DIFFERENT MODES OF ACQUIRING OWNERSHIP

Original modes: independent of any pre-existing or preceding title or right of another.

1. Occupation
2. Intellectual creation
3. Acquisitive prescription
4. Law

Derivative modes: somebody else was the owner before.

1. Succession
2. Donation
3. Tradition, as a consequence of certain contracts (sale, barter, assignment, loan)

Loss of ownership
1. Voluntary modes:
a. Abandonment
b. Alienation
2. Involuntary modes:
a. Destruction of the thing
b. Revocatory acts (rescission, revocation, resolution)
c. Extinguishment by legal precept and in virtue of certain acts by the owner
or third persons (accession, acquisitive prescription)
d. Extinguishment by judicial decree
e. Extinguishment by act of State (confiscation, expropriation)

Mode v. title
Mode is the process of acquiring or transferring ownership. It is the proximate cause of
the acquisition.
Title is that which is not ordinarily sufficient to convey ownership, but which gives a
juridical justification for a mode. It is the remote cause of the acquisition.

Law as a mode
Law, as a mode of acquiring ownership, refers to those special legal provisions which
directly vest ownership or real rights in favor of certain persons, independently of the
other modes of acquiring and transmitting ownership or other real rights.
  Art. 624
 Art. 681
 Art. 1434

Tradition
Tradition or delivery, as a mode of acquiring and transmitting ownership, refers to the
transfer of possession accompanied by an intention to transfer ownership or other real
rights.

Requisites of tradition:
1. Pre-existence of the right to be transmitted in the estate of the grantor;
2. Just cause or title (sale);
3. Intention on the part of the grantor to grant and on the part of the grantee to
acquire;
4. Capacity to transmit and capacity to acquire;
5. An act which gives it outward form, physically, symbolically, or legally.

Kinds of tradition:
1. Real tradition – actual delivery
2. Constructive tradition – delivery of the thing is not real or material but consists
merely in certain facts indicative of the same.
a. Traditio symbolica – parties make use of a toke or symbol to represent the
thing delivered.
b. Traditio longa manu – by mere consent of the parties if the thing sold cannot
be transferred to the possession of the vendee at the time of the sale.
c. Traditio brevi manu – when the vendee already has possession of the thing
sold by virtue of another title.
d. Traditio constitutum possessorium – when the vendor continues in
possession of the thing sold not as owner but in some other capacity.
e. Tradition by public instrument – the execution is equivalent to the delivery
of the thing object of the contract.
3. Quasi-tradition – exercise of the right of the grantee with the consent of the
grantor.
Tradicion por minister de la ley – delivery by operation of law.