Short answer. No. Agreement is the one thing the law is built to detect and defeat. In every annulment and nullity case the court must order a public prosecutor to appear for the State against collusion, and no judgment may rest on a stipulation of facts or a confession of judgment.
What the law says
the Court shall order the prosecuting attorney or fiscal assigned to it to appear on behalf of the State to take steps to prevent collusion between the parties and to take care that evidence is not fabricated or suppressed
Family Code, Article 48 — State Participation; No Default Judgment. Read the full provision →
What the law says
no judgment shall be based upon a stipulation of facts or confession of judgment
Family Code, Article 48 — State Participation; No Default Judgment. Read the full provision →
There is a third party in the room
A marriage case is not a dispute the two of you own. The court is directed to have a prosecutor appear on behalf of the State, whose job is to take steps to prevent collusion between the parties and to take care that evidence is not fabricated or suppressed. Collusion here means an arrangement between spouses to produce the outcome they want — agreeing on a story, agreeing who will say what, or one side quietly not defending. The State's interest in the marriage is treated as separate from the interest of either spouse.
You cannot shortcut the proof
In ordinary civil cases parties save time by agreeing what the facts are, or by simply admitting the claim. Both are closed off here: no judgment shall be based upon a stipulation of facts or confession of judgment. So an admission by your spouse that the ground exists proves nothing on its own, and a joint statement of what happened cannot stand in for evidence. The ground has to be established the ordinary way, by testimony and documents that a court can weigh, even when neither of you is contesting anything.
An uncontested case is not an easy one
This is where expectations usually need correcting. A spouse who does not appear, or who appears and agrees with everything, does not hand you the case; if anything, that pattern is what the prosecutor is looking for. Nor can a case be won by default the way an unanswered money claim can be. The practical effect is that an amicable separation and a bitterly fought one are proved to the same standard, and the amicable one is sometimes the harder to present convincingly.
What this means for how you start
Begin from the ground, not from the agreement. The real question is whether one of the grounds the Family Code recognises actually fits your facts and can be proved with what exists — records, witnesses, dates — and no amount of cooperation between you substitutes for that. Deciding together to end the marriage is not itself a ground. Bring a lawyer the honest history rather than an agreed version of it; an account built to fit a ground is exactly what the article exists to catch.
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 v. Wong, G.R. No. 276986, February 3, 2026 — a spouse’s failure to oppose a nullity petition, and relatives testifying against that spouse, do not by themselves prove collusion under this article. Read our commentary →