In a move that women’s rights advocates describe as long overdue, the House of Representatives on May 22 approved a measure that would make divorce legal in the Philippines with 131 ayes, 109 nays, and 20 abstention votes.
The bill advancing this far “was a clear and resounding victory and signals the imminent liberation for Filipino wives who are entombed in toxic, abusive, and long-dead marriages,” said its author, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman.
Among other provisions, House Bill No. 9349 gives troubled spouses more grounds to dissolve what Lagman describes as “irreparably broken or dysfunctional marriage[s].” Such “irremediably broken marriage” must be established through a judicial process, however. Other grounds are the couple’s separation for at least five years at the time of filing for divorce, psychological incapacity of either spouse whether before or after the marriage vows, sex reassignment, irreconcilable differences, and domestic or marital abuse. The House bill also allows couples to reconcile or have their divorce petition dismissed even after the issuance of an absolute divorce decree.
Abusive relationships
The proposed law has been hailed as a welcome relief by married women trapped in abusive relationships who find the other legal options for marriage dissolution too expensive, too complex, or too restrictive. For non-Muslims, the only way out of a fractured marriage is either annulment or legal separation. Grounds for both include physical violence, fraud, or psychological incapacity, proof of which must be determined through a long and prohibitively expensive court process. Legal separation also maintains the marriage ties, thus prohibiting remarriage.
Such a long and complicated legal procedure imposes a huge financial burden on women who comprise 49.4 percent of the country’s population but only 34.5 percent of its workforce, according to the Philippine Statistical Authority. Fear of losing custody of children has also stopped most abused women from seeking a more permanent way out of toxic relationships. Proponents of divorce correctly point out that women bear the brunt of the conservative sectors’ fierce opposition to divorce. Without a divorce law, women face hefty legal fees, no division of assets, and no child support should they want out of their marriage.
Powerful Catholic Church
Still, while the House passage of the divorce bill is considered a triumph among those pushing for divorce in the Philippines—the only country aside from the Vatican where it is prohibited—the measure faces a steep hurdle in the Senate which must pass a counterpart bill for it to advance in the legislative process. Several divorce bills have languished, staggered through, and finally died out in both chambers since 1986.
Even as Senate President Francis Escudero assured impartiality and said he would leave the issue as “a conscience and personal vote” among other senators, Sen. Raffy Tulfo noted that the bill faces an “uphill battle” mainly because of the religion factor. In a predominantly Catholic country, people don’t want to go against the Church, he added. With next year’s polls on the horizon, antagonizing the powerful Catholic Church is hardly a palatable option for most politicians.
Oppositors, too, have often painted divorce as the bane of families, destroying marriages and breaking up homes, despite Lagman correctly pointing out that “divorce is not the monster plaguing a marriage. It is marital infidelity, abandonment, violence, and cruelty among others, which are the devils that destroy marriages.”
Clamor of shifting times
With Lagman and other lawmakers supportive of divorce vowing to shepherd the measure through intense lobbying and discussions with their colleagues in the Senate, it might yet advance in the legislative process.
An encouraging development is that the Senate committee on women, children, family relations, and gender equality last year approved a consolidated measure that provides absolute divorce on more grounds, including five years of separation—whether continuous or broken—and the commission of rape before or after marriage. This, despite a similar bill or the proposed “Dissolution of Marriage Act” that has been pending in the upper chamber since 2023.
The bill’s passage in the House and the Senate measure’s expanded grounds on absolute divorce are positive signs that lawmakers finally have their ears on the ground. Hopefully, they’d heed the clamor of shifting times and note the evolving description of marriage and family as a more inclusive institution that embraces its members’ individual rights to be free from the shackles of abuse and violence. Only then can one truly strengthen and uphold the sanctity of marriage.