MEDIUM RARE

Last Thursday’s front page read like a divorce document. “VP Sara Duterte resigns from Cabinet” and “Over 40 lay groups form ‘super coalition’ against divorce”.

There’s an “absolute divorce bill” pending in Congress, a close call between 131 pro divorce versus 129 against (including abstentions). Could the numbers possibly reflect an equal sentiment of the general public?

Divorce, like matrimony, sounds so final. But to secure a divorce, the couple who can no longer stand each other must be prepared to shell out a lot of money. At least, that’s the way the cookie crumbles when suffering spouses resort to an annulment. Unfortunately, a civil annulment is only half the story if husband and wife have remarriage on their minds: they will need to go through a Church annulment also.

Either way, an annulment costs money. A couple must be prepared to shell out more than half a million bucks to hire a psychologist and a lawyer to argue their case. (What’s half a million in exchange for freedom? But how many wives can raise this kind of money?) The word “alimony” does not exist in the law that the estranged, unhappy partner may want to seek from the court.

As things stand, it’s a long way before a divorce law will come to pass, even if it’s a fact that to this day only the Philippines and the Vatican have no divorce law. (Who needs a divorce law in the Vatican, where its residents are mostly clergy and nuns?) At best, there’s a pending proposal in the Lower House for a law penalizing deadbeat dads – “balasubas” as its author, Samar Rep. Paul Daza calls them. (Disclosure: He is a distant relation whom I’ve met only once, and we’re not related by blood.) A father would be presumed to be balasubas if he neglects his family and then creates another family using the same resources.

Alimony or no alimon(e)y, it has been observed by the wise that men who leave their wives look the worse for wear and tear while the women they have forsaken begin to flourish.

Between alimony and none, which woman would not want to receive some form of a monetary reward for their years of trouble, toil and tears?