Christmas and the family home

By Atty. Eduardo T. Reyes III

 

Just three to go and Christmas will be upon us.

It is doubtful though whether Santa Claus will be coming to town this time around as his reindeers may be practicing some social-distancing and might be skipping Christmas for the year 2020.

But Santa’s magic is not only cast when he lands on one’s roof to deliver his gifts. The real magic happens when the joy that he brings slides down the chimney straight into the children’s hearts and those who are young-at-heart.

While FoodPanda and GrabFood may bring orders wherever one may be, Santa delivers exclusively only to one’s FAMILY HOME.

Apart from Santa, the law also envisions the family home to be a tender place where potent memories are made and where the spells are cast, good or bad. These memories are carried by the children to adulthood and thus the family home being the cradle that nurtures them, the law ensures that one’s family home is insulated against unwarranted levy and execution or forced sales.

Article 153 of the Family Code enunciates this principle, thus:

“Art. 153. The family home is deemed constituted on a house and lot from the time it is occupied as a family residence. From the time of its constitution and so long as any of its beneficiaries actually resides therein, the family home continues to be such and is exempt from execution, forced sale or attachment except as hereinafter provided and to the extent of the value allowed by law.”

Save for some recognized exceptions, the protection that the law affords the family home is almost sacrosanct. And judges and courts are enjoined by jurisprudence to be the guardians of the family home. Most strikingly, trial courts who renege on this duty will surely be at the receiving-end of the Supreme Court’s opprobrium.

One such case is Albino Josef v. Otelio Santos (2013), where the Supreme Court bewailed the failure of the trial court judge to observe the requisite prudence in following legal guidelines that ensure that the family home is safe from unlawful execution, viz:

“The family home is a real right which is gratuitous, inalienable and free from attachment, constituted over the dwelling place and the land on which it is situated, which confers upon a particular family the right to enjoy such properties, which must remain with the person constituting it and his heirs. It cannot be seized by creditors except in certain special cases. X x x

The family home is the dwelling place of a person and his family, a sacred symbol of family love and repository of cherished memories that last during one’s lifetime. It is the sanctuary of that union which the law declares and protects as a sacred institution; and likewise a shelter for the fruits of that union. It is where both can seek refuge and strengthen the tie that binds them together and which ultimately forms the moral fabric of our nation.”

And so the child who grows up in the family home will soon have to leave to seek his/ her own place outside- in the sun. But the childhood memories will forever linger with him or her, for good or for ill.

Fyodor Dostoevsky in Brothers Karamazov, had made this observation: “I feel that a beautiful, holy memory preserved from early childhood can be the most important single thing in our development. And if a person succeeds, in the course of his life, in collecting many such memories, he will be saved for the rest of his life. And even if we only have one such memory, it is possible that it will be enough to save us one day.”

Thus “a single, holy memory, preserved from childhood” as Dostoevsky noted, “will be enough to save us one day”.

The most cogent manifestation of the power of a memory surfaces only when the child had already left the home: when it is irreversible and too late to recalibrate. If the law will not allow creditors to take a piece of the family home and tear away at the very hearth where each child’s heart dwells, then the inhabitants of the family home, must also be equally vigilant in preserving the sanctity of the family home. They too must protect their family home from the corrosive effects of ruckus or vituperative language that creates family discord.

The pandemic may have dampened much of the year but not the enchantment of Christmas when the family home is illumined and suffused by parental kindness and familial love forming luminous memories ‘that will be enough to save us one day’.

Merry Christmas to all DG readers!!!

 

(The author is the senior partner of ET Reyes III & Associates- a law firm based in Iloilo City. He is a litigation attorney, a law professor and a law book author. His website is etriiilaw.com).