(Draft of a story submitted for a June 20 special feature in Sun.Star Cebu with the same title.)
THEY vowed to love each other for richer, for poorer, in sickness and
in health and that only in death would they part. But, at least three
couples call it quits every two days in Cebu City.
From January to May this year alone, a total of 97 petitions for the
annulment of marriage were filed before the Regional Trial
Court (RTC) civil division.All asking for partition of properties and some demanding
custody of children, the petitions get raffled to special salas, called
family courts, for hearing.
There are three such family courts for Cebu City – Judge Raphael
Yrastorza’s branch 14, Judge Manuel Patalinghug's Branch 22 and Judge
Olegario Sarmiento's branch 24.
Last year, from January to December 2005, the rate was an average
of five couples per week.In 2004, it was six to seven couples a week on
average and, in 2003, it practically one couple every 24 hours.
“It’s a social reality,” said Atty. Janeses Ponce of the Cebu
City-based Aumentado Duallo Ponce and Cañares Law Offices, adding that
the phenomenon crosses boarders.
“It can happen to anybody. I’ve represented clients who were doctors, lawyers and prominent businessmen in the past,” he said.
And, for Ponce, the fact that most of those who file petitions in court
are rich isn’t indicative of anything except perhaps that they are the
only ones who can afford it.
“There are those who are also suffering but just don’t have the means
to file their petitions. They cannot become part of the statistics but
the suffering is there,” Atty. Gloria Lastimosa-Dalawampu, recognized
as Cebu’s foremost expert in annulment cases, meanwhile said.
To Dalawampu, there is no one cause for breakups.
She said while there are petitions for annulment that highlight money
problems, third parties, immaturity, having gotten forced into the
marriage because of early pregnancy, there are marriages who face the
same problems but survive.
“Sometimes, it’s like the luck of the draw,” she, adidng that “there
are two persons who are first drawn to each other but later on
grow to discover that they just cannot be together and that it just
cannot be helped. There are those who advocate staying for the sake of
the children. But we now know that this is more counterproductive and
children end up suffering more."
And there is no such thing as an expert when dealing with his or her own relationship.
“There was one time I went to court and saw a psychologist on the
witness stand. At first, I thought that this person was testifying as
an expert witness to a case. Then, I noticed that the person was
actually testifying about the person’s own marriage,” she narrated.
Ninety-five percent of the annulment petitions cite psychological
incapacity – the inability of one spouse to perform the essential
obligations of marriage.
Mostly, it’s the women who initiate the suit.
Shattered vows
Julia, the daughter of a prominent Cebu physician and the mother of
three, filed an annulment petition against her husband, Eric, who in
turn was the son of a businessman.
They’d met in college. She got pregnant early and they ended up getting
married. As both weren’t able to finish school, they lived with her
parents for a while and then moved in with his parents.
Incessant fights were the order of the day with Julia saying her
husband never even tried to find a job in all those times that they
were married and with Eric saying that Julia was a domineering and
dominant wife who never really appreciated him for who he was.
She accused Eric of being psychologically incapable of performing the
obligations of marriage, describing him as not mature enough to support
a family of his own.
In another suit, Trixie, a privately employed accountant, filed a suit
asking the court to end her marriage to Anthony, a doctor.
In her suit, she accused the husband of depending on her with almost
all his needs, adding that the little that he was earning with his
small private practice was being spent on other things like golf.
She said they were practically living off her parents and the little that she made from her job went to everyday needs.
The exception involve seamen and male overseas workers who spend years
abroad and come home to discover their wives having affairs with other
men and squandering money.
Alfredo works for an engineering firm in the Middle East. He filed a
petition for annulment of marriage against his wife, a government
employee, after discovering that she’d been having an affair with a
married office colleague while he was away.
The affair was uncovered, Alfredo said, that one time he came home for a vacation.
He said he felt suspicious when his wife, instead of spending time with
him, would often leave the house late at night and come back home early
the next day too exhausted to do anything with him.
She would often ask him when he’d be leaving for the Middle East again
and that if he could speed it up, as she needed money for something.
Bitter pill
Both Ponce and Dalawampu admit that in situations like the foregoing,
it is better to secure an annulment of marriage rather than continue to
suffer.
The cost is considerable, to
say the least. Some lawyers offer packaged
services – the preparation of the petition, it’s filing in court,
representation in the preliminary conference, appearance during hearings, the
preparation of ancillary petitions like custody of children and division of
property – at P70,000 to P100,000.
This excludes the filing fee
and the additional charges imposed by the court for receiving and processing
the ancillary petitions.
Parties who want the court
to divide their properties for them pay more.
On top of the standard filing
fee for the annulment, they pay a few hundred pesos more for each few thousand
pesos worth or real estate.
“If you have millions in
property, you’ll end up paying real money,” Ponce said.
Dalawampu doesn’t offer
packages.
“These
deals do not fully compensate lawyers for the work they do,” she said.
Matrimonial backdoor
Nine out of 10 approved petitions for annulment of marriage in the
country today are anchored on Art. 36 of the Family Code –
Psychological Incapacity.
Indeed, cites Atty. Jim Lopez in his 2001 book “The Law on Annulment of
Marriage,” no part of the family code has been so deeply discussed and
studied as this particular provision.
“Over the last decade,” he writes, “Art. 36 has been at the heart and soul of Philippine matrimonial dissolution law.”
And petitioning spouses, through their attorneys, have thrown every
form personality disorder known to man – from the most severe neurosis
to the most debilitating psychosis and to the vilest form of mania –
against the other spouse; if only to convince the judge to order it
quits.
“Psychological incapacity is now the strongest basis to obtain an annulment of marriage,” said Dalawampu.
“It is not tangible. The only things you see are its effects. But it is
possible to concretely demonstrate it before a judge through
psychologists called in as expert witnesses. Before they are presented
in court, they perform tests on the parties and conduct extensive
interview and research,” she added.
A trial lawyer and officer of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines
(IBP) Cebu City chapter, Dalawampu is one of the most sought after
attorneys in annulment cases.
Representing more than 150 people in annulment proceedings, 95 percent
of which were based on Art. 36, the high demand for her services, she
said, is because has gone through the process. She underwent an
annulment in 1989 and has since remarried.
“The parties know that I can empathize with how they feel because I went through the process,” she revealed.
Under Art. 36 of the Family Code, a person can ask the Regional Trial
Court to nullify his or her marriage by proving that the other party,
or both, was psychologically unable to perform the obligations of
marriage.
The provision on psychological incapacity began life as Executive Order
(EO) 227, signed into law in July 27, 1987, during the incumbency of
President Corazon Aquino.
The EO amended the original Art. 36 to read: “A marriage contracted by
any party who, at the time of the celebration, was psychologically
incapacitated to comply with the essential marital obligations of
marriage, shall likewise be void even if such incapacity becomes
manifest only after its solemnization."
And while Catholic Church leaders quickly objected, calling it a de
facto divorce bill, the order was merely copied from Canon 1095 of the
Vatican’s New Code of Canon Law.
Canon 1095: "They are incapable of contracting marriage: 1) who lack
sufficient use of reason; 2) who suffer from a grave lack of discretion
of judgment concerning the essential matrimonial rights and duties
which are to be mutually given and accepted; 3) who are not capable of
assuming the essential obligations of matrimony due to causes of a
psychic nature".
Lopez, in his book, said the term psychological incapacity was “a
conundrum” to judges in the late 80s because the Family Code did not
contain a definition of the term.
“The statutory omission was intentional to give courts a wider
discretion to interpret the intriguing term without being shackled by
statutory parameters,” he said, adding that those who framed the
provision didn’t even cite examples.
Many judges took the absence of an operational definition to mean a
blanket license to grant all submitted petitions. Many, similarly, took
it to mean blanket authority to do the opposite.
It was only in Jan. 4, 1995, almost eight years after EO 227
became law, that the Supreme Court en banc intervened and attempted to
define psychological incapacity though the Santos vs. CA and
Bedia-Santos case.
The High Tribunal, through Associate Justice Jose Vitug, defined
psychological incapacity as “no less than a mental incapacity that
causes a party to be truly incognitive of the basic marital covenants
that concomitantly must be assumed and discharged by the parties to the
marriage.”
This “basic covenant,” he said, include “mutual obligations to live
together, observe love, respect and fidelity, and render help and
support.”
It spoke of “the most serious cases of personality disorders clearly
demonstrative of an utter insensitivity or inability to give meaning
and significance to the marriage.”
The provision got further clarification in the Supreme Court’s Feb. 13, 1997 People vs. Court of appeals and Molina case.
The mere showing of irreconcilable differences and conflicting
personalities does not, according the High Tribunal, constitute
psychological incapacity
According to the ruling, penned by then Associate Justice Artemio
Panganiban, there must be a showing of difficulty if not outright
refusal or neglect of one party to perform marital obligations.
Not only that, the incapacity must also be characterized by gravity,
juridical antecedence and incurability and that all doubts should be
resolved by courts in favor of the denial of the petition for
annulment.
And collusion among parties is not allowed.
 | melanie lim wrote a column along the same line...tsk...tsk...-sigh- why do people marry and then give up... |
 | it took forever for me to realize my mom and dad are better off away from each other. sometimes, love isn't enough. |
 | we look at relationships from behind rose-colored stained glass windows man gud. |
 | and then again, sometimes people are just too selfish to try to live with each other. everything's disposable these days--nobody cares to reycle. no collusion allowed between parties? hah! why are they kidding themselves? |
| kinda..o:) kape lagi ta... |
| we get into this stage every so often. who would not want to see everything rose-colored? |
| hey not talking about abusive relationships here =P far too many people just use "irreconcilable differences" and "psychological incapacity" as an excuse approximate to "the dog ate my homework"--and all that it implies. |
| the stream
it runs deep behind the tree clumps
on the way to God-knows-where
trees stay
streams go
one anchored
one free
they part
is this the fate of gardens? |
Comment deleted at the request of the author. | |
no collusion allowed between parties 