Justice Leonen said in one decision that love is founded on a promise: to seek beyond ourselves in order to enable and ennoble the other to continue to become the best version of themselves. Being in love can be carried on the wings of poetry, announced publicly through each other’s gazes. It is made real and felt with every act of unconditional care and comfort that the lover provides. Love can be beyond labels.
Marriage is not compulsory when in love; neither does it create love. Nonetheless, it remains an institution designed to provide legal and public recognition that may be well deserved not only for the couple, but also for their families existing or yet to come.
Yet, we are not blind to the reality that a person may be truly psychologically incapable for the other from the beginning. If there be grave need to part xxx, courts can lead the way to make parting less bitter, minimize animosity and make lives more forward-looking for those most affected. Parting is already a sorrow. It need not be more than what it already is.
In the en banc [with 15 justices] case of Tan-Andal v. Andal, G.R. 196539, 11 May 2021, our Honorable Supreme Court tackled the application of 1997 Molina doctrine, which provides a restrictive interpretation of psychological incapacity due to the deluge of cases of annulment of marriage that alarmed the Church and State. Since 1997 until 2008, only one [Antonio v. Reyes where lying rendered her psychologically incapacitated] case was found to have satisfied all the Molina requirements: [1] the plaintiff bears the burden of proof and all doubt should be resolved in favor of the marriage; [2] the root cause of psychological incapacity must be medically or clinically identified, proven by expert, alleged in the petition and explained in the decision; [3] the incapacity must be proven at the time of the marriage; [4] such incapacity must be proven medically permanent or incurable; [5] illness must be grave enough to bring about the disability of the spouse to assume the essential marital obligations; [6] essential marital obligations must be those embraced by Articles 68 up to 71 of the Family Code as regards the husband and wife as well as Articles 220, 221 and 225 of the same Code in regard to parents and their children and [7] church decision is given respect.
The unintended consequences of Molina, however, has taken its toll on people who have to live with deviant behavior, moral insanity and sociopathic personality anomaly, which, like termites, consume little by little the very foundation of the family. Far from what was intended by the Court, Molina has become a straight-jacket, forcing all sizes to fit and be bound by it. Conveniently applying Molina has allowed diagnosed sociopaths, schizophrenics, nymphomaniacs and narcissists to continuously debase and pervert the sanctity of marriage.
In Andal case, RTC annulled the marriage based on psychological incapacity because Mario failed to [1] render mutual help and support to his wife, [2] find gainful employment and drive to bankruptcy the construction firm of his wife siphoning its funds for his drug use and [3] exercise his rights and duties as a father. On appeal, the CA reversed the RTC, as it ruled the psychiatric evaluation of Mario to be “unscientific and unreliable’ since Mario was not personally interviewed in violation of the Molina ruling.
Rosana appealed to the Supreme Court which ruled: A marriage contracted by a party who, at the time of the celebration, was psychologically incapacitated to comply with essential marital obligations of marriage, shall likewise be void even if such incapacity becomes manifest only after its solemnization [Article 36, Family Code]. The psychological incapacity means “no less than a mental [not physical] incapacity that causes one to be truly incognitive of the basic marital covenants. In dissolving marital bonds under Article 36, the Court is not demolishing the foundation of families, but it is actually protecting the sanctity of marriage, because it refuses to allow a person afflicted with a psychological disorder, who cannot comply or assume the essential marital obligations, from remaining in that sacred bond.
There is no marriage to speak of in the first place, as the same is void from the very beginning. It is also not a personality disorder. The second Molina guideline is abandoned since psychological incapacity is neither a mental incapacity nor a personality disorder; not illness in a medical sense and its “incurability” is understood in a legal sense, hence expert witness is not required. Psychological incapacity consists of clear acts of dysfunctionality showing a lack of understanding and compliance with essential marital obligations due to psychic causes. The Supreme Court reversed the CA order and reinstated the RTC decision.
