TACLOBAN CITY—When Supertyphoon Yolanda hit the central Philippines, 40-year-old fisherman Ronillo Docos felt he lost everything.
The storm did not only wash away all his property, he also lost four members of his family—his wife Jennilyn, his two sons and his 70-year-old mother Natividad, who was never found again.
“I thought I would lose my mind,” he said.
With his mother still missing, Docos and his siblings continue to be in a quandary: His mother owned some parcel of land they could not divide among themselves as inheritors because his mother could not yet be presumed dead.
Docos is 1 of the 5 people who asked for assistance with the
Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) in filing for a Petition of Presumptive Death for their missing family members whose whereabouts remain unknown until now.
The nongovernment Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services (Ideals), an alternative legal group, is extending them legal aid as part of the implementation of their project Cooperation to Ensure Legal Documentation and Access to Claims for the Injured, the Missing, and the Dead during Typhoon Haiyan.
In a news conference, Ideals explained the petition for Declaration of Presumptive Death is a way for the families to slowly move on from the aftermath of Yolanda.
“The surviving families are still in pain and without closure from their missing loved ones. We want a court decree declaring a person as presumably dead to help the survivors move on from this tragedy,” lawyer Anne Bernadette Mendiola of Ideals said.
Docos said his family wants to file for a death declaration to be able to move forward from the traumatic experience and have closure for his missing mother.
The elderly Docos was washed away by the storm surges during the onslaugt of the typhoon. The Docos family looked for her for three months, but had no success in their search.
“We kept asking around, and told the people to tell us if they saw our mother. When nobody came back, we decided to stop it,” Ronillo recalled.
Docos hopes that one day, he won’t be going to the sea anymore because it scares him. With the compensation they might get from the death declaration of his mother, Docos hoped they might be able to start something small.
Under the civil code, a family member can file for the declaration of presumptive death after four years from the time of disappearance for claiming death-compensation benefits, succession, and other purposes.
Under the family code, in order for a married person to remarry, they must institute a summary proceeding for the judicial declaration of presumptive death after two or four years, depending on the circumstance of the disappearance, and present the court decree for the Declaration of Presumptive Death of their missing spouse.
The court decree will be submitted to file for death-compensation benefits and services in the absence of an official death certificate.
In a span of six months, 20 qualified petitioners were aided by Ideals on their documentation and case building. The case studies of the petitioners were turned over to the regional office of the PAO for filing and for free representation in court.
Mendiola said declaring the death of missing Yolanda victims can be tricky as there are no established mechanisms and rules on mass death declarations due to calamities.
“We hope this case will prosper because this can help establish a mechanism wherein the rights of the missing persons, the surviving families and the public can be better protected and preserved, especially during calamities and tragedies, such as typhoon Yolanda,” Mendiola said.
Data of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council put at 1,074 the number of people still missing during Yolanda.
The initiative is part of Ideals’ Access to Benefits and Claims During Disasters (ABCD) program, in partnership with Christian Aid and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy. Ideals also implemented ABCD back in 2013 for the victims of Yolanda, where more than 126,000 received reconstructed damaged civil and legal documents.