Rivera García v. Superior Court of Puerto Rico
Rivera García v. Superior Court of Puerto Rico
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The facts stipulated in the present case are the following: On July 28, 1901, Esteban Díaz Sabino married Belén Castaño Rivera, which marriage lasted until Esteban’s death on March 29, 1959. Subsequent to his marriage and between the years 1923 and 1924, Esteban had marital relations with a woman known as Juanita Parrilla, from which relations a child was born on March 26, 1924, known as Félix Parrilla.
The trial court rendered judgment against the prescription of the action for the following reasons: “It is not until after the approval of our Constitution that it was definitively established that the adulterine children had the same rights as the legitimate children; neither the constitutional provision nor Act No. 17 established any prescriptive term whatsoever for a child born of a married father or mother to attain the full recognition of his rights on equal terms with the legitimate child. And we have already seen that § 126 of the Civil Code, in its own terms, limits its scope and the term for the institution of the action for acknowledgment to presumptive natural children. ... We hold that the action of the adulterine child whose parents shall have died subsequent to the approval of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has no prescriptive term whatsoever, and that is so, because neither the Constitution
The conclusions of the trial court are contrary to law. It is true that the Constitution of Puerto Rico does not establish any prescriptive term for the adulterine child to attain the same rights as the legitimate children. The Constitution does not have it because this kind of provision corresponds to private law and not to the political law. It is for that reason that the transitory provisions of our Constitution establish that, when the Constitution goes into effect, all laws not inconsistent therewith shall continue in full force until amended or repealed, or until they expire by their own terms. On the other hand, we have already seen that since the approval of Act No. 229 of May 12, 1942, the adulterine children became natural children, and as such, were covered by the prescription provisions of § 126 of our Civil Code before our Constitution of 1952 went into effect. Assuming that § 1864 of the Civil Code were applicable to the situation of facts in the present case, we still would have to reconcile it with § 1869, which provides: “The time for the prescription of all kinds of actions, when there is no special provision to the contrary, shall be counted from the day on which they could have been instituted.” In this case petitioner’s right to request his status of recognized son would have prescribed in 1960. As may be seen, the rule of prescription established by § 126 which permits the action
The order entered by the Superior Court of Puerto Rico, Humaeao Part, on July 13, 1965 will be reversed and judgment rendered sustaining the motion to dismiss filed by defendants-appellees.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.