Divorce Bill Essay

Underpinning this proposal is a commitment to the policy of the State to protect and alter pairing and the family as basic complaisant institutions, to value the dignity of either clement person, to guarantee full respect for hu earth rights, and to ensure the natural equality before the lawfulness of women and men. In the Filipino culture, espousals is regarded as a sacred union, and the family founded on trades union is considered as a side of love, protection and c are. Philippine society generally frowns upon and discourages marital break-ups and so provides ethnical and legal safeguards to perserve marital relations.Cultural prescriptions and religious norms keep many couples unitedly despite the partitioning of the marriage. But the cultural prescriptions for women and men differ. Women are traditionally regarded as primarily responsible for making the marriage work and are expected to sacrifice everything to preserve the marriage and the solidarity of the fami ly. While absolute faithfulness is demanded of wives, men are apt(p) sexual license to have personal business stunnedside marriage. Yet when the marriage fails, the woman is blamed for its failure.Reality tells us that there are many failed, unhappy marriages across all Philippine classes. Many couples especially from the marginalized sectors, who have no access to the administrations, simply blockade up separating without the benefit of legal processes. The sheer number of petitions that have been filed since 1988 for the solvent of the nullity of the marriage down the stairs Article 36 of the Family enrol (comm scarcely know as revocation) shows that there are just too many couples who are desperate to get out of failed marriages.Even when couples start out well in their marriage, political, economical and social realities take their toll on their relationship. Some are not prepared to handle the intricacies of the married life. For a large number of women, the inequali ties and ferocity in marriage negate its ideals as the embodiment of love, care and safety and erode the bases upon which a marriage is founded. The marital relations facilitate the commission of violence and perpetuate their oppression. Official figures in 2009 showed that nineteen women were victims of marital violence everyday.Among the divergent forms of violence and abuse against women move in 2009, wife battery ranked highest at 6,783 or 72% according to the Philippine National Police (PNP). The Department of Social welfare and Development (DSWD) likewise recorded marital violence as highest among different forms of violence against owmen at 1,933. Previous reports of the PNP about three of ten perpetrators of violence against women were husbands of the victims. Husbands accounted for 28 percent of the violence against women crimes.Given these realities, couples must have the plectron to avail of remedies that will pave the federal agency for the attainment of their full human development and self-fulfillment and the protection of their human rights. Existing laws are not enough to guarantee and protect these rights. To quote the Womens Legal Bureau, Inc. , a legal resource NGO for women The present laws relating to separation of couples and termination of marriage are inadequate to respond to the myriad causes of failed marriages. Particularly, the remedies of settlement of nullity and annulment do not cover the problems that occur during the existence of marriage.Legal separation, on the other hand, while covering problems during marriage, does not put an bar to marriage. though both disunitement and a declaration of nullity of a marriage al broken in the spouses to remarry, the two remedies differ in concept and founding. A declaration of nullity presupposes that the marriage is sensible from the send-off and the court declares its non-existence Beyond the ground specified in the law, declaration of nullity is not possible. In annulmen t, the marriage of the parties is say defective from the beginning, albeit it is considered valid until annulled.The defect can be used to annul the marriage within a specified period but the aforesaid(prenominal) may be ignored and the marriage becomes perfectly valid after the lapse of that period, or the defect may be cured with some deed of conveyance. The defect relates to the clock time of the celebration of the marriage and has nothing to do with batch occurring after the marriage is celebrated. In annulment, the marriage is legally cancelled, and the man and woman are restored to their single status. Since August 3, 1988, couples have been given a way out of failed marriages through Article 36 of the Family CodeThe bushel provides low Article 36 is declaration of nullity of the marriage.The article voids a marriage where unity party is psychologically incapacitated to comply with the all important(p)s of marital obligations. Consistent with the concept of void ma rriages (where the salvage is declaration of nullity), the law requires that the idiocy must have existed at the time of the celebration of the marriage In practice, Article 36 has become a form of dissociate, as valid marriages are declared void every day in the dissembling of psychological incapacity. The innumerable Article 36 cases brought to trial courts is an indication of the snapshot of Article 36 to accommodate the needs of many couples desiring to terminate their marriages. It is consequence that divide is needed in the Philippines. Article 36 provides a remedy only for spouses who can prove psychological incapacity. The concept for sure cannot accommodate all cases where divorce would be undeniable. What we need is a divorce law that defines clearly and unequivocally the effort and terms for terminating a marriage.That law will put an end to the creative efforts played daily in courtrooms across the country to accommodate a wide range of cases in order to prove p sychological incapacity. (Womens Legal Bureau, Inc. , The Relevance of divide in the Philippines, 1998) Thus, the vertex seeks to gift divorce as another pickaxe for couples in failed and irreparable marriages. The bill was crafted in consultation with women lawyers and inspired by the studies and inputs of various womens groups and the scrams of spouses gathered by GABRIELA from its various chapters nationwide.The bill seeks to introduce divorce in Philippine law with a strong wizard of confidence that it will be used responsibly by Filipino couples. This confidence stems from the experiences of Filipino families that show that separation is usually the last repair of many Filipino couples whose marriage has failed. Cases of battered women also support this. strike women invariably seek separation only after many old age of tring to make the marriage work. Separation only becomes imperative for them when they realize that it is necessary for their and their childrens surv ival.Divorce could actually provide protection to battered women and their children from unless violence and abuse. With the predominance of the Catholic faith in the Philippines, the fear that divorce will erode personal values on marriage appears unfounded. The experience of Italy, where the Vatican is located, and Spain, two predominantly Catholic countries which practice divorce, supports this. Those countries have a low rate of divorce. Italy registers a 7% rate while Spain registers 15%.The figures invent the strong influence of religious beliefs and culture on individuals in decision making to terminate marital relations. Historically, divorce had been part of our legal system. In the beginning of the 16th century, before the Spanish colonial rule, absolute divorce was widely practiced among ancestral tribes such as the Tagbanwas of Palawan, the Gadangs of Nueva Vizcaya, the Sagadans and Igorots of the Cordilleras, and the Manobos, Blaans and Moslems of the Visayas and Mi ndanao islands.Divorce was also available during the American period, starting from 1917 (under Act No. 710 enacted by the Philippine Legislature), and during the Japanese occupation (under Executive Order No. 141) and after, until 1950. It was only on August 30, 1950, when the New Civil Code took effect, that divorce was disallowed under Philippine law. Only legal separation was available. The same rule was adopted by the Family Code of 1988, which replaced the provisions of the New Civil Code on marriage and the family, although the Family Code introduced the concept of psychological incapacity as a basis for declaring the marriage void.In recognition of the history of divorce in the Philippines, the farmers of the 1987 Philippine Constitution left the wisdom of legalizing divorce to the Congress. Thus, the 1987 Constitution does not preclude the legalization of divorce. This bill is respectful of and sensitive to differing religious beliefs in the Philippines. It recognizes that the masses of religious beliefs and cultural sensibilities in the Philippines demand that different remedies for failed marriages should be do available.For this reason, the bill retains the existing remedies of legal separation, declaring of nullity of the marriage and annulment and only adds divorce as one more remedy. Couples may choose from these remedies depending on their situation, religious beliefs, cultural sensibilities, needs and emotional state. While divorce under this proposed measure severs the bonds of marriage, divorce as a remedy need not be fo the purpose of re-marriage it may be resorted to by individuals to attain peace of mind and facilitate their pursuit of full human development.This bill also seeks to make Philippine law consistent in the way it treats religious beliefs with respect to termination of marriage. Philippine law through the Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines (Presidential Decree No. 1083 1977) allows divorce among Filipino Musli ms, in deference to the Islamic faith which recognizes divorce. Non-Muslim Filipinos should have the same option under Philippine law, in accordance with their religious beliefs. The bill proposes five grounds for divorce.All the five grounds are premised on the irreparable breakdown of the marriage and the total non-performance of marital obligations. Thus, the bill provides that a petition for divorce may be filed when the petitioner has been separated de facto (in fact) from his or her spouse for at least five years at the time of the filing of the petition and reconciliation is highly improbable, or when the petitioner has been legally separated from his or her spouse for at least two years at the time of the filing of the petition and reconciliation is highly improbable.Not all circumstances and situations that cause the total breakdown of a marriage could be delineate in this proposed measure. Thus, the bill also provides that divorce may be granted when the spouses suffer fr om irreconcilable differences that have caused the irreparable breakdown of the marriage. Spouses living in a state of irreparable marital conflict or dissent should be given the opportunity to present their marital contrarieties in court and have those differences adjudged as constituting a substantial ground to put an end to the marriage.Another ground for divorce included in the bill is when one or both spouses are psychologically incapacitated to comply with the essential marital obligations. This provision will consequently repeal Article 36 of the Family Code. The bill seeks to include psychological incapacity in the grounds for divorce in the belief that the concept is consistent with the termination of marital ties or else than with a void marriage. This bill seeks to eliminate condonation of the act and consent to the act as grounds for denying a petition for legal separation and, by extension, a petition for divorce.Many spouses especially women ignore the offense becaus e of the social and economic conditions they are in. Many women in the marginalized sectors tend to condone the offense because they are economically dependent on their spouses or because of the stigma given up to failed marriages. Some women who are perceived to be condoning the acts of their husbands actually suffer from the rhythm method of birth control of spousal abuse such that they have become so disempowered to apostrophize their situation.