DE OCAMPO V.

FLORENCIANO [107 P 35 (1960)] - Where the husband, after finding the wife
guilty of adultery sent her to Manila to study beauty culture, and there she committed another
adultery with a different man, and the husband filed a petition for legal separation, the wife's
admission to the investigating fiscal that she committed adultery, in the existence of evidence
of adultery other than such confession, is not the confession of judgment disallowed by the
Code. What is prohibited is a confession of judgment - a confession done in court or through a
pleading.
(1) "Where there is evidence of the adultery independently of the defendant's statement
agreeing to the legal separation, the decree of separation should be granted, since it would not
be based on the confession but upon the evidence presented by the plaintiff. What the law
prohibits is a judgment based EXCLUSIVELY on defendant's confession."
(2) The failure of the husband to actively search for his wife who left the conjugal home after
his discovery of her illicit affairs, and to take her home does not constitute the condonation or
consent to the adultery. It was not his duty to search for her.
(3) The petition should be granted based not on the first adultery, which has already
prescribed, but on the second adultery, which has not yet prescribed. Adapted.

1. RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS OF PARTIES

Art. 61. After the filing of the petition for legal separation, the spouses shall be entitled to live
separately from each other.
The court, in the absence of a written agreemnt between the spouses, shall designate either of
them or a third person to administer the absolute community or conjugal partnership property.
The administrator appointed by the court shall have the same powers and duties as those of a
guardian under the Rules of Court.