A House committee on Tuesday unanimously approved a substitute divorce bill crafted by a technical working group.
“Today is a momentous occasion for countless wives, who are battered and deserted, to regain their humanity, self-respect, and freedom from irredeemably failed marriages and utterly dysfunctional unions,” said Albay Representative Edcel Lagman said after the Committee on Population and Family Relations unanimously approved the unnumbered substitute bill.
The measure seeks to reinstate absolute divorce and includes several amendments to existing bills, such as provisions on court-assisted petitioners, community-based women’s desks to provide assistance and support to victims of violence and abuse, and grounds for divorce, among others.
Lagman said House Speaker Lord Allan Velasco has already expressed favor for the enactment of the measure.
He said the grounds for legal separation, annulment of marriage, and nullification of marriage based on psychological incapacity under the Family Code were included as grounds for absolute divorce.
The other grounds for divorce under the proposed measure are as follows: separation in fact for at least five years at the time the petition for absolute divorce is filed; when one of the spouses undergoes a gender reassignment surgery or transitions from one sex to another; irreconcilable marital differences as defined in the bill; other forms of domestic or marital abuse which as defined in the bill; valid foreign divorce secured by either the alien or Filipino spouse; and a marriage nullified by a recognized religious tribunal.
Absolute divorce would void the marital union, which means divorced spouses are allowed to remarry.
The Philippines is the only country across the globe that outlaws absolute divorce, aside from the Vatican.
“It is hard to believe that all the other countries collectively erred in instituting absolute divorce in varying degrees of liberality and limitations. An en masse blunder is beyond comprehension,” Lagman said.
“An erroneous unanimity on such a crucial familial institution defies reason and experience. Obviously, the rest of the world cannot be mistaken on the universality of absolute divorce,” he added.