How to get away with marriage:

Annulment is not enough to be separated, other options to marry again.

Marriage is a special contract of permanent union between a man and a woman entered into in
accordance with law for the establishment of conjugal and family life. It is the foundation of the family
and inviolable social institution whose nature, consequences and incidents are governed by law and not
subject to stipulation, except that marriage settlements may fix the property relations during the marriage
within the limits provided by this Code (Article 1, Family Code). Indeed, marriage is an inviolable social
institution and cannot be impaired except as provided by legal provisions. In the Philippines, marriage can
only be severed through legal separation, judicial declaration of nullity and annulment. All of these legal
options does not prescribe a Filipino citizen, who does not have any defects in marriage, for remarriage
because it is an established rule that marriage is a permanent union and cannot be severed nor be
subjected for another marriage. However, the question at bar is: what if the spouse fell out of love and
wanted to remarry other person? How can you get away with the existing marriage? In our law, there are
certain conditions that provide for remarriage of individuals and there are some existing gaps in the
statutes that can be used to provide opportunity of remarriage for individuals. As wise men say, in every
rule there are exemptions and it is up to individuals to twist the law and make the way out of it.

The first legal option that is clearly provided by the law in order to get away with marriage, can
be found in the Family Code Art. 35, 36, 37, 38 and Art. 53 which clearly provides certain conditions to
make marriage void ab initio or void from the very beginning. A marriage is void from the very beginning
if it violates the provisions in the Family Code such as the absence of either formal requisite, essential
requisite, psychological incapacity of either of the spouses, bigamous or polygamous marriages,
incestuous marriages and marriages prohibited by reason of public policy. In order to get away with
marriage through this exemption, it is necessary for the petitioner to discover whether these conditions
exist before or during the contract of the marriage. If the facts are true, the offended spouse can file a
case of judicial declaration of nullity of marriage on the grounds of either of the void conditions that
existed in the marriage. If the court found this case meritorious, then the married person can remarry
again provided that the essential requirements of judgement of absolute nullity of the marriage, the
partition and distribution of the properties of spouses and delivery of the children’s presumptive
legitimes, which should be recorded in appropriate civil registry, in order to make the subsequent
marriage valid in pursuance to Art. 40, 52, 53 of Family Code.

In the same way, certain conditions under Art. 45 and Art. 46 of the Family Code can be subject
to annulment and can be considered to make marriages voidable. These conditions include the lack of
parent’s consent to those who availed the marriage between 18-21 years old, unsound mind, fraud, force,
intimidation, physical incapability or sexually transmitted disease. In order to get away with marriage
using voidable conditions, it is necessary for the individual to find these conditions to be existing before
or during the celebration of the marriage. In the same way with void ab initio marriages, in voidable
marriages, the offended spouse, considering the facts are true, can file for judicial declaration of
annulment and if found meritorious, the spouses can remarry again, provided that Art. 40, 52, 53 of Family
Code as noted above are complied with.
 The last legal option for remarriage is impliedly shown in Art. 26 of the Family Code, where it
states that if a foreign divorce was validly obtained by the foreign spouse which capacitates him/her to
remarry, the Filipino spouse shall likewise have capacity to remarry under Philippine law (Executive Order
227). In this case, if the Filipino spouse is desperate to remarry another person, it is necessary for him/her
to change its citizenship into a foreign one, specifically those countries where divorce is valid. In changing
to a foreign citizenship, the Filipino who converted to foreign citizenship can now obtain a divorce abroad
and therefore capacitating him/her to remarry again. It is to be noted however, that the person who wants
to remarry must obtain the divorce after he/she changed his/her citizenship into foreign one to make the
divorce valid and binding here in the Philippines.