BUZZER BEATER
IT’S buzzer beater for the divorce bill, as it was approved on third and final reading before the adjournment sine die of the second regular session of the 19thCongress.
During the last day of session, House Bill 9349 or the Absolute Divorce Act was approved with 131 members of House voting yes while 109 cast heir negative votes. About 20 solons abstained.
The approval took at least two months since it was referred to the plenary by the House committee on population and family relations.
According to the main author Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, the measure allows absolute divorce as an alternative mode of dissolving an irreparably broken or dysfunctional marriage.
It provides limited grounds and well-defined judicial procedures for divorce and aims to save children from the pain, stress and agony brought about by their parents’ marital clashes or irreconcilable differences.
It also allows divorced spouses the right to marry again for another chance at marital bliss.
Under the bill, troubled couples may file a petition for absolute divorce using the following grounds: legal separation under Article 55 of the Family Code of the Philippines, as modified; annulment of marriage under Article 45 of the Family Code of the Philippines, as modified; separation in-fact of the spouses for at least five years at the time the petition for absolute divorce is filed and reconciliation is highly improbable; psychological incapacity as provided in Article 36 of the Family Code of the Philippines; irreconcilable differences; and domestic or marital abuse to include acts under Republic Act 9262 (Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004).
Among the considered grounds for absolute divorce are: physical violence or grossly abusive conduct directed against the petitioner, a common child or a child of the petitioner; physical violence or moral pressure to compel the petitioner to change religious or political affiliation; attempt of respondent to corrupt or induce the petitioner, a common child or child of the petitioner to engage in prostitution or connivance in such corruption or inducement; final judgement sentencing the respondent to imprisonment of more than six years; drug addiction or habitual alcoholism or chronic gambling of the respondent; homosexuality of the respondent; contracting by the respondent of a subsequent bigamous marriage, whether in the Philippines or abroad; marital infidelity or perversion of having a child with another person other than one’s spouse during marriage; attempt by the respondent against life of the petitioner, a common child or child of the petitioner; abandonment of petitioner without justifiable cause for more than one year and when the spouses are legally separated by judicial decree for more than two years.
