subject may be determinable for purposes of obligation, but it is not yet the specific property of the acquirer.

Things Outside the Commerce of Persons

Not every valuable thing may be the object of private contracts or private ownership. Things outside the commerce of persons cannot be validly sold, donated, mortgaged, attached, acquired by prescription, or otherwise dealt with as ordinary private property. A juridical act concerning such an object is ineffective to transfer private dominion because the defect lies in the object itself.

• Common things are not susceptible of exclusive appropriation in their natural and unconfined state, although particular captured or processed portions may become property.
• Property of public dominion is devoted to public use, public service, or national wealth and remains outside ordinary private commerce while it retains that character.
• Illicit or prohibited objects cannot be valid objects of property transactions when the law forbids their ownership, transfer, or circulation.
• Purely personal rights such as civil status, personality rights, and family relations are not property, although their violation may produce patrimonial consequences.

The phrase outside the commerce of persons does not always mean physically unusable. A public road is constantly used, but it is not privately disposable. A public plaza may be occupied temporarily under lawful authority, but that permission does not convert the plaza into private property. A government concession may grant use or exploitation under special law, but it normally grants only the rights expressly conferred and does not imply ownership of the public domain resource itself.

Public Dominion and Private Ownership

A central property distinction is between property of public dominion and property of private ownership. Property of public dominion belongs to the State or its political subdivisions in a public capacity and is devoted to public use, public service, or the development of national wealth. It is generally inalienable, imprescriptible, and not subject to levy, execution, or private acquisition while its public character remains.

Property of private ownership may belong to private persons, juridical entities, or the State and its subdivisions in their patrimonial capacity. Patrimonial property of the State is not devoted to public use or public service and may generally be the subject of private law relations, subject to constitutional, statutory, and administrative limits on disposition. The conversion of public dominion property into patrimonial property requires a lawful act of withdrawal from public use or public service; mere non-use or tolerance of private occupation does not usually suffice.

Land law gives this distinction special force. Under the Regalian doctrine, lands of the public domain belong to the State, and private land ownership must rest on a recognized grant, title, or mode of acquisition under law. A person who occupies land that remains part of the public domain does not become owner merely by long possession unless the law makes that land alienable and disposable and recognizes the possession as a basis for title. Thus, in land titles and deeds, the first inquiry is often whether the land is capable of private ownership at all.

Immovable and Movable Property

The Civil Code's primary classification divides property into immovable and movable. Immovable property generally includes land, buildings, roads, constructions adhered to the soil, growing crops and plants while attached, machinery and equipment placed by the owner for an industry or works on immovable property, and real rights over immovables. Movable property generally includes things capable of transport without impairment of the immovable to which they may be connected, obligations and actions involving movables or demandable sums, shares of stock, and other property not classified as immovable.

The classification affects more than terminology. It determines the proper mode of delivery, the need for public instruments or registration, the availability of mortgage or pledge, the venue and nature of actions, the rules on accession, and the operation of prescription. A right may also take the classification of its object: a real right over land is treated as immovable, while a credit payable in money is movable even if evidenced by a document kept in a building.

The law may classify a movable object as immovable by destination or incorporation when it is connected to real property in a legally significant manner. Machinery, receptacles, instruments, or implements may become immovable when placed by the owner of the tenement for an industry or works carried on in the building or land and when they directly meet the needs of that activity. The same object may therefore be movable in one setting and immovable in another, depending on its relation to the land and the legal purpose for which classification is being made.

Other Classifications

Property classifications organize legal consequences. The same object may fall into several classifications at once; for example, a titled parcel of land may be immovable, private, alienable, nonconsumable, and individually determined. These categories are tools for applying rules on transfer, use, preservation, liability, succession, and remedies.

Property as Part of Patrimony

Patrimony refers to the totality of a person's economically valuable rights and obligations. Property is usually discussed as an asset, but civil law also considers how assets answer for obligations. A debtor's property, except those exempt by law, generally serves as the common guarantee of creditors. This patrimonial view explains rules on attachment, execution, insolvency, fraudulent transfers, succession, and the transmissibility of rights.

Not all interests connected to a person form part of patrimony. Civil status, family rights, honor, privacy, liberty, and personality are not ordinary property rights. They are protected by law, but they are not treated as disposable assets. When their violation produces damages, the claim for damages may become patrimonial, but the underlying personal interest does not thereby become property capable of sale or mortgage.

Future property may be relevant in obligations and contracts, but the law limits dispositions of mere expectancies. A future harvest may be sold because it is a future thing with an expected material existence. A mere hope of inheriting from a living person is different because succession opens only upon death, and the law restricts transactions over future inheritance except in cases it expressly allows.

Property, Possession, and Ownership

Property should be distinguished from possession and ownership. Property is the object; possession is the holding or enjoyment of the object or right; ownership is the fullest juridical power over it. A possessor may not be the owner, and an owner may temporarily lack possession. The law protects possession for reasons of public order and stability, but possessory protection does not by itself settle ownership.

Ownership includes the rights to enjoy, dispose, recover, and exclude others, subject to law. These powers presuppose an object capable of ownership. If the object is public dominion property, outside commerce, illicit, or incapable of individual appropriation, ownership cannot arise by private will. If the object is private property, ownership may be acquired and transmitted through occupation, law, donation, succession, tradition following contracts, prescription, and other modes recognized by law.

Possession is significant because it may ripen into ownership only when the property is legally capable of prescription and the requisites of acquisitive prescription are present. Possession of private property may have one legal consequence; possession of public dominion property has another. Thus, the legal character of the property controls the possible effect of possession.

Property and Accession

Property includes not only the principal thing but, in proper cases, its products, fruits, accessories, and additions. Natural fruits arise spontaneously, industrial fruits are produced by cultivation or labor, and civil fruits consist of rents, income, and similar juridical yields. As a general principle, the owner of property is entitled to its fruits, but possession in good faith, usufruct, lease, co-ownership, and other legal relations may allocate fruits differently.

Accession reflects the idea that ownership of property may extend to what it produces or what is incorporated or attached to it. Buildings, plantings, improvements, alluvion, and mixtures raise questions of ownership because the law must determine whether the added thing follows the principal, whether reimbursement is due, and whether removal is allowed. These rules depend on the nature of the property, the good or bad faith of the parties, and the relation between the principal and the accessory.

Operative Consequences of Property Classification

The legal character of property controls the rules that govern it. Alienable private property may generally be sold, donated, leased, mortgaged, attached, inherited, and acquired by prescription. Public dominion property may generally be used only according to its public purpose or special authority. Movables may be delivered by actual or constructive delivery and may be pledged, while immovables commonly require public instruments and registration for transactions to bind third persons effectively.

Classification also affects remedies. A person deprived of a movable may seek recovery of the specific thing when the law allows it, while disputes over real property may involve possessory actions, reivindicatory actions, quieting of title, partition, foreclosure, or registration proceedings. The remedy follows the right asserted and the kind of property involved. The same factual interference may therefore produce different legal consequences depending on whether the affected object is movable, immovable, private, public, corporeal, or incorporeal.

Finally, property law connects private autonomy with public regulation. Parties may define many property relations by contract, but they cannot override the legal nature of the object. They cannot make public dominion property privately alienable by agreement, convert an inalienable object into collateral, sell what the law prohibits, or defeat registration and statutory requirements meant to protect third persons and the public. The first task in any property question is therefore to identify the object, determine whether it is legally appropriable, classify it, and then apply the rules attached to that classification.