04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly repudiation sufficient for the reckoning of the acquisitive prescription. At most, we can find on record the sale by petitioners Delfin and Agustin of parts of the property to petitioners Maynard and Jose; but the same was done only in 1998, shortly before respondent filed a case against them. Hence, the 30-year period necessary for the operation of acquisitve prescription had yet to be attained. Whether the ancestral land claim pending before the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) should take precedence over the reivindicatory action The application for issuance of a Certificate of Ancestral Land Title pending before the NCIP is akin to a registration proceeding. It also seeks an official recognition of one's claim to a particular land and is also in rem. The titling of ancestral lands is for the purpose of "officially establishing" one's land as an ancestral land.[69] Just like a registration proceeding, the titling of ancestral lands does not vest ownership[70] upon the applicant but only recognizes ownership[71] that has already vested in the applicant by virtue of his and his predecessor-in-interest's possession of the property since time immemorial. As aptly explained in another case: It bears stressing at this point that ownership should not be confused with a certificate of title. Registering land under the Torrens system does not create or vest title because registration is not a mode of acquiring ownership. A certificate of title is merely an evidence of ownership or title over the particular property described therein. Corollarily, any question involving the issue of ownership must be threshed out in a separate suit x x x The trial court will then conduct a full-blown trial wherein the parties will present their respective evidence on the issue of ownership of the subject properties to enable the court to resolve the said issue. x x x[72] (Emphasis supplied) Likewise apropos is the following explanation: The fact that the [respondents] were able to secure [TCTs over the property] did not operate to vest upon them ownership of the property. The Torrens system does not create or vest title. It has never been recognized as a mode of acquiring ownership x x x If the [respondents] wished to assert their ownership, they should have filed a judicial action for recovery of possession and not merely to have the land registered under their respective names. x x x Certificates of title do not establish ownership.[73] (Emphasis supplied) A registration proceeding is not a conclusive adjudication of ownership. In fact, if it is later on found in another case (where the issue of ownership is squarely adjudicated) that the registrant is not the owner of the property, the real owner can file a reconveyance case and have the title transferred to his name.[74] Given that a registration proceeding (such as the certification of ancestral lands) is not a conclusive adjudication of ownership, it will not constitute litis pendentia on a reivindicatory case where the issue is ownership.[75] elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/54595 "For litis pendentia to be a 10/17