SC: Marital support cuts both ways, not for just one side alone

SUPPORTING a so-called better half or lifetime partner is not for either the husband or the wife alone; it is a mutual arrangement of the couple under their marital contract, according to the Supreme Court (SC).

to his wife does not automatically mean he broke the law on violence against women.

“The obligation to provide support is imposed by the law mutually upon both spouses. The obligation is not a one-way street for the husband to support his wife,” the High Tribunal explained.

“The wife has the identical obligation to provide support to her husband. The law certainly did not intend to impose a heavier burden on the husban to provide support for his wife, or institutionalize criminal prosecution as a measure to enforce support from him,” the ruling stated.

Although RA 9262 was enacted to protect women, the SC asserted it did not intend to limit or discount their capacity to provide for and support themselves.

“The law cannot presume that women are weak and disadvantaged victims. The wife was a person fully capable of providing for herself. She was gainfully employed as a massage therapist and owner of a sari-sari (retail) store. She was not a destitute victim who had no choice but to depend on her husband’s money to live,” the SC noted. The SC added that it “would be gravely erroneous to interpret and apply the law in a manner that will perpetuate gender disparities that should not exist.”

The SC decision overturned a Court of Appeals’ ruling which had affirmed the trial court’s order.

The couple with the marriage on the rocks wed in 2002 and two years later, the husband left the country to work abroad. The union bore no children.

The husband stopped remitting money to his wife after a few months of his employment as a seaman and suggested that she considers living with her parents in the province.