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BY GORDON Q. GUILLERGAN
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Wednesday, May 31, 2017
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“The remedy for most marital stress is not in divorce. It is in repentance and forgiveness, in sincere expressions of charity and service. It is not in separation. It is in simple integrity that leads a man and a woman to square up their shoulders and meet their obligations. It is found in the Golden Rule, a time-honored principle that should first and foremost find expression in marriage.” ― Gordon B. Hinckley, “Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes”
DIVORCE has long been talked about by Filipinos who either wish to leave a difficult marriage or seek annulment. Though many believe that now is the time to have divorce in the Philippines, seeing that we are one of the few countries that do not have divorce yet, others believe that with the way we implement laws in our country, divorce shall only be arbitrarily used by those who wish to have a quick fix to end their marriage.
Flerida Ruth P. Romero, in “Concerns and Emerging Trends On Laws Relating to Family and Children” for the Philippine Law Journal defined divorce as a way of severing the marital bonds at the time the causes manifest themselves.
Divorce is not recognized in the Philippines yet the same effect is achieved indirectly in a marriage between a Filipino citizen and an alien spouse in order to place on an equal footing the Filipino spouse, usually the wife, in the event that the alien spouse obtains a divorce abroad.
According to Romero, the second paragraph of Article 26 of the Family Code provides for the legal basis of the aforementioned: “Where a marriage between a Filipino citizen and a foreigner is validly celebrated and a divorce is thereafter validly obtained abroad by the alien spouse capacitating him or her to remarry, the Filipino spouse shall likewise have capacity to remarry under Philippine law.”
The elements that must be satisfied for the application of this paragraph are: There is a valid marriage that has been celebrated between a Filipino citizen and a foreigner; and A valid divorce is obtained abroad by the alien spouse capacitating him or her to remarry.
The reckoning point is not the citizenship of the parties at the time of the celebration of the marriage but their citizenship at the time a valid divorce is obtained abroad by an alien spouse capacitating the latter to remarry.
Romero explained that the rationale and legislative intent behind Paragraph 2 of Article 26 was elucidated in a decision made by the Supreme Court in Republic vs Orbecido in 2005, as follows:
“Thus, taking into consideration the legislative intent and applying the rule of reason, [this paragraph] should be interpreted to include cases involving parties who, at the time of the celebration of the marriage, were Filipino citizens but later on, one of them becomes naturalized as a foreign citizen and obtains a divorce decree. The Filipino spouse should likewise be allowed to remarry as if the other party were a foreigner at the time of the solemnization of the marriage. To rule otherwise would be to sanction absurdity and injustice.”
More importantly, the law seeks to avoid the situation where the Filipino spouse, usually the woman, would be discriminated against in her own country. Without the second paragraph of Article 26 of the Family Code, the judicial recognition of the foreign decree of divorce, whether in a proceeding instituted precisely for that purpose or as a related issue in another proceeding, would be of no significance to the Filipino spouse since our laws do not recognize divorce as a mode of severing the marital bond. We would have the ludicrous spectacle of the Filipino wife still being married to an alien spouse who is no longer married to her.
Sometimes, we all feel the need to conform to the call of the times, to the extent that we sacrifice our principles that made us distinctively Filipinos. Our being rooted to our values makes us a distinctively unique race. Divorce or not, I see this discussion as an enlightenment with regard our stand on how we value our marriage and our family./PN
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