Icasiano v.

Icasiano Digest
G.R. No. L-18979 June 30, 1964
Facts:
1. Celso Icasiano, filed a petition for the probate
of the will of Josefa Villacorte and for his
appointment as executor thereof. It appears from
the evidence that the testatrix died on
September 12, 1958. She executed a will in
Tagalog, and through the help of her lawyer, it
was prepared in duplicates, an original and a
carbon copy.
2. On the day that it was subscribed and attested,
the lawyer only brought the original copy of the
will while the carbon duplicate (unsigned) was left
in Bulacan. One of the witnesses failed to sign
one of the pages in the original copy but
admitted he may have lifted 2 pages
simultaneously instead when he signed the will.
Nevertheless, he affirmed that the will was signed
by the testator and other witnesses in his
presence.
Issue: Whether or not the failure of one of
the subscribing witnesses to affix his

signature to a page is sufficient to deny

probate of the will
RULING: No, the failure to sign was entirely
through pure oversight or mere inadvertence.
Since the duplicated bore the required signatures,
this proves that the omission was not intentional.
Even if the original is in existence, a duplicate
may still be admitted to probate since the original
is deemed to be defective, then in law, there is no
other will bu the duly signed carbon duplicate and
the same can be probated.
The law should not be strictly and literally
interpreted as to penalize the testatrix on
account of the inadvertence of a single witness
over whose conduct she has no control of. Where
the purpose of the law is to guarantee the
identity of the testament and its component
pages, and there is no intentional or deliberate
deviation existed.
Note that this ruling should not be taken as a
departure from the rules that the will should be
signed by the witnesses on every page. The
carbon copy duplicate was regular in all respects.