‘I just want to be free’: Some Filipinos see potential relief as country readies to legalise divorce

LAS PINAS, Philippines: From the second her husband walked through the door one evening in mid-2023, Mdm Jessica was already bracing herself for the worst.
He had been out drinking with his friends, a habit which in their 15-years of marriage would often end up with him hurting his wife and tearing apart their tiny home in a small coastal town in the Philippines for little to no reason. 
That night started out the same. Mdm Jessica’s husband had been on a drunken rampage for reasons she could not remember, grabbing her by the hair and slamming her head against the wall.
But unlike before, this time, her 12-year-old daughter emerged from her room and intervened. 
“Don’t hurt my mum!” Mdm Jessica, who asked CNA not to use her real name as she fears for her safety, recalled her eldest daughter saying. “I’ll burn this whole house down if I have to. Just don’t hurt my mum!”
Seeing her courage was a turning point for the 33-year-old mother of two.
The following morning, while her husband was sound asleep from the night of heavy drinking, Mdm Jessica and her two daughters sneaked out of the house and took a 12-hour bus journey to Manila. 
Despite fleeing to a different city far away, it is hard for Mdm Jessica to escape her husband’s shadow and move on. 
She has never filed any criminal charges against her husband. 
In many countries, what happened to her should be legal grounds for Mdm Jessica to file for divorce and gain full custody of her two children. But the Philippines is the only country in the world outside of the Vatican where divorce is illegal. 
This means that even if Mdm Jessica manages to get her husband behind bars for years of domestic abuse as well as the countless threats made on her life after she left, she would still be legally married to him. 
But soon, there could be light at the end of the tunnel.
On May 22, the country’s House of Representatives approved the Absolute Divorce Act and passed it onto the Senate for further deliberation. If the bill passes the upper chamber of parliament, where it has seen an increasing number of supporters, divorce in the Philippines will become legal.
At least five of the 24 members of the country’s Senate have spoken out in support the bill and are strongly advocating for the passing of the proposed law.
Mr Edcel Lagman, a member of the House of Representatives and the principal author of the divorce bill said this is the furthest that the Absolute Divorce Act has progressed. In 2018, the bill also passed by the lower chamber of parliament but the Senate did not even put it on the list of priority bills up for deliberation.
But this time, Mr Lagman continued, there are a number of senators who vowed to ensure that the bill is passed into law. It has even won the support of the country’s president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, telling several media outlets when he came into office in 2022 that there are cases where divorce is necessary.
“I am optimistic that before the end of the (sitting parliament) in 2025, we will join the community of nations in legalising divorce,” Mr Lagman told CNA. 
The bill could provide an avenue of relief for some of the financial, emotional and psychological costs of not having a legal route to divorce for some women in the country.   
But efforts to legalise divorce in the Philippines, where 78 per cent of 115 million population are Roman Catholic, will not be easy. Standing in its way are the Catholic church and anti-divorce politicians who have been advocating hard for the bill to not become law. 
The Philippines has banned divorce since the 16th century when it was still under Spanish colonial rule. When the United States annexed the Philippines in 1898 however, fault-based divorce was recognised. 
Divorce became illegal again in 1950, four years after the Philippines gained independence, when the provision was eliminated from the country’s Civil Code. In 1977 however, then-president Ferdinand Marcos Sr issued a presidential decree on Muslim Personal Law, legalising divorce for Muslims in the country.  
For the rest of the population, including Protestants, Buddhists and people of other religions, divorce remains out of reach. 
The only avenue for non-Muslim couples looking to end their marriage is through an annulment. 
But this means proving that a marriage was never legally valid in the first place, such as marrying a minor without parental consent, participating in an incestuous relationship or in a marriage that was not officiated by an authorised person. 
A marriage is also voidable if one party was already married to another person or has a so-called “psychological incapacity” which causes the inability to perform one’s marital obligations.
Physical abuse, infidelity and abandonment are not grounds for an annulment. 
Victims of such cases can still seek a legal separation. But they will remain technically married to their abusers although they can live independently of each other. 
For both annulment and legal separation, issues such as child custody, child support and separation of assets are determined by the court. 
Mdm Cheryl Estoya, 36, tried to apply for a legal separation from her cheating husband so she could get child support for her two daughters. 
“I was told by my lawyers that my case was weak. I need to find evidence as to where my ex and his mistress live, if my ex had a child with his mistress. This was the evidence that they were looking for,” she told CNA. 
In the end, she decided not to pursue a case against her husband because it would mean opening up old wounds and possibly creating fresh ones by probing the depths of her husband’s infidelity. 
And even if she did, it would technically mean that Mdm Estoya is still married to him. As a consequence she would need her husband’s signature for things such as opening up a business or buying a property.  
“How am I supposed to do that when I don’t even know where he is,” she said. “It is really hard without a divorce or an annulment.”
Seeking an annulment can be a lengthy and prohibitively expensive process since it requires proving that a marriage that happened years ago was invalid to begin with. The chance of success can be slim.
Mdm Stella Sebonga, 47, said she had spent 300,000 pesos (US$5,200) in legal and administrative fees to annul her marriage to an abusive and cheating husband who never provided any financial support to their three children. 
Because infidelity and abandonment are not considered grounds for an annulment it took her 12 years and dozens of court sessions to prove that her husband was too psychologically incapacitated to perform his marital duties. She also needed to prove that this problem stemmed all the way back to when they got married 29 years ago.   
Mdm Sebonga’s motion was ultimately rejected by the court. She could still appeal but she does not have the money or the energy left to proceed. 
“My children were asked to testify against their father in court and it was really hard for them. I cannot let them go through that again,” she said. 
“The law here in the Philippines sometimes treats you like a criminal even when you are the one being abused. Even criminals are given parole and being released. What about us?” 
The proposed law aims to expand the grounds from which a marriage can be terminated. This includes physical violence towards the petitioners or their child, forcing them to engage in prostitution, infidelity, abandonment or other grounds which currently only allow a couple to legally separate.  
Disallowing couples to terminate their marriages based on these grounds has led to a culture of domestic violence in the country, said Mdm Mavi Millora, secretary general of advocacy group Divorce Pilipinas Coalition. 
With few incentives for the victims to report abuse, the perpetrators are free to repeat their actions again and again. 
“In our society, they are just a few who would come out and say that they have been abused or abandoned,” Mdm Millora told CNA. “Children grow up watching this abuse happening at home, so they grow up thinking it’s normal and it’s okay and create a cycle of abuse.” 
According to a 2022 demographic and health survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority, 17.5 per cent of Filipino women aged 15-49 have experienced some form of physical, sexual, and emotional violence from their intimate partners.
The cycle of abuse and the little chance to escape it, is one of the reasons why many Filipinos fall into depression. 
In its Mind Health Report, insurance provider AXA found that 22 per cent of Filipino women in 2023 had severe stress, 16 per cent had severe depression and six per cent suffered from severe anxiety. The figure is almost double compared to the prevalence of these illnesses among men. 
Some of the causes of their declining mental health include lower levels of self-acceptance among women and gender discrimination.
Although there has not been any study on the subject, reports of married women taking their own lives after enduring years of physical abuse are frequently featured in Filipino media as are cases of wives killing or attempting to kill their husbands. 
The situation has also led to mass migration as people with troubled marriages seek a fresh start away from their spouse in another city or, in Mdm Jessica’s case, another country. Shortly after leaving her husband, she became a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, leaving her children behind in the care of her sister who lives in Manila. 
An estimated 10 million Filipino emigrants live in more than 200 countries, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Around 60 per cent of overseas Filipino workers are female, according to the World Bank. 
These problems are some of the reasons why there is growing support for legalising divorce in the Philippines. A survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations research institution in March suggested that 50 per cent of Filipino adults support the bill, 31 per cent are opposed, while the rest are undecided. 
In May 2005, when the study first began, 43 per cent of those surveyed said Filipinos should be allowed to divorce while 45 per cent believe it should remain illegal. 
Despite the bill’s rising popularity, opposition towards legalising divorce remains strong in the Catholic majority country. 
Divorce opposition is linked to a strong, politically influential conservative Catholic lobby, including some of the country’s largest churches, which prohibit divorce among their parishioners.
“Divorce is against the teachings of Christ,” Father Jerome Secillano, the spokesman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, told CNA. “Why not make the annulment process less tedious, less expensive and shorter?”
The priest believes that allowing divorce will not solve the issue of domestic abuse, infidelity or abandonment saying that instead that the Church should be allowed to play a bigger role in keeping families together.
“You do not treat violence through divorce. You just allow them to separate. And now you allow this violent guy to again marry another woman and that woman will turn into a punching bag later on,” Father Secillano said.
“You do not treat the problematic spouse. The Church should be proactive. If there are problematic unions, why shouldn’t we, the Church, intervene … so that we can help these couples survive the difficulties that they experience in their married life?”
The priest said because divorce is illegal, there have been many cases where couples set aside their differences and stay together. The bill, he said, will only enable gold diggers to get married repeatedly in search of alimony and assets.
But congressman Mr Lagman said the proposed law already has several safeguards against those looking to abuse the legalisation of divorce.
These include very strict grounds from which a couple can seek a divorce such as physical abuse, infidelity or abandonment and there is a yet-to-be determined period where a recently divorced couple would have to wait before they can remarry. 
“This is not a no-fault divorce. We are not in favour of the Las Vegas type of divorces. We do not sanction the notarial divorce where spouses would just appear before the notary and say that they want to be divorced and it’s over. We have made very strict provisions to prevent the abuse of the law,” he said. 
With a good chance of the bill becoming law, anti-divorce campaigners have stepped up their rhetoric.
Several churches in the Philippines have adorned their facades with banners saying “no to divorce” and “what God has united no man can separate” while services are frequently filled with sermons warning churchgoers that legalising divorce threatens the sanctity of marriage and will invoke God’s wrath. 
Supporters of the bill are also feeling the heat with some activists telling CNA that they have received threats, criticism and condemnation on their social media pages. 
“Whenever I posted something on divorce I would have many comments saying that it is a big sin, if we die we will go to hell, that we only want divorce so we can marry over and over again,” Mdm Estoya, who handles the Divorce Pilipinas Coalition social media, said. 
“Sometimes we got into a heated discussion. We told them ‘how about those who were abandoned and neglected? How about those who were abused? Would you like us to suffer in silence until we die?”
Pressure for these pro-divorce advocates to stop what they are doing can also come from their own families and close friends.
“Even my mum, who is in a Catholic organisation, would tell me ‘don’t get involved with that divorce group anymore. (Legalisation of divorce) is never going to happen. Leave them’,” Mdm Mary Bravo, a 54-year-old mother of three who informally separated from her husband in 2009 for irreconcilable differences, told CNA.
“It was disheartening. But I won’t stop. I have three daughters and God forbid that they find themselves in my situation. (By legalising divorce) they won’t get trapped. They will have a way out. That’s what I want to happen. It is for the future generations. Not for myself.”
The Senate still has to deliberate on the bill before they can pass it into law and there are several senators who have stated that they will try to block it. Mr Lagman said he will continue to lobby members of the Senate to get the Absolute Divorce Act approved.
He also expects several organisations to bring the case to the Supreme Court and challenge the act’s constitutionality should it pass the Senate and become law.
“Which is why we are in talks with the Supreme Court to explain what the bill is all about,” the congressman said. 
Mr Lagman said should the bill pass into law, there will be a brief period when the country’s judicial system will have to make a few adjustments before it can start hearing divorce cases. 
“But it shouldn’t take long because (divorce cases) will just be like any other civil cases,” he said. 
Mdm Jessica said she cannot wait for the day when she will finally be able to divorce her abusive husband. 
“I shouldn’t be trapped in a marriage like this for the rest of my life. I just want justice for what has happened to me,” she said. “I just want to be free.”