PRESS RELEASE
Office of Rep. Edcel C. Lagman
0916-6406737 I 0918-9120137
30 June 2016
Rep. Edcel C. Lagman, the principal author of the Reproductive Health Law, leads the campaign in the 17th Congress for the enactment of a law on absolute divorce.
Lagman filed on 30 June 2016 House Bill No. 116 instituting absolute divorce in the Philippines.
The Philippines is the only country in the world today which has no law on absolute divorce, after Malta on 28 May 2011 recommended by referendum the approval of its own divorce law.
The Bicol solon explained that while "most marriages are supposed to be solemnized in heaven, the reality is many marriages plummet into hell - in irremediable breakdown, spousal abuse, marital infidelity and psychological incapacity, among others, which bedevil marriages."
In the declaration of policy in HB No. 116, Lagman stated that "While the State continues to protect and preserve marriage as a social institution, it gives the opportunity to spouses in irremediably failed marriages to secure an absolute divorce decree under limited grounds and well-defined procedures to avoid abuse, save the children from the pain and stress of their parents' marital clashes, and grant the divorced spouses the right to marry again for another chance to achieve marital bliss."
It is also provided that "The State shall assure that the petition and proceedings for the grant of absolute divorce shall be inexpensive and affordable. Upon application by the petitioner, the proper court may waive the payment of filing fees and other costs of litigation."
The grounds for legal separation and annulment of marriage provided for in the Family Code of the Philippines have been adopted as among the grounds for absolute divorce.
The existing grounds for legal separation are marital abuse, sexual infidelity, attempt against the life of the other, abandonment, de facto separation, conviction for a crime when the sentence is more than six years, contracting a subsequent bigamous marriage, drug addiction or habitual alcoholism, and lesbianism or homosexuality.
For annulment of marriage the current grounds are lack of parental consent, vitiated consent, impotency, insanity and affliction of sexually transmissible disease.
Psychological incapacity under Article 36 of the Family Code is included as another ground for absolute divorce.
Four (4) additional grounds for absolute divorce are provided for in House Bill 116, namely, when either of the spouses secures (a) a valid foreign divorce, (b) canonical divorce, and (c) gender reassignment surgery, as well as (d) when irreconcilable differences or conflicts exist between the married couple which are beyond redemption despite earnest and repeated efforts at reconciliation.
Lagman said that the institution of absolute divorce is a pro-woman legislation for the following reasons:
- Traditionally, in a marriage relation, the husband is more ascendant than the wife. It is the woman who is usually brutalized and it is the man who philanders and gets away with it.
- Under these foreboding and unequal circumstances, a wife needs an absolute divorce more than the husband.
- In divorce proceedings, the wife as the innocent spouse, needs a court-decreed alimony and support for the child or children under her custody with corresponding fines and contempt of court for delinquency in providing financial support.
- Absolute divorce is not only a women's issue. It is a poor women's issue. Poor women cannot afford the current exorbitant expense for legal separation or annulment of marriage.
- An absolute divorce is a merciful liberation of the hapless wife from a long-dead marriage.
Many legislators are expected to co-author and support the Lagman bill.
EDCEL C. LAGMAN