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BY GORDON GUILLERGAN
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Through sickness and health
“… in sickness and in health, ‘til death do us part…”
I CAME across an interesting Bar question from 1995. The fiancée was tested positive with HIV and the future husband knew about such while they were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Despite this, the future husband accepted such fact and with no doubt offered marriage. And they did so, and for a time was content with their marriage.
After two years into the marriage, the husband – by some divine clarity – realized how perhaps the wife might not be able to give him healthy children. So he filed for the annulment of their marriage based on the ground that his wife has HIV prior to the marriage.
Under our Family Code’s Article 45, a marriage may be annulled for any of several cited causes existing at the time of the marriage. One of this is: “That either party was afflicted with a sexually-transmissible disease found to be serious and appears to be incurable.”
While this contention may be granted as a valid ground for the husband to have their marriage annulled, he failed to read further Article 47 (5) of the Code. The action for annulment of marriage must be filed by the injured party within five years after the marriage for causes mentioned in numbers 5 and 6 of Article 45.
The requirement of being an injured party is essential in an action for the nullity of a marriage based on the aforementioned ground. In this case, having knowledge of the fact that his wife has HIV does not render him an injured party, as our Family Code requires that an injured party only may raise such contention.
The vow to sickness and health was certainly recognized by our courts but with limitations.
I see this situation as something sad, more than anything. It made me realize that perhaps what we, for a moment, believed to be unconditional may be something we can’t actually deal with at some future time.
How far can we go when it comes to unconditional love?
Time is the greatest catalyst of change. It is only through time that we can clearly see truths and that we know we can no longer love the same way we did before. The vows of yesterday may perhaps be your life’s biggest inadvertent pronouncement ever.
Let us remember that it is through time that love is tested and marriage is fortified. I remember what a priest said during my best friend’s wedding: There will come a time when you will feel like giving up; look back on the day you decided to marry and what was on that day that made you fall in love. Hold on to that thought and everything bad will be reduced to an insignificant dot on a blank, white canvass. The dot will remain there but if you paint over it with your reasons for getting married, that dot will eventually disappear.
Never look at love and marriage as something like a blank, white canvass, perfect and clean. Only then can you truly love unconditionally./PN
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