Wife wants to end marriage to Maceda

He can’t have his cars, and his wife won’t have him now.

Maria Azucena "Marichu" Vera Perez-Maceda, the estranged wife of former Ambassador to the US Ernesto Maceda, asked the Quezon City Regional Trial Court yesterday to annul their 39-year-old marriage because of her husband’s alleged psychological incapacity.

The disorder was described as a "narcissistic personality with negativistic and aggressive sadistic features."

Mrs. Maceda said she now seeks "freedom from this hopeless marital bond," in her seven-page petition submitted to the court through her lawyer, Lorna Patajo-Kapunan. She filed the petition on the basis of Article 36 of the Family Code of the Philippines.

The couple were married on March 24, 1962 at the St. Vincent De Paul Church in Manila. She was an 18-year-old colegiala, he was a 26-year-old promising politician. They have five sons, all of whom are now adults.

But according to Mrs. Maceda, since the beginning of their marriage, Mr. Maceda, who was Joseph Estrada’s spokesman in his impeachment trial, has been "psychologically incapacitated" to fulfill the essential obligations of marriage. She said her husband constantly displayed a lack of love and respect for her.

She attached to her petition the results of psychological tests which showed that Mr. Maceda was suffering from "a personality disorder that prevented him from performing the normal obligations of marriage."

"The defendant is immature and self-centered," she said, "only he and his career mattered." She said Mr. Maceda treated her only as a "political partner" and not a wife.

"(He) focused on being a good political person and made sure (I) was the asset to (him), being one of the prominent figures in politics," she said. Aside from that, she said her husband was also unfaithful, courting one girl after another despite his having already married her.

"He also did not deny that he had gotten another woman pregnant," Mrs. Maceda said.

She said she endured her unhappy situation for 15 years until she told him she couldn’t stand it anymore. She said she made a last desperate attempt to keep the family intact by asking Mr. Maceda to try to sort out their differences during a six-month period.

She demanded that he give up his philandering ways. But her husband, according to her, only said he couldn’t give her what she wanted. In 1998, they divided their properties through a settlement. Then, in March last year, the couple flew to Reno in Nevada, to file for divorce. The petition was granted. Divorce however, is not recognized under Philippine law.