Short answer. No. Article 2035 declares that no compromise is valid upon the validity of a marriage or a legal separation, or upon any ground for legal separation. These touch civil status and public policy, which spouses cannot bargain away between themselves. A private agreement purporting to settle whether a marriage stands is void.
What the law says
The validity of a marriage or a legal separation
Civil Code, Article 2035 — What Can Never Be Compromised. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Any ground for legal separation
Civil Code, Article 2035 — What Can Never Be Compromised. Read the full provision →
Status is not for the parties to settle
Some questions are placed beyond the reach of any private bargain. Article 2035 lists them, and among the things on which no compromise shall be valid are The validity of a marriage or a legal separation and Any ground for legal separation. Spouses cannot sign away whether their marriage is valid, agree between themselves that it is void, or trade a legal separation as if it were an ordinary dispute over money. An agreement that tries to do so is not merely weak — it is void, and produces none of the effect the parties intended.
Why the State will not let them
Marriage is not treated as a purely private affair. The public has an interest in the stability and truth of civil status, and the State is regarded as a party whenever the existence or dissolution of a marriage is in question. That is why these matters are decided in a proper proceeding, on evidence, with the State's participation, rather than by the say-so of the two people most tempted to arrange a convenient answer. Letting spouses compromise the point would put the status of a marriage — and everything that depends on it — up for negotiation, which the law refuses to allow.
What the ban does not cover
The prohibition is about the status questions themselves, not about every arrangement a separating couple might make. The property and financial consequences that flow once a court has ruled — how assets are divided, for instance — are a different order of thing and can be the subject of agreement. What cannot be compromised is the core: whether the marriage is valid, whether a legal separation is granted, and whether a ground for it exists. Those must be established before a court, and an out-of-court deal purporting to resolve them settles nothing the law will recognise.
The practical consequence
If your marriage or separation is genuinely in issue, a signed agreement between you and your spouse is not the route to resolving it, however amicable you both are. The status question requires a court proceeding brought for that purpose, and no amount of mutual consent substitutes for it. Time and money spent papering over the point with a private compromise is wasted, because the moment either side or a third party relies on that status, the void agreement gives way and the underlying question stands exactly where it did before.