Every presumption is in favor of the validity of a marriage
where the marital relations have continued uninterruptedly for over
forty years without any question's being raised or right asserted
by anyone claiming under an earlier marriage of one of the parties
until more than ten years after the death, and five years after the
distribution of the property, of that party.
The validity of such a marriage should not be impugned except
upon clear, strong, and unequivocal proof; nor, in the absence of
such proof, will this Court reverse the judgment of the lower court
sustaining its validity when attacked by those who had opportunity
to do so before the death of both spouses.
16 Phil. 137 affirmed.
The facts, which involve conflicting claims to the estate of a
Chinese merchant domiciled in the Philippine Islands and of the
validity of his marriage, are stated in the opinion.
Page 228 U. S. 336
MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER delivered the opinion of the Court.
This appeal brings under review a decree of the Supreme Court of
the Philippines in a suit involving conflicting claims to the
estate of a Chinese merchant domiciled in those islands, and there
known as Vicente Romero Sy Quia, who died intestate at Manila in
1894. The appellants, who were plaintiffs in the court of first
instance, claim as descendants of a marriage between the intestate
and Yap Puan Niu, a Chinese woman, said to have been contracted in
1847 at Am Thau, in the Province of Amoy, China. The appellees
claim as the descendants of a marriage with Petronila Encarnacion,
a Filipino woman celebrated in 1853 at Vigan, in the Philippines.
The principal question here, as in the insular courts, is whether
the proof sufficiently established the Chinese marriage. On this,
the insular courts differed, the court of first instance finding
the marriage adequately proved and the Supreme Court, one justice
dissenting, holding the other way. 16 Phil. 137. Before coming to
the evidence directly addressed to this question, it will be well
to state the facts about which there is no dispute.
Sy Quia was born at Am Thau, China, in 1822, and went to the
Philippines at the age of twelve. At first, he was located in
Manila, but at some time before 1852 went to Vigan and entered the
service of a merchant at an annual salary of 200 pesos. During that
year, he was converted to the Catholic faith, and was baptized in
the parish church. The next year, he married Petronila, the banns
being regularly published and the marriage publicly solemnized
according to the rites of the church, as a preliminary to which he
affirmed under oath, and the civil and ecclesiastical
Page 228 U. S. 337
authorities certified, after inquiry, that he was then
unmarried. Shortly after the marriage, he and Petronila took up
their permanent home in Manila. They were then without any
particular property other than 5,000 pesos which she received from
her mother and brought into the conjugal society. He became a
merchant, and, through their united efforts, they accumulated real
and personal property amounting at the time of his death to upwards
of 600,000 pesos. They lived in a manner becoming the marital
state, and were universally recognized as husband and wife. Three
sons and two daughters were born of the marriage. One of the
daughters married and predeceased her father, leaving a son
surviving. The other died after the father, leaving the mother as
her only heir. Following Sy Quia's death, the widow administered
the estate, with the aid of the sons until 1900, when, through
appropriate judicial proceedings, the property was distributed
among the widow, sons, and grandson as the persons rightly entitled
thereto. The present suit was brought in 1905, more than half a
century after the marriage, and then for the first time was its
validity or its good faith as to either spouse brought in question
-- a fact which is of particular significance first, because Yap
Puan Niu, the alleged Chinese wife, visited in Manila at the home
of a brother of Sy Quia twice during the life of the latter, and
second, because two of the plaintiffs were adults living in Manila
at the time of Sy Quia's death and during the eleven years
intervening before the suit was brought.
There was testimony, taken by way of depositions in China,
tending to show that Sy Quia returned from the Philippines to Am
Thau in 1847, when he was twenty-five years old; that, during that
year, he married Yap Puan Niu, the marriage being properly arranged
and celebrated; that he remained at Am Thau three or four years,
during which two sons were born of this marriage; that he then
returned to the Philippines, and Yap Puan Niu continued to
reside
Page 228 U. S. 338
at Am Thau, dying there in 1891; that the four plaintiffs are
the only living descendants of this marriage, two being grandsons,
one a granddaughter, and one a great-grandson. Six of the witnesses
in China testified directly to the marriage, and their testimony,
if standing alone, would be quite persuasive of its occurrence,
notwithstanding some discrepancies in their statements. But this
testimony did not stand alone. It was met and contradicted by that
of several Philippino witnesses, taken mostly by deposition, to the
effect that they had known Sy Quia in Vigan for some years before
his marriage to Petronila in 1853, and that he was living there
during the period when, according to the opposing testimony, he
married Yap Puan Niu and remained in China. One of these witnesses
was an aged man who testified with certainty that he was a student
at Manila between 1839 and 1845 and knew Sy Quia there; that he,
the witness, was married at Vigan in 1847, and that Sy Quia was
living there then. Others of these witnesses give kindred reasons
for their ability to speak with precision concerning Sy Quia's
presence at Vigan during the period in question. Still other
witnesses gave testimony more or less corroborative of these
opposing theories, but it was less direct and was also
contradictory.
In addition to this conflicting testimony, there was this
situation, as before indicated: the Philippine marriage and the
forty years of uninterrupted marital life following it were not
only established, but conceded. While Sy Quia lived, the validity
of that marriage passed unchallenged, and no right was asserted
under the one alleged to have occurred in China. More than this,
the right of the widow and children of the Philippine marriage to
the property acquired during its existence went unquestioned for
eleven years after his death and for five years after the judicial
distribution of the property.
In these circumstances, every presumption was in favor
Page 228 U. S. 339
of the validity and good faith of the Philippine marriage, and
sound reason required that it be not impugned and discredited
through the alleged prior marriage save upon proof so clear,
strong, and unequivocal as to produce a moral conviction of the
existence of that impediment. The conflicting testimony, isolatedly
considered, did not measure up to this standard, and clearly it did
not do so if proper regard was had for the probative force of the
conduct of all the parties concerned during the many intervening
years. Then too, the lips of Sy Quia and Yap Puan Niu had been
sealed by death, and this, with the long interval of time, gave
unusual opportunity for the use of fabricated testimony the untruth
of which it would be difficult to expose.
Giving due effect to these considerations, we cannot say that
the Supreme Court of the Philippines erred in holding that the
Chinese marriage was not adequately proved. Indeed, we regard the
evidence as not producing a moral conviction of the existence of
that marriage, but as leaving the issue in serious doubt. The
decree is accordingly
Affirmed.