The Supreme court has issued on Tuesday, April 24, a landmark ruling that recognized divorce in marriages between Filipinos and foreigners.
In its decision, the SC en banc ruled 10-3-1 in a case, allowing Marelyn Tanedo Manalo, a Filipina married to Japanese national Minoru Yoshino, to file for divorce.
Manalo divorced her husband in Japan in 2011 and went to a court in Dagupan, Pangasinan to have her divorce recognized in the Philippines. The said court denied her plea. Manalo then brought the case to the Court of Appeals and won in 2014.
The CA said that Manalo has the right to remarry, citing the amended Article 26(2) of the Family Code. The new provision states that, “where a marriage between a Filipino citizen and a foreigner is validly celebrated and a divorce is thereafter validly obtained abroad by the alien spouse capacitating him or her to remarry, the Filipino spouse shall likewise have capacity to remarry under Philippine law”.
The Office of the Solicitor General brought the case to the SC in an attempt to reverse the CA’s ruling, but the SC ruled in favor of Manalo in what could be described as a landmark ruling.
The ruling means the state now allows Filipinos who are married to foreigners to file for divorce in the Philippines, one of only two countries in the world without a divorce law.
