Grounds: Psychological Incapacity and the Other Routes

First, which action are you bringing?

Three different cases hide behind one word. A void marriage was never valid — but a court must still declare it, because your civil registry record will not change on its own. A voidable marriage is valid until a court annuls it, and that right expires. Recognition of a foreign divorce is a fourth thing entirely, with its own page. After years away, the distinction decides whether you still have a case at all.

Article 36: psychological incapacity after Tan-Andal

Article 36 of the Family Code is the ground most overseas clients ask about:

Art. 36. A marriage contracted by any party who, at the time of the celebration, was psychologically incapacitated to comply with the essential marital obligations of marriage, shall likewise be void even if such incapacity becomes manifest only after its solemnization.

For decades it was read through a medical lens. In Rosanna L. Tan-Andal v. Mario Victor M. Andal (G.R. No. 196359, May 11, 2021, En Banc), the Supreme Court restated the doctrine:

To summarize, psychological incapacity consists of clear acts of dysfunctionality that show a lack of understanding and concomitant compliance with one's essential marital obligations due to psychic causes. It is not a medical illness that has to be medically or clinically identified; hence, expert opinion is not required.

Proof of those enduring aspects of personality, the Court held, need not come from an expert: ordinary witnesses who knew the spouses before they married may testify to behaviours they consistently observed. But the burden rose as that gate opened:

While there is opinion that a nullity case under Article 36 is like any civil case that requires preponderance of evidence, we now hold that the plaintiff-spouse must prove his or her case with clear and convincing evidence. This is a quantum of proof that requires more than preponderant evidence but less than proof beyond reasonable doubt.

No psychiatrist is legally required, and the standard of proof is now clear and convincing evidence. That is a trade, not a discount.

Exactly what Tan-Andal changed in Molina

The guidelines in Republic of the Philippines v. Court of Appeals and Roridel Olaviano Molina (G.R. No. 108763, February 13, 1997, En Banc) survive except where Tan-Andal touched them:

• Burden of proof — retained, and supplemented: Molina was silent on the quantum.
• Root cause medically or clinically identified and proven by experts — categorically abandoned.
• Juridical antecedence — retained as an explicit requirement of the law, but reframed: provable by testimony about the environment the spouse grew up in.
• Incurability — amended, and meant in the legal rather than the medical sense.
• Gravity — retained but narrowed: mild characterological peculiarities, mood changes and occasional emotional outbursts are excluded, as is mere refusal, neglect, difficulty or ill will.
• Essential marital obligations, Family Code Arts. 68 to 71, 220, 221 and 225 — retained.
• Canonical decisions — retained but qualified: merely persuasive, not binding on secular courts.

The abandoned one is why so much advice online is out of date. Guideline (2) required the root cause to be medically or clinically identified and proven by experts. On the evidence it demanded:

The evidence must convince the court that the parties, or one of them, was mentally or psychically ill to such an extent that the person could not have known the obligations he was assuming, or knowing them, could not have given valid assumption thereof.

That is quoted from Molina itself, which reads "psychically"; later decisions render the word differently, so we quote each from its own text. Tan-Andal answered directly:

In light of the foregoing, this Court now categorically abandons the second Molina guideline. Psychological incapacity is neither a mental incapacity nor a personality disorder that must be proven through expert opinion. There must be proof, however, of the durable or enduring aspects of a person's personality, called "personality structure," which manifests itself through clear acts of dysfunctionality that undermines the family.

Void from the start: Article 35

Article 35 lists the marriages void from the beginning. Two of them recur constantly in overseas consultations:

(3) Those solemnized without license, except those covered the [sic] preceding Chapter;

(4) Those bigamous or polygamous marriages not failing [sic] under Article 41;

The bracketed markers belong to our own codes page: the sources we verify against print the provision in that form, and we reproduce it as found. A missing licence is a documentary question rather than a question about anyone's personality, which is why it is often worth checking first.

Voidable, and on a clock: Articles 45, 46 and 47

Article 45 is annulment proper:

Art. 45. A marriage may be annulled for any of the following causes, existing at the time of the marriage:

Its six causes are lack of parental consent between eighteen and twenty, unsound mind, fraud, force or intimidation, incurable non-consummation, and a serious, apparently incurable sexually-transmissible disease. The first four are lost if the injured party freely cohabited after learning of the defect.

Fraud is closed-ended. Article 46 lists four concealments — a prior conviction for a crime involving moral turpitude, pregnancy by another man, a sexually transmissible disease, and drug addiction, habitual alcoholism or homosexuality or lesbianism — then shuts the door:

No other misrepresentation or deceit as to character, health, rank, fortune or chastity shall constitute such fraud as will give grounds for action for the annulment of marriage.

That list is reproduced as enacted; the framing is the legislature's. In practice the closing sentence disposes of most cases built on discovering that a spouse lied.

Then the clock. Article 47 gives every Article 45 ground a deadline, for example:

(3) For causes mentioned in number 3 of Articles 45, by the injured party, within five years after the discovery of the fraud;

This is the decisive point for anyone who left the Philippines long ago. Articles 36 and 47 set no prescriptive period for psychological incapacity, so fifteen years apart does not time-bar a nullity petition — while the same fifteen years will usually have extinguished an Article 45 annulment.

What this means for your evidence

Tan-Andal removed the requirement of a diagnosis, not the requirement of proof, and clear and convincing evidence has to come from people who knew your spouse before the wedding — from abroad, a logistics problem rather than a legal one. See the evaluation when you are overseas and what can be done remotely. Consultations are paid, and our fee structure is discussed openly at the first meeting.

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