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Divorce bill filed in the Senate


A bill seeking to institute absolute divorce in the Philippines has been filed in the Senate.

Senator Risa Hontiveros, author of Senate Bill 2134 or Divorce Act of 2018, said that while the State continues to recognize the sanctity of family life and endeavors to protect and strengthen the family, it is also duty-bound to promote and protect the well-being of its citizens.

"It is a duty that should extend to circumstances whereby this well-being is being compromised by the inability to break free from irremediably broken marriages and start anew in healthier family and living arrangements," she said in the explanatory note.

She further said that, based on studies, it is not divorce that creates well-being issues for children but bearing witness to their parents' troubled marriage.

Under Senate Bill 2134, filed in December 2018, divorce is defined as the legal termination of a marriage by a court in a legal proceeding, requiring a petition or complaint for divorce by one party, which will have the effect of returning both parties to the status of being single, including the right to remarry.

Among the grounds for divorce are psychological incapacity of either spouse, whether or not the incapacity was present at the time of the marriage or later; violation of the Violence Against Women and their Children Act; rape by the respondent-spouse against the petitioner-spouse before marriage; and irreconcilable differences or irreparable breakdown of marriage despite earnest efforts to reconcile.

The bill states that a spouse found by the court to have used force, fraud, or intimidation to compel the other spouse to file the petition for absolute divorce shall be punished with imprisonment of five years and a fine of P200,000.

It also states that any parent who will fail to provide court ordered child support or any spouse who will fail to pay court-ordered alimony shall be punished by prision mayor or fined P100,000 to not more than P300,000 on top of the unpaid child support and/or alimony.

The House of Representatives approved a divorce bill in March last year and sent it to the Senate, but it was not immediately acted upon.

Several senators last year expressed their disinclination to support a divorce bill, with some saying they would rather amend the annulment law.

President Rodrigo Duterte earlier said he would not be in favor of a divorce bill, saying that his daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, does not agree with it. — BM, GMA News

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