PH one step closer to legalizing divorce after congress approves bill on third and final reading

Yesterday, the Philippine House of Representatives approved on third and final reading a bill that legalizes divorce. The predominantly Catholic country is one of only two in the world where divorce has not been legalized, the other being the Vatican.

134 representatives voted in favor of House Bill No. 7303 or the “Absolute Divorce Act of 2018,” while 57 voted against it and two abstained.

The bill mandates that divorce court proceedings must be affordable for all. It also requires couples to undergo a six-month cooling-off period, which means “the court shall exercise all efforts to reunite and reconcile the parties” after a petition for divorce has been filed. The cooling-off period will not apply to cases where women and children have been abused or when there has been an attempt against the life of one of the spouses.

A similar bill needs to be approved by the Philippine Senate before it can then be signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte. But according to Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, Duterte isn’t keen on approving it.

“The president is against divorce. He said, the children will be affected and that if there will be divorce, those who have been abandoned by their spouses will lose the right to file a case against them,” Roque said in Filipino yesterday.

This, despite Duterte’s personal experience with an annulment. The president is separated from her first wife Elizabeth Zimmerman, a marriage that was annulled in 2000 after 27 years together. He currently has a common-law wife, Honeylet Avanceña.

While the bill’s approval in Congress is just the first hurdle it must go through, the decision was a monumental one because no other divorce bill has gone that far. Up until today, those who want to legally dissolve their marriage only have annulment as an option. Annulment cases can take years to finish and will cost at least PHP250,000 (US$4,804.42).

In January, congress approved a bill that would make annulment easier for couples who had already been annulled by a religious body, but since those annulment cases are usually harder to have approved, the bill won’t make much of a difference to most people.

These recently approved bills come at a time when most Filipinos think that divorce should be legalized. A survey released earlier this month shows that 53 percent of Filipinos surveyed think couples who have been separated and cannot reconcile should be allowed to get divorced in order to remarry.