Short answer. File a verified petition in court under Rule 108 of the Rules of Court for cancellation of the entry, in the province where the civil registry holding the record is located. Cancelling a marriage record is a substantial correction, so the administrative route for clerical errors under RA 9048 and RA 10172 cannot do it.
What the law says
may file a verified petition for the cancellation or correction of any entry relating thereto, with the Court of First Instance of the province where the corresponding civil registry is located
Rule 108, Section 1 — Who may file petition. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Upon good and valid grounds, the following entries in the civil register may be cancelled or corrected: (a) births; (b) marriages; (c) deaths
Rule 108, Section 2 — Entries subject to cancellation or correction. Read the full provision →
Marriage entries can be cancelled, not just corrected
Rule 108, Section 2 lists the entries open to attack: upon good and valid grounds, the following entries in the civil register may be cancelled or corrected, and marriages are second on the list, right after births. The distinction between the two verbs matters for your situation. Correction fixes a detail in a record of something that did happen — a misspelt name, a wrong date. Cancellation strikes the record itself, which is the remedy when the recorded event never occurred. A registry entry saying you married someone when no such marriage took place is not a record with an error in it; it is a record that should not exist, and cancellation is the relief aimed at exactly that.
Who files, and in which court
Section 1 answers both. Any person interested in any act, event, order or decree concerning the civil status of persons which has been recorded in the civil register may file — and nobody is more interested than the person the false record names as a spouse, since the entry misstates your own civil status. The petition must be verified, meaning sworn, and it goes to the court of the province where the corresponding civil registry is located — the registry holding the false record, which may not be where you live. The rule's text says Court of First Instance; that court's work is done today by the Regional Trial Courts.
Why you cannot fix this at the civil registrar's window
Since Rule 108 was written, Republic Act No. 9048 and Republic Act No. 10172 have opened an administrative shortcut through the local civil registrar — but only for narrow matters: clerical or typographical errors, a change of first name, and the day and month of birth or the sex entry where the error is clerical. Erasing an entire marriage record is none of those. Whether a marriage exists is about as substantial as a civil registry question gets, and substantial corrections still require the judicial proceeding. So a trip to the registrar to explain that the marriage is fake will end with a referral to court; the petition under Rule 108 is the route, not the fallback.
What the case will turn on
You will be proving a negative — that no marriage happened — so gather what makes the record itself collapse. Start with certified copies of the entry from the Philippine Statistics Authority and the local civil registrar, because the details on the face of the record (the date, the place, the solemnising officer, the signatures) are where the falsity shows. Evidence that the signature is not yours, that you were elsewhere on the recorded date, or that the recorded ceremony's participants do not know you all speaks to good and valid grounds. Expect the proceeding to involve the civil registrar and the person named as your spouse, since the point of the judicial route is that everyone affected is heard before an entry is struck.
Related provisions
- Rule 108, Section 1 — Who may file petition
- Rule 108, Section 2 — Entries subject to cancellation or correction