Divorce: Is it the answer?

Guest column contributed by Ric Saludo’s colleague Maria Carmina Olivar

First of two parts

THE recent renewed push to legalize divorce by amending the Family Code is not as controversial the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill—at least not yet. But divorce legislation—or rather the lack of it—has given the Philippines somewhat of a unique status in the global arena. After Malta passed its divorce law in July to take effect next month, the Philippines became the only nation left banning divorce.

House Bill No. 1799, or “An Act Introducing Divorce in the Philippines,” was filed by representatives of the women’s party-list group Gabriela by Rep. Liza Maza in 2005, then re-filed in August last year by Luzviminda Ilagan and Emerenciana De Jesus. It would amend the Family Code of the Philippines, decreed in 1987 by then-President Corazon Aquino, when she wielded legislative powers under the transitory provisions of the Constitution.

House committee hearings on HB 1799 begun in June this year drew immediate protest from the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. CBCP legal counsel Jo Imbong cited passages from the Constitution to argue that divorce violates Philippine law.

The bishops’ main objection, of course, is moral, not legal. Former Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz had warned that enacting the RH Bill into law could open the gates to more contentious legislation, such as divorce and same-sex marriages. Opponents also maintain that legal separation and annulment already allowed by the Family Code, address the problem of unhappy and failed marriages.

But divorce advocates insist those two remedies are not enough. The grounds for annulment focus on events at the time of the wedding, rather than the marriage itself. Legal separation, on the other hand, while allowing couples to live apart, does not actually put an end to the marriage. In effect, it maintains a marital status that clearly no longer reflects the relationship between former spouses.

The current Divorce Bill would terminate marriage, not just separate couples or declare that a marriage was null and void from the start, which seems to many as a kind of legalized fiction. The measure would also eliminate “condonation of/consent to the act” of marital abuse as grounds for denying petitions for separation or divorce. The Divorce Bill would also better address financial issues through equal division of conjugal assets and spousal support for former partners who are not gainfully employed.

Other bills offer similar solutions. Early this year Bayan Muna Representative Neri Colmenares filed House Bill No. 3952, or “An Act Recognizing Spousal Violence, Infidelity and Abandonment as Presumptive Psychological Incapacity Constituting a Ground for the Annulment of Marriage.” Instead of instituting divorce, Colmenares wants to expand the grounds for annulment. The Catholic Church still objects to the bill, however.

A year before Rep. Colmenares filed House Bill No. 3952, another women’s party list group, 1-Ako Babaeng Astig Aasenso (1-ABAA), pushed its solution: set a 10-year limit on a marriage contact’s validity, with an option for renewal, as has been proposed in the U.S. Though 1-ABAA initially reported positive reactions to their proposal, the Catholic Church held its ground and opposed it, and the idea did not gain much traction after the initial media coverage.

In fact, there used to be a divorce law in the country, enacted and expanded under non-Catholic foreign rule. Deogracias T. Reyes’s “History of Divorce Legislation in the Philippines since 1900” cites Act No. 2710, or the Divorce Law, allowing absolute divorce, or divorce a vinculo matrimonii, which was passed on March 11, 1917. It set strict grounds: criminal conviction for adultery or concubinage. Then, under Japanese occupation, the law was relaxed. On March 25, 1943, Executive Order No. 141 repealed Act No. 2710 and permitted absolute divorce on 11 grounds.

Divorce itself was repealed on June 18, 1949, by Republic Act 386. The Civil Code of the Philippines made divorce illegal, except under an accompanying measure, RA 394, enacted the same month. The latter allowed absolute divorce for Muslims in non-Christian provinces. In 1977 then-President Ferdinand Marcos included Muslim divorce in Presidential Decree No. 1083, or “A Decree to Ordain and Promulgate A Code Recognizing the System of Filipino Muslim Laws, Codifying Muslim Personal Laws, and Providing for its Administration and for Other Purposes.” Besides Muslims, foreign spouses of Filipinos were also allowed to divorce under an amendment to the Family Code, allowing their Filipino exes to remarry.

The divorce law has been trying to make a comeback here in the Philippines for more than a decade now. In 1999, Representative Manuel Ortega filed House Bill No. 6993. Two years later Senator Rodolfo Biazon championed Senate Bill No. 782, while Representative Bellaflor Angara-Castillo filed House Bill No. 878. All three were entitled, “An Act Legalizing Divorce, Amending for the Purpose Title II and Articles 55 to 67 Thereunder of Executive Order No. 209, as Amended by Executive Order No. 227, Otherwise Known as the Family Code of the Philippines.”

Will the new divorce bills filed by Gabriela finally gain traction? Both have the local women’s rights groups all up in arms and ready to defend their stance. The issue has half of the public backing it, according to an SWS survey conducted earlier this year. But with the RH Bill having stirred the Catholic Church into political action, opponents of divorce are also primed for a big fight. And not just the Philippine hierarchy. Vatican envoy Archbishop Giuseppe Pinto declared that being the only nation with no divorce law was ‘honor’-for-philippines-says-vatican-envoy”“a point of honor” for our country.

So is divorce the answer to the challenge of marital woes? In the concluding part we look at how divorce has worked in the rest of the world, and whether it is the way to go for the Philippines.

(The last part will be published on Friday.) –RICARDO SALUDO, Manila Times

Maria Carmina Olivar writes for the Center for Strategy, Enterprise & Intelligence and The CenSEI Report on major national, global and business issues. For the full weekly Report, email report@censeisolutions.com.