In cases like this, it is important to remember is that it is not up to you to decide whether your marriage is legally null and void, particularly if you want to remarry.

The law says that:

The absolute nullity of a previous marriage may be invoked for purposes of remarriage on the basis solely of a final judgment declaring such previous marriage void. (Article 40, Family Code of the Philippines)

This means that, even if there was something intrinsically wrong with your marriage so that it was invalid, you still need to get a court declaration on the nullity of that marriage if you want to be clear to remarry. A case needs to be filed in court to get the final judgment. Without such a court declaration, the second marriage would be bigamous and itself null and void.

The case for nullity of marriage must be filed with the Family Court of the province or city where you or your spouse resided at least six months prior.

The Supreme Court has ordered trial courts to be very strict about this residency requirement so that failing to file the case at the proper venue would result in the dismissal of the case.

In preparing for a case, there are basic steps you can take.

First among them is gathering the evidence that will be needed.

These include obtaining your Advisory on Marriages from the Philippine Statistics Authority. (This is the equivalent for married persons of the Certificate of No Marriage of single persons.) You should, of course, obtain a certified copy of the marriage certificates of the people involved from the PSA and the civil registrars.

Other evidence, such as photographs, letters, and related documents proving the identities and relationships of the spouses should also be gathered.

All of these will be important to have in hand when you consult with a lawyer.

When trial commences, these will need to be presented in court to prove the circumstances of the null and void marriage.

Witness testimony will also need to be prepared. Your testimony and that of other witnesses will be put in writing in the form of a judicial affidavit sworn to by you even before the case is filed. These affidavits will be submitted to the court together with the Petition for Declaration of Nullity of Marriage prepared by your lawyer and likewise sworn to by you.

The case is docketed with the Family Court after the Petition and the affidavits are filed in the city or province where one of the spouses resides.

Court involves extensive pre-trial proceedings, then the presentation of evidence, and then extensive other paperwork. There are multiple court hearings during which the lawyer must appear and others where the witnesses will need to testify.

Since the onset of the COVID pandemic, the Supreme Court has directed the trial courts to explore video conference court hearings. This is an ongoing project, but the prospect of witnesses testifying through video conference can make the courts more accessible in certain cases.

Once all the evidence is presented and the last submissions are made, the court will finally render a decision.

If the court rules favorably, its decision will officially declare marriage null and void. The spouses will be officially not married and, by law, will have never been married. The court judgment may make a ruling on the division of conjugal property. Matters such as custody of any children will also be resolved in the same decision.

If the court rules for the nullity of the marriage and the decision becomes final, this will have to be registered in the Philippine civil registry system. The registration of the final court decree in the civil registry is itself a requirement for the validity of the subsequent marriage.

It can depend on the court. Different courts in different parts of the country operate with different case loads.

A given trial court usually handles hundreds of cases at any given time. But some unfortunate courts in underserved areas have thousands of cases on their dockets.

This means that a case to prove the nullity of an underaged marriage could take about a year to several years to finish at the trial court. The lawyer can better estimate how long a given case will take after learning the facts of that case.

You should also note that, even after the court decision declaring the nullity of the marriage is issued, that is not the end of it. The court decision needs to become final and have a certificate of finality issued accordingly. Then it has to be recorded in the Philippine civil registry – both at the local and the national level.

This latter process itself takes time, usually a couple of months or more.

As a practical matter – for those anxious to marry as soon as possible – this period also needs to be included when estimating the time it takes to complete the entire process.

Atty. Francesco C. Britanico