House panel okays divorce bills

by MA. REINA TOLENTINO ManilaTimes.net

THE Committee on Population and Family Relations of the House of Representatives on Thursday, February 23 approved in principle the proposed laws for divorce.

These are House Bills (HBs) 78, 2593, 3843, 3885, 4957, and 4998.

The committee designated Albay First District Rep. Edcel Lagman to head the technical working group that will produce the substitute bill.

In its hybrid meeting, the committee heard the positions of resource persons on divorce.

Later, following Lagman's motion for the approval in principle of the measures and HBs 1021 and 1593 which was seconded, the committee moved to approve the proposed laws.

Lagman moved for the approval of the bills "subject to the submission of a substitute bill encompassing the various take basically forever” based on this current trajectory.

“For us, asking the ICC to come in is the perfect way to do it,” she said. “These are 6,000 people who lost their lives, and they deserve that this is being properly investigated. And I think this is the discussion that we should have all together,” she said.

In the same presser, Neumann said the following years are also a crucial time for the EU and the Philippines' trade ties as Manila’s GSP+ inclusion is set to expire in December.

Neumann said there would be a two-year transition period where the Philippines could reapply.

“This gives basically the administration a timeframe of about two years to show the sincerity in the implementation and improving the human rights situation on the ground for us to properly assess and see how we proceed,” she said.

Neumann was joined by other members of the EP (MEP) Ryszard Czarnecki, Isabel Wiseler-Lima, Karsten Lucke, and Miguel Urban Crespo.

The MEPs held meetings with the chairman and members, both from majority and minority, of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights and of the House Committee on Human Rights.

(PNA) bills to be crafted by a technical working group soonest with special concern on the civil recognition of marriages dissolved by the Catholic Church and other recognized religious denomination as a possible separate measure but a companion bill."

HB 1021 seeks to recognize church annulment or church dissolution of marriage.

On the other hand, HB 1593 aims to recognize the civil effects of church annulment, church declaration of nullity, and church dissolution of marriage.

Lagman said that absolute divorce "is urgently necessary in exceptional cases for couples in inordinately toxic and irreparably dysfunctional marriages, particularly the wives who are abused or abandoned."

"The State has the responsibility of rescuing couples and their children from a house on fire," he added.

Annulment, declaration of nullity, and legal separation are available options in the Philippines.

Lagman said that in a legal separation, "the judicially separated spouses cannot remarry unlike in a divorce decree."

"In annulment and dissolution of marriage based on psychological incapacity, the causes must exist before or contemporaneous with the celebration of the marriage, while in reality, the overwhelming grounds for divorce occur after the marriage and during cohabitation," he said.

Among the grounds for absolute divorce stated in HB 78 was psychological incapacity, "whether or not the incapacity existed at the time of the marriage or supervenes after the marriage."

Other grounds for absolute divorce under HB 78 include "violence or aggressive behavior within the home, typically