Senate passes bills amending Family Code

MANILA, Philippines -  The Senate has passed two bills amending the Family Code, one of which would allow a divorced Filipino to automatically remarry.

With a vote of 13-0, the Senate passed Senate bills No. 1052 and 480, amending Articles 26 and 111 of Executive Order No. 209 or the Family Code of the Philippines respectively.

Under the original law, Article 26 of the Family Code states that “where a marriage between a Filipino citizen and a foreigner is validly celebrated and a divorce is thereafter validly obtained abroad by the alien spouse capacitating him or her to remarry, the Filipino spouse shall have capacity to remarry under Philippine law.”

Senator Manuel Villar Jr., the principal author of the bill, said that the provision of the old law is discriminatory to all Filipino citizens.

“The need for the foreigner’s capacity to remarry is not essential as it imposes an unnecessary restriction on the Filipino citizen,” Villar said.

“Reasonable interpretation of the law should be that a Filipino citizen who is divorced should be allowed to remarry,” he added.

The proposed bill removes the phrase “capacitating him or her to remarry.”

In her sponsorship speech, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago said “there is a need to amend the law because before, in cases of divorce between a foreign spouse and a Filipino national, divorce was recognized only on the part of the foreigner but not on the part of the Filipino who remained married to the foreigner.”

Santiago said equality and justice dictate that a Filipino who is divorced from a foreign national should be considered divorced and eligible to remarry regardless of whether the foreign spouse has been remarried or not.”