Requisites

Meaning of Property

Property, in civil law, refers to things and rights capable of becoming objects of juridical relations because they have economic or practical value and may be subjected to legal control. The Civil Code treats as property all things which are or may be the object of appropriation, whether they are immovable or movable.

A thing becomes legally relevant as property not merely because it exists, but because the legal order recognizes that it can be used, enjoyed, possessed, transferred, encumbered, recovered, or otherwise made the subject of rights and obligations. The concept therefore connects physical or juridical existence with usefulness, individuality, and appropriability.

Property is broader than material objects. Land, buildings, animals, vehicles, crops, books, machinery, and money are property, but so are certain rights with economic value, such as real rights over land, credits, shares of stock, intellectual property rights, leasehold interests, and other incorporeal rights recognized by law.

Requisites of Property

For a thing or right to be treated as property, three basic requisites must concur: utility, individuality or substantivity, and susceptibility of appropriation. These requisites explain why some existing things are property, why some are not property, and why some things may become property only after legal or physical conditions are satisfied.

Utility

Utility means usefulness in law, not necessarily commercial value. A thing has utility if it can serve a material, economic, moral, cultural, scientific, aesthetic, religious, or practical purpose recognized by law.

Land has utility because it can be used for residence, agriculture, industry, commerce, conservation, or public service. A document may have utility because it evidences a right. A family heirloom may be useful because of sentimental, historical, or evidentiary value, even if its market value is small.

Utility may be present even if the thing is not immediately profitable. A vacant parcel of land, an unused machine, a dormant credit, and an unexploited patent may all be property because each is capable of beneficial use or legal disposition.

The law does not require that utility be lawful in every possible use; it requires that the thing itself be capable of a legally recognized use. A knife, chemical, vehicle, or computer remains property even if it can be misused, because lawful use and legal control remain possible.

When the only contemplated use is prohibited by law or contrary to public order, the law may deny enforceable proprietary treatment. Property concepts cannot validate commerce in things whose ownership, transfer, or possession is illegal.

Individuality or Substantivity

Individuality means that the object must be determinable as a distinct thing or right. The object need not be physically solid, but it must be capable of separate identification from other objects, persons, or the general environment.

A parcel of land becomes individually cognizable through boundaries, technical descriptions, tax declarations, surveys, titles, possession, or other means of identification. A movable may be individualized by its physical characteristics, serial number, container, quantity, location, or segregation from a mass.

Substantivity does not always require present separation. Fungible goods, such as rice, sugar, fuel, or money, may be property even though units are interchangeable, because the law can identify them by quantity, quality, and source when necessary. The relevant point is that the object of the right can be determined.

Incorporeal rights also satisfy individuality when the law can identify their source, holder, object, and content. A credit is identified by the debtor, creditor, prestation, amount, and maturity; a real right is identified by the property burdened and the legal power conferred.

Things that cannot be separated or legally identified cannot ordinarily be the object of independent ownership. A beam of sunlight in the open sky, air in its natural state, the sea while unconfined, or the flow of a public river is not privately owned as a separate object merely because a person benefits from it.

Susceptibility of Appropriation

Susceptibility of appropriation is the central requisite of property. A thing may be useful and identifiable, but it is property in the civil law sense only if it can be brought under legal control as an object of ownership, possession, enjoyment, administration, or another patrimonial right.

Appropriation does not mean actual ownership by a private person. A thing may be property even if it is presently unowned, abandoned, ownerless, or owned by the State, provided it is of a kind that may become the object of legally recognized dominion.

The requirement is capacity, not present title. Wild animals, abandoned movables, hidden treasure, and unoccupied things capable of private ownership may become objects of ownership when the modes and conditions fixed by law are complied with.

Appropriation may be private or public. Roads, ports, rivers, public plazas, military reservations, and other properties for public use or public service are property, but they are not privately appropriable while they retain that character. Their legal regime protects public use or governmental purpose rather than private dominion.

Property of public dominion is outside ordinary private commerce while devoted to public use, public service, or the development of national wealth. It cannot be acquired by prescription, levied upon as ordinary private property, or transferred as private property unless the law first removes its public character.

Public land illustrates the distinction between existence, usefulness, and appropriability. Land may physically exist and be valuable, but under the Regalian doctrine lands of the public domain belong to the State unless legally classified and disposed of according to law. Private title to public land arises only through a valid grant, confirmation, patent, or other legally recognized mode.

Natural resources are likewise governed by constitutional and statutory limits. Minerals, forests, waters, fisheries, petroleum, and similar resources are not freely reducible to private ownership merely by occupation or possession. The State may allow exploration, development, utilization, or limited rights under law, but the resource remains subject to the constitutional framework of State ownership and supervision.

Things Excluded from Private Appropriation

Some things are not proper objects of private ownership because they are common to all, outside commerce, inseparable from human personality, or withdrawn by law from private dealing. The exclusion may arise from nature, public policy, morality, or positive law.

• Common things are things whose nature prevents exclusive appropriation, such as the atmosphere, sunlight, the open sea, and flowing waters in their natural condition, although portions may become property when lawfully captured, stored, confined, or reduced to control.
• Things outside commerce are things that cannot be the object of valid private transactions because the law withdraws them from sale, donation, mortgage, lease, prescription, or execution.
• Public dominion property is not privately appropriable while dedicated to public use, public service, or public wealth, even if individuals may use it under regulation.
• Human personality and status cannot be owned, sold, or encumbered; civil status, personal liberty, filiation, citizenship, and family relations are governed by personal and public law, not by commerce.
• The living human body is not property in the commercial sense, although the law may regulate medical treatment, donation, custody of remains, and limited acts concerning organs or tissues.
• Prohibited objects, such as contraband or items whose possession or transfer is unlawful, may be subject to seizure or forfeiture rather than protected as ordinary private property.

Exclusion from private appropriation does not always mean absence of legal regulation. A public road, a river, a forest reserve, or a protected cultural object is legally significant precisely because the law assigns a special regime to it. The point is that ordinary ownership powers are restricted or denied.

Things, Rights, and Patrimony

A thing is generally an object that exists outside the person and may be subjected to juridical power. A right is a legally enforceable power, claim, or interest over a thing, against a person, or in relation to a legal status. Both may be property when they have economic value and are legally transferable, inheritable, enforceable, or otherwise patrimonial.

Patrimony is the totality of a person's economic assets and liabilities. It includes property, rights, obligations, and charges susceptible of pecuniary valuation. Ownership of a parcel of land, a creditor's claim, shares in a corporation, and a leasehold right may all form part of patrimony.

Not every right is property. Political rights, purely personal family rights, personality rights, and rights inseparable from civil status are generally not patrimonial property, although their violation may give rise to damages that become patrimonial claims.

The distinction matters because property rights may generally be transferred, inherited, burdened, attached, recovered, or protected by real actions, while strictly personal rights are governed by personal, family, constitutional, or public law limitations.

Potential Appropriation and Future Property

The Civil Code's phrase "are or may be the object of appropriation" includes things that are not presently owned but are capable of becoming property under law. The capacity to be appropriated is enough; actual appropriation is a matter of acquisition.

Future things may be the subject of certain contracts when the law permits them and the object can be determined without need of a new agreement. Future crops, unborn young of animals, goods to be manufactured, and future receivables may be dealt with within legal limits because they are expected to acquire individuality and utility.

There is a difference between a future thing and a mere hope. A crop expected from identified land or goods to be produced under a contract may be sufficiently determinable; a purely speculative possibility with no determinate source may fail as an object of property relations.

Potential property remains subject to legality. A future object cannot be validly appropriated if the law prohibits its ownership or transfer once it comes into existence.

Relation to Classification as Movable or Immovable

Once a thing or right satisfies the requisites of property, the law classifies it as immovable or movable. Classification affects form of transfer, registration, prescription, remedies, taxation, security transactions, succession, execution, and conflict of laws.

Immovables generally include land, buildings, constructions adhered to the soil, growing crops in certain contexts, mines, quarries, docks, machinery intended by the owner for an industry on immovable property, and real rights over immovables. Movables generally include things susceptible of appropriation that are not classified as immovable, forces of nature brought under control, obligations and actions involving movables or demandable sums, and shares or interests in juridical entities.

The classification presupposes that the object is property. A thing that is not useful, not identifiable, or not legally appropriable does not become movable or immovable property merely because it has a physical location.

Practical Consequences of the Requisites

The requisites of property determine whether a person can acquire ownership, convey title, create a real right, recover possession, demand damages for impairment, or subject the object to execution. A void object cannot support a valid sale, mortgage, donation, lease, pledge, or succession.

If the object lacks individuality, the legal issue is often determinability. The law may uphold a transaction if the object can be identified by objective standards, such as location, quantity, quality, boundaries, records, or the parties' course of dealing.

If the object lacks appropriability, the defect is usually more serious because parties cannot by agreement place within commerce what law or nature excludes from commerce. No amount of possession, payment, or private documentation can convert public dominion property, inalienable public land, or prohibited objects into ordinary private property.

If the object has utility and individuality but is burdened by restrictions, the property may exist but the owner's powers are limited. Zoning, environmental regulation, agrarian reform, land registration requirements, heritage laws, condominium rules, easements, servitudes, and public welfare restrictions may regulate use without destroying the character of the thing as property.

The law of property therefore begins with a simple inquiry: whether the asserted object of a right is useful, identifiable, and legally appropriable. Only after these requisites are satisfied do the more specific rules on ownership, possession, accession, co-ownership, usufruct, easements, nuisance, registry, and land titles operate in full.