Lagman flags divorce bill proceedings delay

Albay Representative Edcel Lagman on Tuesday cried foul over the return of the divorce bill to the committee for further discussion, saying such action only aims to derail the proceedings.

Lagman was referring to the House plenary’s action of recommitting House Bill 9349 or "An Act Reinstituting Divorce as an Alternative Mode for the Dissolution of Marriage" to the Committee on Population and Family Relations chaired by Isabela Rep. Ian Paul Dy.

The committee unanimously approved the bill last March 2023. 

Lagman, author of the proposed measure, said he was belatedly informed that the bill was recommitted because it should be referred first to the Committee on Appropriations, which he deemed baseless.

“There is no rule of the House which requires that bills without an appropriation language be referred to the Committee on Appropriations. Only bills with appropriation language are referred to the appropriations committee. The divorce bill has no appropriations language,” he said.

“The recommitment was made to further delay, or even derail, the enactment of the divorce bill,” he added.

During the committee's discussions on the divorce bill, the panel adopted Lagman’s motion to send the bill back to the Committee on Rules for scheduling for plenary sponsorship.

Lagman welcomed the development, saying the divorce bill has been languishing in Congress for far too long at 37 years or almost four decades, putting Filipino women in bad marriages at a disadvantage.

“Millions of Filipino women have been waiting for the enactment of this bill, considering that wives are the victims of toxic and destroyed marriages due to the cruelty, violence, or abandonment by their husbands,” he pointed out.

“It is important to underscore that the Philippines is the only remaining country which has not legalized divorce, except the Vatican, an ecclesiastical State with only about 800 residents, mostly nuns and priests,” he added.

“All Catholic countries have their absolute divorce laws in varying degrees of liberality or strictness, an unmistakable manifestation that divorce does not violate the doctrine of the Catholic Church,” Lagman added.

The lawmaker also said that the proposed divorce law stands on solid legal ground.

“The Supreme Court in Te vs. Te, (G.R. No. 161793, February 13, 2009), ruled that the dissolution of a marriage is a decent interment of a long-dead marriage,” he added.

The present Family Code only provides for annulment or voiding of marriage based on the following grounds that do not explicitly state domestic violence and other sexual assault related abuses:

• the party in whose behalf it is sought to have the marriage annulled was eighteen years of age or over but below twenty-one, and the marriage was solemnized without the consent of the parents, guardian or person having substitute parental authority over the party, in that order, unless after attaining the age of twenty-one, such party freely cohabited with the other and both lived together as husband and wife;
• either party was of unsound mind, unless such party after coming to reason, freely cohabited with the other as husband and wife;
• the consent of either party was obtained by fraud, unless such party afterwards, with full knowledge of the facts constituting the fraud, freely cohabited with the other as husband and wife;
• the consent of either party was obtained by force, intimidation or undue influence, unless the same having disappeared or ceased, such party thereafter freely cohabited with the other as husband and wife;
• either party was physically incapable of consummating the marriage with the other, and such incapacity continues and appears to be incurable; and
• either party was afflicted with a sexually-transmissible disease found to be serious and appears to be incurable.

State-run Philippine Commission on Women earlier expressed support for the passage of the divorce bill, saying the current system is disadvantageous to Filipino women.—AOL, GMA Integrated News