.webp)
By Ma. Reina Leanne Tolentino
March 22, 2023 120
WITH a vote of 12-0, the House Committee on Population and Family Relations on Tuesday approved the substitute bill on divorce.
"The approval of the bill on absolute divorce for eventual plenary debates assures that the country is now at the threshold of joining the universality of absolute divorce in the community of nations," Albay First District Rep. Edcel Lagman said in a statement.
Annulment, declaration of nullity and legal separation are the only available options in the Philippines.
Last month, the House committee approved in principle the proposed laws for divorce after it heard resource persons' positions on divorce.
"The template of the substitute bill is my House Bill 78, which is almost a replica of the bill approved on third and final reading by the House of Representatives during the 17th Congress. The approval of the same bill during the 18th Congress was stalled by the pandemic," Lagman said.
"While it is said that marriages are solemnized in heaven, the fact is some marriages plummet into hell because of human frailty and imperfections. The Divorce Act seeks to redeem couples, particularly the abused or abandoned wives, from infernal agony," he said.
"But it must be underscored that a law on absolute divorce is not for everybody. This act is for the exceptional circumstances of married couples who are marooned in toxic, dysfunctional and even abusive marriages, particularly for wives who suffer the torment of irreversibly dead marriages," Lagman said.
Under the bill, a divorce petition will undergo a judicial process where proof of the cause for the divorce is established and that the marriage has completely collapsed without any possibility of reconciliation. There will be a 60-day cooling-off period after the filing of a divorce petition "wherein the judge shall exert earnest efforts to reconcile the parties."
The cooling-off period will not apply in cases involving acts of violence against women and their children under the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act, or an attempt against the life of the other spouse or a common child or a child of the petitioner.
The cooling-off period would not be required for petitions under summary judicial proceedings.
Grounds for absolute divorce that may be subject to summary judicial proceedings will include separation for at least five years; when one of the spouses has contracted a bigamous marriage; when the spouses have been legally separated by judicial decree for at least two years; when one of the spouses has been sentenced to imprisonment for at least six years, even if subsequently pardoned; or when one of the spouses has undergone sex reassignment surgery or has transitioned into another sex.
