Divorce not the solution

I support the call to defend the Filipino family (“In defense of the Filipino family,” Letters, 2/21/18) to  protect the sanctity of marriage as an institution and keep the family from disintegrating.

We acknowledge and accept that there have been “failed marriages,” but divorce is not the solution to such failed marriages.

There are already sufficient laws that parties to such marriages can avail themselves of, e.g., annulment or legal separation.

Divorce is, therefore, unnecessary.

One principal issue for divorce is that annulment or legal separation cases entail heavy financial costs to the parties. This is where the legislature can enact measures to lower cost and facilitate annulment cases without resorting to divorce.

The institution of marriage, after all, is one “of the greatest ever devised for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity,” according to professor Robert P. George, one of America’s highly regarded and respected  legal theorists and authors.

GEORGE C. DEE, Commission on Family and Life, Diocese of San Pablo, Laguna