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Query: Candro and I met and became sweethearts seven years
ago. We planned to get married and thereby applied for a marriage
license three years later. We had our first sexual intercourse
almost a month after we had applied for a marriage license—and had
regularly engaged in sex thereafter. When we went back to the Office
of the Civil Registrar, the marriage license had already expired.
To push through with our plan to get married, we
executed an affidavit stating that we had been living together as
husband and wife for at least five years. Thus, we got married, with
a judge administering the civil rites. Nevertheless, after the
ceremony, Candro and I went back to our respective homes and did not
live together as husband and wife. Six months thereafter, I gave
birth to a child named Dadin. Since our child’s birth, I have been
supporting her with my meager income as a caregiver. I asked Candro
to help me support our child, but he objected saying that our
marriage was void ab initio as it had been facilitated by a fake
affidavit—there was no marriage license and that we had not lived
together as husband and wife. However, he had signed the hospital
record admitting that he is the father of Dadin.
With the foregoing, I am now in a predicament on
what to do. Fortunately, I have come across your column in The
Manila Times extending legal assistance/guidance to people in
despair, like me. I am confronted with the following questions: Was
not our marriage valid? Is not Candro legally obliged to help me
support Dadin?
Cording D.
Response
Your problem gives a lesson for young women
nowadays who have sex with men whose background they do not know.
Such sex escapade will certainly give them a temporary pleasure, but
their problem—if a child is born—will last for lifetime, that
is, if their co-conspirators will disappear.
Going now to your problem, your first query is:
was your marriage with Candro valid? Under the family Code, the
absence of any of the essential or formal requisites renders the
marriage void ab initio, whereas a defect in any of the essential
requisites renders the marriage voidable. Article 3 of said law
provides the following as the formal requisites of marriage: (1)
Authority of the solemnizing officers; (2)A valid marriage license;
(3) A marriage ceremony which takes place with the appearance of the
contracting parties before the solemnizing officer and their
personal declaration that they take each other as husband and wife
in the presence of not less than two witnesses of legal age.
Parenthetically, was/were there witness(es) during your alleged
civil rites? Moreover, Candro’s claim that a falsified affidavit
had been executed stating that you had been living together as
husband and wife for more than five years to pave the way for the
civil rites certainly failed to comply with the foregoing provision.
Thus, your marriage with Candro was not only voidable—but it was
void ab initio (from the beginning). (Article 35 of the same Code).
With respect to your second query regarding the
status of Dadin, she can be considered as Candro’s illegitimate
child—and therefore, entitled to support, taking note of
Candro’s alleged admission at the hospital records (Article 172 of
the Family Code). This is anchored on a recent decision of the
Supreme Court in Reinel Anthony de Castro vs. Annabelle Assidao-de
Castro (G.R. No. 160172, prom.: February 13, 2008) that illegitimate
children may establish their illegitimate filiation in the same way
and on the same evidence as legitimate children. On this score,
Article 175 of the Family Code provides that “illegitimate
children may establish their illegitimate filiation in the same way
and on the same evidence as legitimate children.” Such action may
be brought by the child during his or her lifetime. (Article 173,
id.). As illegitimate child, Dadin is, therefore, entitled to
support from her parents, including Candro, pursuant to Article 176
of the same Code.
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Above al things, let us reflect on the following
statement of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ: “ I am telling you
the truth: Those who hear my words and believe in Him who sent me
have eternal life. They will not be judged, but have already passed
from death to life. I am telling you the truth: the time is
coming—the time has already come—when the dead will hear the
voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will come to life.
Just as the Father is Himself the source of life, in the same way He
has made His Son to be the source of life. And He has given the Son
the right to judge, because He is the Son of Man. Do not be
surprised at this; the time is coming when all the dead will hear
His voice and come out of their graves; those who have done good
will rise and live, and those who have done evil rise and be
condemned. (John, 5:24-29)
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