BY GEROME DALIPE IV
ILOILO City – You heard it right. It may sound weird, but the Supreme Court resolved cases involving unconventional circumstances that led to landmark decisions that impacted the legal precedent.
While the tribunal has consistently upheld the inviolability of marriage as enshrined in our Constitution, it had to step in when the husband and wife “found themselves trapped in its mire of unfulfilled vows and unconsummated marital obligations.”
The high court, in its landmark ruling issued in 1997, ruled in favor of the distraught wife who sought to annul her marriage due to her husband’s refusal to make love with her since they got married.
“Senseless and protracted refusal is equivalent to psychological incapacity. Thus, the prolonged refusal of a spouse to have sexual intercourse with his or her spouse is considered a sign of psychological incapacity,” the high tribunal said.
Panay News withheld the names of the parties in the case in compliance with the confidentiality provisions of the Family Court Act.
In this case, the wife filed the petition to annul her marriage to her husband, a Chinese national, on the grounds of psychological incapacity, one of the grounds allowed by law to void one’s marriage for the refusal of a spouse to fulfill essential marital obligations.
The couple married on May 22, 1988. But the wife and her husband never had an intimate moment even during their honeymoon.
On the night of their marriage, the wife said her husband simply occupied the other side of the bed, turned his back on her, and slept.
During their honeymoon, the wife said they stayed in a hotel in Baguio City for four days. Still, nothing happened because her husband allegedly avoided her by taking a long walk during siesta time or sleeping on a rocking chair in the living room.
For about 10 months – from May 22, 1988 to March 15, 1989 – the wife said they slept together in the same room and bed, but her husband never initiated sex with her. Ironically, the wife said she did not even see her husband’s private parts nor did he see hers.
The couple submitted themselves for medical examinations. Results showed the wife was still “healthy, normal, and still a virgin” while that of her husband’s examination was kept confidential.
In her annulment petition, the wife said her husband was impotent and a closet homosexual as evidenced by not showing his penis.
The wife said she observed her husband using an eyebrow pencil or the cleansing cream of his mother. She suspected her husband married her merely to acquire or maintain his residency status and to “publicly maintain the appearance of a normal man.”
The Regional Trial Court in Quezon City granted the wife’s annulment petition on the grounds of psychological incapacity. The Court of Appeals affirmed such a ruling.
In his petition to the high court, the husband said the appeals court erred in declaring that their refusal to have sex with each other constitutes psychological incapacity.
He said he does not want to annul their marriage because he still loves her. He insisted there was nothing wrong with him both physically and psychologically.
The husband said he also initiated intimate moments with his wife, but the latter allegedly avoided him when he started caressing the private parts of her body.
He said he even tried to force his wife to have sex with him once, but he did not continue because she was shaking and she did not like it. So he stopped.
The husband theorized that his wife wanted to annul their marriage because she was afraid of being forced to return the jewelry given to her by his mother.
In the decision, the tribunal rejected the husband’s argument. Under the Family Code, the high court said the procreation of children through sexual cooperation is the basic end of marriage.
“This is so because an ungiven self is an unfulfilled self. The egoist has nothing but himself. In the natural order, it is sexual intimacy that brings spouses wholeness and oneness. Sexual intimacy is a gift and participation in the mystery of creation,” the tribunal said.
The court also noted the absence of empathy between the couple, adding that husband and wife had to share feelings not only through spontaneous sexual intimacy but also a deep sense of spiritual communion.
“Marriage is not for children but for two consenting adults who view the relationship with love, respect, sacrifice, and a continuing commitment to compromise, conscious of its value as a sublime social institution,” the tribunal ruled.
“Love is useless unless it is shared with another. Indeed, no man is an island, the cruelest act of a partner in marriage is to say ‘I could not have cared less,” it added./PN
