Short answer. Only if it was a conviction by final judgment of a crime involving moral turpitude. The Family Code lists that non-disclosure as one of the few circumstances amounting to fraud, so a hidden arrest, a pending case or a conviction for an ordinary offence will not do.
What the law says
(1) Non-disclosure of a previous conviction by final judgment of the other party of a crime involving moral turpitude;
Family Code, Article 46 — What Constitutes Fraud. Read the full provision →
What the law says
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.
Family Code, Article 46 — What Constitutes Fraud. Read the full provision →
Every word in the clause is a filter
The ground is non-disclosure of a previous conviction by final judgment of the other party of a crime involving moral turpitude. Previous means before the marriage. Conviction by final judgment means the case was decided and the decision has become final, so a charge that was pending, dismissed or still on appeal at the time of the wedding is outside the clause. And the offence must be one involving moral turpitude, a category concerned with baseness or depravity rather than with the length of the sentence. A conviction that fails any of these is not this ground.
The list of frauds is closed
The article ends by shutting the door on everything else: 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 sentence is why so many genuinely aggrieved spouses have no case here. Lies about income, employment, property, past relationships, family background or intentions are outside the statute entirely, however central they were to the decision to marry. The law does not treat every deception as fatal to a marriage, only the four it names.
Non-disclosure, not just active lying
The clause speaks of non-disclosure, so silence is enough. A spouse who was never asked and never volunteered the conviction falls within it as squarely as one who denied it outright. The corollary matters too: if you knew about the conviction before the wedding, there was no non-disclosure, and knowledge acquired from a relative or from public record counts. Continuing to live together with full knowledge of the facts constituting the fraud is separately fatal, since the statute treats that as acceptance of the marriage.
What decides it is the court record
This ground is unusually document-driven. What you need is the judgment itself, or a certified record showing the offence, the date, and that the decision became final before the marriage; the nature of the offence then determines whether moral turpitude is present. Keep also anything showing when you learned of it, because the action for annulment on the ground of fraud carries a prescriptive period that can run from discovery. Bring the court record and that timeline to a lawyer together, since one without the other settles nothing.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- Republic of the Philippines vs. Melvin T. Villacorta, G.R. No. 249953, June 23, 2021 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Republic of the Philippines vs. Liberty D. Albios, G.R. No. 198780, October 16, 2013 — read the decision on LawPhil →