Supreme Court (SC) Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen said that “marriage as the foundation of the family no longer reflects the present realities and sensitives of many Filipino families.”

In his lecture at the University of the Philippines (UP) last Valentine’s Day, Justice Leonen cited several SC decisions which highlighted how the living realities in the Philippines of many couples and children are now far from ideal as he added that the law has made it difficult for Filipinos to move out of unhappy marriages.

His lecture was on “Legal and Political Foundations of the Current Restrictions on Intimacies and Relationships: A Critical View from the Bench.”

He discussed various kinds of relationships, the complexities of marriage, legitimacy of children, divorce, and marriage annulment in his lecture.

On divorce, Leonen said that “the Philippines is the only country outside the Vatican that has no absolute divorce law applicable to all
citizens.”

He noted, however, that before the Spanish colonial period, the Philippines did have divorce laws, but it was during the Spanish colonial period when absolute or no-fault divorce was prohibited in the Philippines.

“The antiquated form from our colonial past is still codified in our laws and is still being reiterated in jurisprudence 135 years later.”

But he said that Spain, which predominantly inspired the Philippines’ antiquarian notions of family and children, had already changed their law decades ago.

"Perhaps if we truly want justice, we will see how antiquated our laws are. If we truly are for justice, we will feel how we impose a burden that is a vestige of our colonial past, that even our colonizer chose to no longer impose on their own people,” he pointed out.

Leonen said: “We need to read our law from different lenses, from more contemporary ones. We need to construe law knowing that our freedoms should be individually and socially meaningful.”

He then told lawyers present during the forum: “The point of being lawyers is not to maintain an unjust status quo. The point is to change our world. Legal concepts are powerful frames for our thinking of reality, properly invoked through the right forms and with the right procedure and with competent lawyers, it triggers the coercive powers of the state, summarized in the dispositive portion of our cases.”

“Many of our people suffer during our watch, and while we all still exist, let us not fail them,” he stressed.

A copy of his lecture was not available.  The SC’s public information office (PIO) said Justice Leonen also pointed out in his lecture:

“Those who establish and maintain relationships and love differently from the ideals of the conservative Catholic majority are not less human, they are no less Filipinos.

“To be different is not to be abnormal. To be different from the hegemonic definition of what humans should be is not illegitimate. We should not pathologize them with words like psychological incapacity. They are not illegitimate.

“The capacity to love is a human capacity. You are not less human just because you find love in the same biological sex. You are not less human if you want a relationship that is different from marriage. You are not less human if your premise with another is that there is no forever but you can work to be with each other for as long as you both can. Make love real for all our people.”

In September 2023, a Senate panel approved the measure that provides absolute divorce in the Philippines.

Senate Bill No. 2443, or the proposed “Dissolution of Marriage Act”, expands the grounds for dissolution of marriage, and institutes divorce in the Philippines, has been approved by the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality.

The consolidated version of the bill were authored by Senators Risa Hontiveros, Raffy Tulfo, Robin Padilla, Pia Cayetano, and Imee Marcos.

Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, and Senators Grace Poe, and Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito also signed the measure under Committee Report No. 124.

Under the bill, either or both spouses can seek a judicial decree of absolute divorce.