If you have made a purchase of a parcel of land and found out that the contract has not been notarized, can the contract be considered invalid? The notarization of a contract is not required to prove its validity. As stated in Article 1356 of the Civil Code, contracts are deemed obligatory and it should meet the essential requisites that will prove its validity.
Art. 1356. Contracts shall be obligatory, in whatever form they may have been entered into, provided all the essential requisites for their validity are present. However, when the law requires that a contract be in some form in order that it may be valid or enforceable, or that a contract be proved in a certain way, that requirement is absolute and indispensable. In such cases, the right of the parties stated in the following article cannot be exercised.
It has also been specified under Article 1318 that notarization is not one of the requirements for preparing a contract.
Art. 1318. There is no contract unless the following requisites concur:
(1) Consent of the contracting parties;
(2) Object certain which is the subject matter of the contract;
(3) Cause of the obligation which is established.
However, the notarization converts a contract into a public document. While it is not required, it is suggested that contracts involving land must be notarized as specified under Article 1358 of the Civil Code.
Art. 1358. The following must appear in a public document:
(1) Acts and contracts which have for their object the creation, transmission, modification or extinguishment of real rights over immovable property; sales of real property or of an interest therein a governed by Articles 1403, No. 2, and 1405;
(2) The cession, repudiation or renunciation of hereditary rights or of those of the conjugal partnership of gains;
(3) The power to administer property, or any other power which has for its object an act appearing or which should appear in a public document, or should prejudice a third person;
(4) The cession of actions or rights proceeding from an act appearing in a public document.
If you will undergo the registration process, the deed of sale should be notarized according to Section 112 of the Property Registration Decree.
Section 112. Forms in conveyancing. The Commissioner of Land Registration shall prepare convenient blank forms as may be necessary to help facilitate the proceedings in land registration and shall take charge of the printing of land title forms.
Deeds, conveyances, encumbrances, discharges, powers of attorney and other voluntary instruments, whether affecting registered or unregistered land, executed in accordance with law in the form of public instruments shall be registerable: Provided, that, every such instrument shall be signed by the person or persons executing the same in the presence of at least two witnesses who shall likewise sign thereon, and shall acknowledged to be the free act and deed of the person or persons executing the same before a notary public or other public officer authorized by law to take acknowledgment. Where the instrument so acknowledged consists of two or more pages including the page whereon acknowledgment is written, each page of the copy which is to be registered in the office of the Register of Deeds, or if registration is not contemplated, each page of the copy to be kept by the notary public, except the page where the signatures already appear at the foot of the instrument, shall be signed on the left margin thereof by the person or persons executing the instrument and their witnesses, and all the ages sealed with the notarial seal, and this fact as well as the number of pages shall be stated in the acknowledgment. Where the instrument acknowledged relates to a sale, transfer, mortgage or encumbrance of two or more parcels of land, the number thereof shall likewise be set forth in said acknowledgment.
