Aggrieved party

Will a foreign judgment obtained by a foreign citizen annulling a marriage on the ground of bigamy be recognized here? This is the issue raised in this case of Mina.

Mina was among the many Filipinas who dreamt of working in Japan. The opportunity came when he met Tanaka a Japanese tourist visiting the Philippines. After a whirlwind courtship, Mina and Tanaka got married in Pasay City. Unfortunately the marriage did not sit well with Tanaka’s parents. Thus Tanaka could not bring Mina to Japan when he returned. Eventually, they lost contact with each other.

After four years, Mina met Fukuoka, another Japanese citizen touring the Philippines. The two fell in love with each other and decided to get married. So without the first marriage being dissolved Mina and Fukuoka were married in Quezon City. Then Fukuoka brought Mina to Japan. Unfortunately their relationship did not last as Mina left Fukuoka and started to contact Tanaka.

Mina and Tanaka thus met again in Japan and they were able to reestablish their relationship after Tanaka took pity on Mina who told him about the alleged physical abuses inflicted on her by Fukuoka. After two years of living together again, Tanaka helped Mina obtain a judgment from a family court in Japan which declared the marriage between Mina and Fukuoka void on the ground of bigamy.

Then when the couple returned to the Philippines, Tanaka filed a petition in the Regional Trial Court (RTC) for Judicial Recognition of the Decree of Absolute Nullity of the Marriage issued by the Japanese Family Court. He also asked the RTC to declare the bigamous marriage between Mina and Fukuoka void under Articles 35 (4) and 41 of the Family Code (FC) and to direct the QC Civil Registrar to annotate the foreign judgment on the Certificate of Marriage between Mina and Fukuoka and endorse the same to the National Statistics Office (NSO). Can the RTC grant the petition?

Yes. Philippine courts already have jurisdiction to extend the effect of a foreign judgment in the Philippines to the extent that the foreign judgment does not contravene domestic public policy. In fact under Article 26 of the FC, a foreign divorce decree obtained by a foreigner married to a Filipino citizen is already recognized in this jurisdiction to enable the Filipino to remarry here. And there is even a critical difference between the case of a foreign divorce decree and a foreign judgment nullifying a bigamous marriage because bigamy, as a ground for the nullity of marriage is fully consistent with Philippine public policy as expressed in Article 35(4) of the FC and Article 349 of the Revised Penal Code.

This petition can be filed only by the husband or the wife of the subsisting marriage and not of the bigamous marriage. So it is indeed Tanaka who can file it because the parties in a bigamous marriage (Fukuoka and/or Mina) in this case are neither the “husband” nor the “wife” under the law. The prior spouse (Takanaka) is clearly the aggrieved party as the bigamous marriage not only threatens the financial and the property ownership aspect of the prior marriage but most of all, it causes an emotional burden to said spouse (Fujiki vs. Marinay et.al., G.R. 196049, June 26, 2013, 700 SCRA, 69).

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