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BY RHODA GARZON-CAMPILLAN
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Dissolution of marriage in the Philippines: Seriously?
MARRIAGE is the union of two people who vowed to love each other forever no matter what.
My parents taught me that when I get married I should do whatever it takes to protect my marriage and my family.
It is inevitable for couples to fight. There will always be issues in the marriage and as husband and wife you should do something about it. If it does not involve physical violence and adultery, then you should save your marriage no matter what.
I was surprised when I heard over the radio this morning that House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez formally filed his bill seeking to legalize the dissolution of marriages. He filed House Bill 6027 on July 24. The bill is currently pending with the Committee on the Revision of Laws.
For the sake of clarity, I will differentiate divorce, legal separation and annulment. According to Atty. Frederick Schwinn, divorce is also called dissolution of marriage or dissolution of domestic partnership. If you get divorced, you will be single, and you can marry or become a domestic partner again.
Legal separation, on the other hand, does not end a marriage or domestic partnership. Atty. Schwinn explained that you cannot marry or enter into a partnership with someone else if you are legally separated.
He further discussed that a legal separation is for couples that do not want to get divorced but want to live apart and decide on money, property, and parenting issues.
Alternatively, annulment or nullity of marriage or nullity of domestic partnership means the court says your marriage or domestic partnership is not legally valid. There are grounds, therefore, that need to be considered before the court decides that the marriage should be annulled.
I learned that Congressman Alvarez has another interpretation of dissolution of marriage. For him, marriage is like a contract, a piece of paper without any significance. If the couple decides that they do not like to live in the same roof over marriage issues, all they have to do is rescind the contract. The implication: partnership ends right away.
I reflected over these and came up with questions like, what the hell is going on in the mind of Congressman Alvarez? Is he crazy? Does he want more broken families? Does he want to destroy the future of the children of these marriages?
I do not know what he wants and I will never comprehend his stand regarding this issue because seriously, I do not get his point. My lawyer friend told me that marriage is a social institution as defined by the Family Code of the Philippines. It is not an ordinary contract. It has social and cultural aspects.
In our culture, divorce is not accepted. Our forefathers inculcated in us to put high-value on marriage. For Filipinos, marriage is sacred. Hence, no one has the right to disrespect or worse, dissolve it.
I pray that when this bill reaches the Senate, our senators will be given the wisdom to discern the right from the wrong. I hope they will study this bill thoroughly and analyze the impact and implications of this to the Filipino family – the victim of this selfishness.
My marriage is not perfect. My husband and I have differences in opinions, values and attitudes. But never in our minds had we entertained the idea of ending our marriage because we simply do not like each other.
Ending marriage has grounds. It is not like a memorandum of agreement where you can just end it immediately if your demands were not satisfied. I hope that Filipino families will stand up and stop this bill to become a law. Let us all uphold our values and let us not allow this kind of evil to destroy the sacredness of marriage and family. (rcampillan@usa.edu.ph/PN)
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