Manila, Philippines – Michelle Boulang left her abusive husband six years ago.
But despite everything, Bulang, who lives with her four children in Rizal province just outside Metro Manila, could not divorce her husband.
The Philippines is the only country, other than the Vatican, where married couples cannot legally end their marriages in cases of infidelity or domestic violence.
“No man or woman who gets into a relationship plans on getting a divorce,” Bulang said, her voice shaking as tears welled up in her eyes. “We go into a relationship, we love this person, and we decide to be with that person.”
But there is no way for Boulang to end the marriage without an expensive and difficult annulment process that she cannot afford. “I just want to be happy,” she said. “What should I do?”
Now, a new bill could change everything in the Catholic nation. The absolute divorce bill passed the House in May, and if it passes the Senate, it would make divorce legal.
The bill has support in the upper chamber of Congress, and while the outlook remains uncertain, supporters are more optimistic than ever that it can pass.
“It’s never been this far,” said AJ Alfafara, executive director of the Divorce PILIPINAS Coalition. “This time, I think we have a chance.”
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. expressed openness to legalizing divorce when he took office in 2022, saying that while some cases require divorce, the process would not be easy.
According to a survey conducted by the Social Meteorological Institute in March, 50% of Filipino adults support legalizing divorce, while 31% oppose it.
Filipinos can file for legal separation, which allows spouses to live separately but does not legally end the marriage. They can also file for annulment, which is expensive and requires clear evidence that the marriage is invalid.
But opposition to divorce is linked to powerful and politically influential conservative Catholic lobbies, including the country’s largest church, the Iglesia ni Cristo, which prohibits its parishioners from divorcing.
“The church has a lot of influence over the flock,” Alfapara said. “When the head says this is what we vote for… if you are Iglesia ni Cristo, you vote for them.”
barriers to separation
Boulang recalled that she married at age 26 after a difficult childhood in which her parents fought and were sometimes abusive.
“Nobody told me what love was. No one guided me,” she said. “When I was young, I thought marriage was a fairy tale.”
Boulang recalls falling in love with her future husband, whom she barely knew, and quickly agreeing to the marriage.
“I thought he was the one,” she said.
But he often drank and hit her when they fought, she said. When he got angry, he refused to give her money to buy food. The children, now 18, 12, 11 and 7, learned to wait until his anger subsided.
“They started to think, ‘Okay, maybe fighting is normal,'” Bulang said. “That’s when I knew I didn’t want that life for my children.”
Boulang filed for legal separation, but in the process she discovered that her husband had previously married another woman, meaning her marriage was never legal to begin with.
But she was stuck because she couldn’t afford to go through the legal process of proving that her marriage contract was invalid.
Janine Aranas, senior attorney at the De Leon Arevalo Gonzales Law Offices in Quezon City, said it typically costs up to $4,000 to hire an attorney to file a petition for annulment, plus attorney appearance fees of about $100 per hearing date.
Besides the cost, Philippine courts are very technical and will reject your marriage annulment petition if even one document is missing.
Aranas said Bulang must provide her original marriage contract and her husband’s previous contracts, or the court will likely reject her petition. Bulang no longer has contact with her husband and has no way to secure the contracts.
“The burden of proof is on you, and the burden is very high,” she said.
Some Filipinos take extreme measures to get out of their marriages, even moving to another country with the primary purpose of filing for divorce in a foreign court, and then hoping that the process will be recognized in the Philippines.
Aranas once worked with a client whose husband raped her and threatened her with an itak, a long, sharp knife used to butcher animals, when they fought. Still, she could not get the woman’s marriage annulled, and legal separation did not protect her from her husband.
“Imagine being in that particular relationship, and when it’s all said and done, you’re still married to that person. They still have visitation rights to your kids,” Aranas said. “The trauma doesn’t end there.”
According to the 2020 Census of the Philippine Statistics Authority, approximately 1.6 million Filipinos are either annulled, separated, or divorced. Excluding foreign divorces, limited divorce is permitted among Filipino Muslims under Islamic law.
obstacle
However, in countries where the majority of the population is Catholic, there is strong opposition to divorce, as many people have a firm belief that marriage is sacred and should only be done once.
Many prominent senators have spoken out against the divorce bill, while some, including Senate President Pro Tem Jingoy Estrada, have instead supported expanding access to the costly annulment process.
“Instead of pushing for an absolute divorce law… a bill that would provide clear grounds for annulment would be a very welcome alternative,” Estrada said in May.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said in a Facebook post that more than 40 groups had joined together last month to form a super coalition against divorce, which would “work together to block the passage of anti-family and anti-life legislation in Congress.”
“Divorce destroys families on a massive scale,” said Tim Ross, a campaigner with the Alliance for the Family Foundation Philippines, Inc.
Ross, who has been married to a Filipina for more than 25 years, fears that if the bill passes in its current form, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos could rush to court for divorce.
Instead, ALFI members argue that divorce should be free or affordable, at least in abusive marriages.
The law favors legal separation over divorce, he says, because people who remarry with other partners tend to have higher divorce rates. “What’s the benefit?” he asks.
“(Marriage) is a lifelong commitment,” Laws said. “Marriage has been abolished throughout the world, except in the Philippines, as it has been generally understood throughout history.”
Alfapara warned that the current Congress ends in May 2025 and many incumbent senators who are up for reelection may be reluctant to support divorce legislation.
Last week, Marcos laid out five priorities he wanted Congress to pass before his administration left office. Legalizing divorce was not one of them.
Nevertheless, Alfapara remains optimistic that the divorce bill will pass the Senate. She said the Divorce PILIPINAS coalition is engaging with lawmakers like never before.
“This is a civic policy,” Alfapara said. “It’s not a theological policy.”
If she succeeds in divorcing her husband, Boulang might remarry. “I want to feel a moment of freedom,” she said. “We are not criminals. We are all victims.”
