Philippine Marriage Laws: Absurd and Not in Touch with Reality.
When I had my internship at the Office of the Solicitor General last summer, I was assigned to draft a Comment on a case, a petition to enforce a foreign divorce decree. The factual backdrop of the case revealed that the petitioner, a Filipina, worked as an entertainer in Japan and there she met her Japanese ex-husband. They were married for about two years until the honeymoon stage of the marriage waned. Her husband thus filed a petition for divorce under Japanese laws, which was granted by the foreign forum. Relying on the provisions of Article 26, paragraph 2 of the Family Code, the Filipina filed a petition to enforce the foreign judgment in this jurisdiction and so she could remarry. The RTC judge, however, denied the same mainly on the ground that the petitioner failed to allege that under Japanese laws, the ex-husband’s national law (obviously), he was allowed to remarry by virtue of the divorce decree. To have a better grasp of what I’m blabbing about here, let me quote Article 26 of the Family Code:
“Art. 26. All marriages solemnized outside the Philippines, in accordance with the laws in force in the country where they were solemnized, and valid there as such, shall also be valid in this country, except those prohibited under Articles 35 (1), (4), (5) and (6), 3637 and 38. (17a)
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 have capacity to remarry under Philippine law.”
When I read the judge’s decision, I got confused because I didn’t know that the capacity to remarry of the Filipino spouse was dependent upon the capacity to remarry of the foreign spouse under his national laws. (Maybe my professor back in first year told our class then but I was either not listening or absent. Hehe.) To me, that was just…revolting. I couldn’t (and still can’t) find the logic, the reason behind such requirement. It’s just RIDICULOUS.
Last week, my Civil Law Review professor confirmed what the RTC judge said in his decision: that the capacity to remarry of the Filipino spouse premised on Article 26, paragraph 2 of the Family Code hinges on the capacity to remarry of the foreign spouse. In simpler terms, the Filipino spouse cannot remarry if the foreign spouse who obtained the divorce cannot remarry under his national laws. This interpretation gave rise to many questions that I wish someone could answer satisfactorily:
1.) Why does the law have to require that the Filipino spouse can only remarry if the national law of the foreign spouse allows him to remarry by virtue of the divorce decree when there are no ties binding the two already? What has the foreign spouse still got to do with the Filipino ex-spouse when the ties have already been severed by the divorce decree? And what has the national law of the foreign spouse got to do with the Filipino spouse who is governed by his/her own national law?
2.) Any law student would have heard from his professors or read somewhere that every law enacted has a reason/rationale that animates it to life–the spirit of the law. In this case, what is the purpose of the law in rendering the capacity to remarry of the alien spouse a condition precedent for the Filipino spouse’s capacity of remarriage? To preserve the marriage? If that is the rationale, I just can’t find the logical connection. It has been said that the purpose of adding the second paragraph to Article 26 is to EQUALIZE the standing of the Filipino spouse and the foreign spouse. If this really is the purpose of the law, then I don’t see how the law, by mandating that the Filipino spouse can only remarry if the foreign spouse also can under his national law, gives an equal standing to both. In fact, it even places the Filipino spouse in a disadvantageous position. You see, it is the foreign spouse who obtained the divorce decree–in lay man’s terms, HE/SHE IS THE ONE WHO LEFT THE FILIPINO SPOUSE. And now the Filipino spouse is further made to suffer by effectively depriving him/her of the right to remarriage–in lay man’s terms, THE LAW DEPRIVES THE FILIPINO SPOUSE THE RIGHT TO MOVE ON.
3.) If the divorce decree obtained by the foreign spouse is recognized in the Philippine jurisdiction by virtue of Article 26, why should the capacity to remarry of the Filipino spouse be made to depend on the capacity of the foreign spouse to remarry? Isn’t it a natural consequence of divorce that the parties can remarry simply because they are not bound by any marital rope under the law anymore?
4.) Finally, what is the status of the subsequent marriage contracted by the Filipino spouse, assuming he/she is incapacitated to remarry for the reason that his/her foreign spouse is incapacitated to remarry under his national law despite the grant of a divorce decree? Does this make another case of VOID MARRIAGE? And what is the status of the children born out of such subsequent marriage?
It is a settled doctrine in statutory construction that laws should not result to absurdities. And so to avoid this absurdity, it is submitted that the phrase “capacitating him to remarry” in the second paragraph of Article 26 should be interpreted as a qualifying phrase of the word “divorce”. In other words, the phrase “capacitating him to remarry” should not mean that the foreign spouse must be allowed to remarry under his national law before the Filipino spouse may remarry; it should be interpreted to be a mere qualifying phrase, signifying one of the basic consequences of divorce–enabling the parties to marry again. To my (cluttered) mind, this is the only way to put some sense and sanity into the law and make it in touch with reality. Otherwise, no amount of reasoning can convince me to justify the present interpretation interposed by some professors and commentaries. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s ridiculousness at its best.
