MARIA LINA P. QUIRIT-FIGARIDO v. EDWIN L. FIGARIDO [G.R. No. 259520, November 5, 2024 ]

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MARIA LINA P. QUIRIT-FIGARIDO v. EDWIN L. FIGARIDO

[G.R. No. 259520, November 5, 2024] 

En Banc, Rosario, J.

 

DECLARATION OF NULLITY OF A BIGAMOUS MARRIAGE; LEGAL PERSONALITY TO FILE; A.M. NO. 02-11-10-SC, SEC. 2(a); AGGRIEVED OR INJURED INNOCENT SPOUSE; CLEAN HANDS

 

Only the aggrieved or injured innocent spouse of either marriage may petition for the declaration of nullity of a subsequent bigamous marriage. The erring spouse who knowingly contracted the bigamous marriage is not an aggrieved or injured spouse and therefore has no legal personality to file the petition. Neither does the dissolution of the prior marriage by a divorce decree obtained by the innocent spouse transfer that personality to the erring spouse. The State has no absolute obligation to dissolve every bigamous marriage; the purpose of the rules is to preserve marriage, not to furnish the guilty spouses in a bigamous union a convenient means of dissolving it.

 

Maria Lina P. Quirit-Figarido was married to Ho Kar Wai, a Chinese national, on December 13, 1989 in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, and again on August 23, 1994 before a judge of the Metropolitan Trial Court of Parañaque City. 

In June 2000, while working as a bank teller in Hong Kong, Maria Lina met Edwin L. Figarido, an expatriate engineer and a regular client of the bank. Edwin courted her from 2002. Maria Lina at first declined because of her subsisting marriage, but Edwin, with knowledge of her marital situation, promised to wait. She nevertheless entered into a relationship with him while still lawfully married to Ho Kar Wai. 

Maria Lina resigned from her work in Hong Kong and returned to the Philippines because she became pregnant by Edwin. On February 22, 2003, while her marriage to Ho Kar Wai was still subsisting, Maria Lina and Edwin were married in Quezon City. They had two children, born in 2004 and 2007. 

On November 28, 2007 — four years after the second marriage — Ho Kar Wai obtained a Certificate of Making Decree Nisi Absolute from the District Court of Hong Kong, dissolving his marriage with Maria Lina. Maria Lina petitioned for recognition of that foreign judgment, which the Regional Trial Court of Parañaque City, Branch 260, granted on February 5, 2009. 

Maria Lina and Edwin separated in 2014. On March 6, 2017 — fourteen years after the bigamous marriage was celebrated — Maria Lina filed before the family court a petition for declaration of nullity of her marriage to Edwin under Article 35(4) of the Family Code, praying that it be declared void ab initio for being bigamous and that she be declared to have the legal capacity to remarry. Edwin, then working in Singapore, was served by publication and never appeared. 

The trial court denied the petition, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. The Office of the Solicitor General maintained before the Supreme Court that Maria Lina had no personality to file the case because she was not the spouse aggrieved or injured by the bigamous marriage.

 

 

ISSUE 1: Does Maria Lina, the spouse who knowingly contracted the subsequent bigamous marriage, have the legal personality under Section 2(a) of A.M. No. 02-11-10-SC to file a petition for the declaration of nullity of that marriage?

ANSWER: NO. Article 35(4) of the Family Code declares bigamous and polygamous marriages void from the beginning. Section 2(a) of A.M. No. 02-11-10-SC, the Rule on Declaration of Absolute Nullity of Void Marriages and Annulment of Voidable Marriages, provides that a petition for declaration of absolute nullity of a void marriage “may be filed solely by the husband or the wife.” 

The Rationale of the Rules elucidates that provision: “Only an aggrieved or injured spouse may file petitions for annulment of voidable marriages and declaration of absolute nullity of void marriages.” The Court applied this in Juliano-Llave v. Republic, holding that the prior spouse is the aggrieved party, since the bigamous marriage threatens the financial and property aspects of the prior marriage and, above all, causes an emotional burden to the prior spouse. 

In Fujiki v. Marinay, the Court clarified that the husband and the wife contemplated in Section 2(a) refer to the spouses of the prior subsisting marriage, because under Article 35(4) the parties to a bigamous marriage “are neither the husband nor the wife under the law.” 

Applying these rules, Maria Lina married Edwin in 2003 while her marriage to Ho Kar Wai subsisted. She is therefore guilty of contracting a bigamous marriage, cannot be deemed an aggrieved or injured innocent spouse of either marriage, and lacks the personality to petition for the nullification of her subsequent marriage. 

To hold otherwise would produce a legal absurdity: the party who contracted the illicit subsequent marriage would be permitted to invoke its bigamous nature in support of a petition to nullify it, empowering the offending spouse to dissolve the marriage at will. Bigamy would then be treated by the erring spouse not as a transgression warranting redress but as a matter of convenience.

 

 

ISSUE 2: Did the divorce decree obtained by Ho Kar Wai, which extinguished his own standing as the injured spouse, transfer to Maria Lina the personality to file the petition?

ANSWER: NO. Ho Kar Wai, as the injured spouse in the prior subsisting marriage, had the right to file a petition for the declaration of nullity of the marriage between Maria Lina and Edwin. After he secured the divorce decree, however, his marital relations with Maria Lina legally ceased; there being no longer a prior subsisting marriage, he lost his status as aggrieved spouse and can no longer file the petition. 

But the loss of Ho Kar Wai's standing did not render Maria Lina eligible to file it. The divorce decree “in no way resulted in the assignment of the right to petition the declaration of the bigamous marriage to Maria Lina.” 

There is neither legal nor factual basis to hold that the absence of persons capacitated to file the petition, or their disqualification because of supervening events, automatically confers upon other concerned parties the right to bring the action.

 

 

ISSUE 3: Is the State under an absolute obligation to dissolve a bigamous marriage regardless of the circumstances of the case and the acts of the parties?

ANSWER: NO. Maria Lina anchored her arguments on the erroneous presumption that the State is burdened with the obligation to declare bigamous marriages null and void. The Court held that the State does not have an absolute responsibility to dissolve bigamous marriages irrespective of the circumstances of the case and the acts and omissions of the parties involved. 

The intention behind the rules and jurisprudence is to preserve marriage, not to provide the guilty spouses in a bigamous marriage a convenient means to dissolve their illegitimate union. The Rationale explicitly declares that the concern of the State is to preserve marriage and not to seek its dissolution. 

Maria Lina correctly observed that there is no longer a legitimate marriage to protect, the prior marriage having been dissolved by divorce. She failed to realise, however, that in the absence of such a legal union as an object of protection, there exists no compelling reason for the State to dissolve her illegitimate marriage with Edwin. 

The Court also noted that Maria Lina appears to have benefited from the second union — she had two children with Edwin, and filed the petition only in 2017, fourteen years after the bigamous marriage was contracted.

 

 

ISSUE 4: For purposes other than remarriage, is a judicial declaration of nullity of the bigamous marriage indispensable before its nullity may be invoked?

ANSWER: NO. Granting that a marriage is void ab initio for being bigamous, it must still be judicially declared void in order that the parties-in-interest may avail of the right to remarry. Such legal capacity to remarry is the only benefit solely ensuing from the rectification of civil status through a declaration of nullity. 

For all other legal intents and purposes, a bigamous marriage is void and its absolute nullity may be invoked by any concerned person. As settled, “for purposes other than remarriage, no judicial action is necessary to declare a marriage an absolute nullity.” For other purposes — the determination of heirship, legitimacy or illegitimacy of a child, settlement of estate, dissolution of the property regime, or a criminal case — the court may pass upon the validity of the marriage even after the death of the parties, and even in a suit not directly instituted to question it, so long as it is essential to the determination of the case. 

Under Article 40 of the Family Code, the marital vinculum of a previous marriage that is void ab initio subsists only for purposes of remarriage. It thus became apparent that the ultimate objective of Maria Lina's petition was to attain the capacity to remarry.

 

 

ISSUE 5: May the Court exercise its equity jurisdiction to relieve Maria Lina of her resulting inability to remarry?

ANSWER: NO. Maria Lina implored the Court to exercise its equity jurisdiction, arguing that no one else could legally file the petition — Ho Kar Wai having been granted a divorce, and Edwin having been aware of the bigamous nature of their marriage. 

The Court declined, applying Alcantara v. Alcantara, where it refused to extricate an erring husband from a void marriage he had himself willfully contracted. Under the principle that he who comes to court must come with clean hands, a party cannot benefit from his own act and “be allowed to extricate himself from the marriage bond at his mere say-so when the situation is no longer palatable to his taste or suited to his lifestyle.” 

Under the current rules and jurisprudence, there exists no legal recourse for Maria Lina to redress her inability to remarry, which she inflicted on herself to begin with.

 

 

ISSUE 6: Does the denial of the petition have the effect of legalising the bigamous marriage?

ANSWER: NO. The Court addressed this directly. The denial of Maria Lina's petition is not a refusal to declare her bigamous marriage void, but a repudiation of her legal personality to file the petition. It is not tantamount to legalising bigamous marriages, considering that erring and offending parties may still be held civilly and criminally liable for bigamy. 

Other legal incidents related to the nullity of the marriage — the determination of heirship, legitimacy or illegitimacy of a child, settlement of estate, and dissolution of the property regime, among others — may still proceed independently and in the absence of a declaration as to the invalidity of the bigamous union. 

As to Maria Lina's claim that no one would be hurt, the Court found it bereft of merit. Allowing the offending spouse to file the petition, even when that spouse intentionally caused the illegitimacy and benefited from its convenience for a considerable length of time, would inevitably bastardise the institution of marriage to the prejudice of the State.

 

DISPOSITION. The Petition for Review on Certiorari was DENIED, and the Decision dated June 21, 2021 and the Resolution dated November 16, 2021 of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. CV No. 114777 were AFFIRMED. The Decision was rendered by the Court En Banc, with separate concurring opinions by Chief Justice Gesmundo, Justice Caguioa and Justice Singh, and with Senior Associate Justice Leonen and Justices Lazaro-Javier and Zalameda dissenting.



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