Till death do us part, and they mean it
Philippines last to forbid divorce
MANILA — Just because the Philippines is the last country on Earth to refuse to allow divorce for most of its citizens, that doesn’t mean Filipinos don’t fall out of love with one another.
So what to do? One recourse for those who stray is to separate, move on to the next relationship — and live in sin. The alternative, in a country where the Catholic Church still wields enormous influence, is to follow a torturously convoluted — and for many, prohibitively expensive — path to an annulment.
Most of those who are unhappy or unfaithful don’t even try.
The absence of modern divorce laws looms large in the Philippines, a poor but rapidly transitioning society with a large migrant workforce and many transnational families. The church will stick to its guns on this issue, even as a synod convened at the Vatican this week plans to take up the question of divorce, among other subjects.
As it stands, though, tens of thousands in the Philippines are stuck in difficult or dysfunctional marriages, torn between the teachings of their faith and a humiliating legal limbo.
“YOU KNOW, IT’S ONLY ABOUT 10,000 OR 15,000 PESOS TO HIRE A HIT MAN TO KILL YOUR SPOUSE — MUCH LESS THAN AN ANNULMENT.” PAOLO YAP
An annulment, for those who pursue one, means the marriage never happened. Infidelity, desertion, abuse, irreconcilable differences or the reality two people simply can’t stand the sight of each other anymore cannot be considered in a civil proceeding. It also helps to pay the judge a bribe to speed up the process and guarantee a positive outcome.
“It’s a travesty of the justice system,” said Sen. Pia Cayetano, who said she speaks from experience and who has argued divorce is a basic human right.
The church disagrees. “Human rights are not absolute if they are against the plan of God,” said Monsignor Edgardo Pangan, a canon lawyer who handles church annulments for the Diocese of San Fernando.
For now, couples wanting out of a marriage can choose between a church annulment or a civil annulment; most opt for the latter. Either way, they must establish there was some fatal impediment to the marriage from Day 1: That one or both were too young to get married, were coerced into the marriage, or — most common — were psychologically “incapacitated” at the time of the marriage.
But that presents its own hurdles.
Paolo Yap, 35, a graphic designer in Manila, separated from his then-wife in 2004 and stopped communicating with her entirely two years later. Three years ago, when he and his new partner decided they wanted to marry, Yap needed an annulment.
He hired a lawyer for 300,000 pesos ($6,800), but dismissed her when he realized it was going to cost at least twice that — a considerable sum in the Philippines. Next, he made a deal with a lawyer friend who agreed to take on the case in exchange for Yap’s services as a designer.
A psychologist was hired to certify “mental incapacity.” Yap was found to be “depressive” and “anti-social”; his wife was diagnosed as “narcissistic” and “histrionic.”
As the case was wending its way through the system, Yap made the startling discovery his wife already had obtained an annulment in a court in a remote corner of the Philippines. Yap was never notified. Even when his wife learned Yap had started annulment proceedings, she didn’t tell him, allowing him to spend hundreds of thousands of pesos unnecessarily.
“You know, it’s only about 10,000 or 15,000 pesos to hire a hit man to kill your spouse — much less than an annulment,” he noted sardonically.
Yap was joking. After all, he had his freedom.
Last year, the courts in the Philippines, with a population of 100 million, heard 10,257 annulment cases, granting about 95 per cent of them — a minuscule number for a large country. But rather than universal marital harmony, the small number is indicative of another reality: This is a poor country and going to court to get an annulment is too expensive for most of the population.
Another stress on marriage in the Philippines is the economy’s dependence on remittances from a vast army of migrant workers. With the government’s encouragement, more than 10 million Filipinos work outside the country. Often these workers are forced to live apart from their spouses for years at a time. More than 70 per cent of them are women.
The absence of a fair and easy-to-access divorce procedure is a particular hardship for women, said Glenda Litong, a human rights lawyer. Women are the ones most often in need of an escape from an abusive marriage; they are the ones most often left with the responsibility of caring for the children.
“But the court system is onerous for women,” Litong said. “Most of these women can barely afford bus fare to the city, much less a lawyer.”
The Philippines became the only nation generally to forbid divorce in 2011, when the Mediterranean nation of Malta, in a bitterly contested referendum, voted to allow it. Philippines does allow divorce for the country’s Muslim minority — about 11 per cent of the population.
A bill legalizing divorce for all is before legislature, but does not have the support of the president.