Gwen’s First Bill Amendment to Family Code gets House nod

CEBU, Philippines - The House of Representatives has passed Monday on third and final reading a proposed measure authored by Cebu third district Rep. Gwendolyn Garcia that seeks to revise the Family Code of the Philippines. 

 It is the first House bill which Garcia, the former Cebu governor, has crafted since she assumed office in July last year that has passed the plenary.

House Bill 2385 seeks to recognize the separate and personal ownership of each individual spouse’s property.

 The House Committee on Revisions of Laws earlier passed HB 2384, which wants to revise the Family Code on the system of absolute community and reinstate the long-accepted system of conjugal partnership of gains as basis for property relations of marital institutions.

 â€œNot until fairly recently, the provisions of the New Civil Code concerning marriage and family relations has remained relatively constant if not firmly established for almost six decades since its adoption in 1950 and for more than 100 years before that under the Old Civil Code,” Garcia said.

She pointed out that with the effectivity and adoption of Executive Order No. 209 as amended by EO 227 (The Family Code of the Philippines), a radical change has been made with respect to the provisions on property relations in marriage.

She said Article 75, Title IV of the Family Code, which states that property relations between husband and wife shall be under the system of absolute community, is “a far departure from the long accepted system of conjugal partnership of gains.”

The system of absolute community, as contemplated under the New Family Code, sets that both spouses, upon entering marriage, shall become owners in common of all properties they had previously owned individually prior to their marriage.

Garcia said the system of absolute community would appear to be the most ideal type or mode of priority relations between spouses, but it fails “to consider the vagaries of life, the idiosyncrasies of people, and that spouses, as human beings, are only too prone to human weaknesses and errors.”

She said it is unfair that properties given by the family would become a conjugal property when, traditionally, if one has property before marriage, the property continues to be his or hers.

 The system of absolute community, which is provided under the Family Code, impresses and projects an image of an “all for one and one for all” attitude for the marital partnership.

While the conjugal partnership of gains, as pushed by Garcia under HB 2385, recognizes the separate and personal ownership of each individual spouse’s property.

HB 2385 was originally authored by Garcia’s father, former Deputy Speaker Pablo Garcia, and was approved in the 15th Congress and transmitted to the Senate on Aug. 18, 2011.

The Upper Chamber, however, failed to act on the measure reportedly due to lack of time.—(FREEMAN)