Unlawful marital union

A marriage license is one of the essential requirements for a valid marriage. Generally, a marriage celebrated without a license is considered void from the beginning. Nevertheless, both the Civil Code and the Family Code recognize certain exceptions, one of which applies to a man and a woman who have lived together exclusively as husband and wife for a continuous and uninterrupted period of at least five years before their marriage.

Carlos married Elena on Sept. 26, 1974. Their union produced five children: Angela, Bianca, Carla, David and Joshua. Despite having a family, Carlos continued to engage in relationships with other women. Six years into the marriage, he left Elena and began living with Sofia. However, in April 1985, Carlos shot and killed Elena.

While the criminal case against Carlos was still pending, he married Sofia on Dec. 11, 1986. They did not get a marriage license, executing an affidavit declaring that they had lived together as husband and wife for at least five years and were therefore exempt from obtaining a marriage license under Article 76 of the Civil Code. At that time, Carlos’ children were still minors and accepted the situation without fully understanding its legal implications. Eleven years later, Carlos died in a car accident.

Concerned that the second marriage might affect their inheritance rights, Angela, acting on her own behalf and as guardian of her younger siblings, filed a petition seeking to declare the marriage between Carlos and Sofia void. She argued that the marriage lacked the required marriage license. Sofia, however, maintained that no license was necessary because she and Carlos had lived together for at least five years before their marriage.

Was Sofia correct?

No.

The law requires that the five-year period of cohabitation immediately preceding the marriage must be a period during which both parties were legally free to marry each other. The cohabitation must be exclusive, meaning that no third party was involved, and continuous, meaning it was uninterrupted. If the law allowed the five-year period to include years during which one party was still legally married to someone else, it would effectively encourage immoral relationships and place them on equal footing with lawful marital unions.

In this case, even if Carlos and Elena had already separated in fact and Carlos had lived with Sofia for more than five years, their relationship did not meet the requirements of the law. Carlos was still legally married to Elena when he began cohabiting with Sofia. The fact that he and Elena were no longer living together did not remove the legal bond of marriage. Therefore, the relationship between Carlos and Sofia could not be considered a lawful cohabitation between “husband and wife” as contemplated by the law exempting couples from obtaining a marriage license. (Ninal vs. Bayadog 328 SCRA 126).

For this reason, the Family Code now expressly provides that the exemption applies only to a “marriage of a man and a woman who have lived together as husband and wife for at least five years and without any legal impediment to marry each other” (Article 34).