Short answer. Philippine law allows annulment on six specific grounds that existed at the time of the marriage: lack of parental consent for an 18-to-20-year-old spouse, unsound mind, fraud, force or intimidation, incurable physical incapacity to consummate the marriage, and a serious, incurable sexually transmitted disease.
What the law says
That the party in whose behalf it is sought to have the marriage annulled was eighteen years of age or over but below twenty-one, and the marriage was solemnized without the consent of the parents, guardian or person having substitute parental authority over the party, in that order
Family Code, Article 45 — Grounds for Annulment. Read the full provision →
What the law says
That the consent of either party was obtained by fraud, unless such party afterwards, with full knowledge of the facts constituting the fraud, freely cohabited with the other as husband and wife
Family Code, Article 45 — Grounds for Annulment. Read the full provision →
What the law says
That either party was physically incapable of consummating the marriage with the other, and such incapacity continues and appears to be incurable
Family Code, Article 45 — Grounds for Annulment. Read the full provision →
What the law says
That either party was afflicted with a sexually-transmissible disease found to be serious and appears to be incurable
Family Code, Article 45 — Grounds for Annulment. Read the full provision →
Six specific grounds, present at the time of marriage
Article 45 of the Family Code lists six grounds for annulment, and all six share one requirement: the defect must have existed at the time the marriage was celebrated, even if no one noticed it then. This is what separates annulment from a declaration of nullity — the marriage was valid when entered into, but one of these defects makes it voidable at the request of the injured party. The six grounds are lack of parental consent for a spouse aged eighteen to twenty, unsound mind, fraud, force or intimidation, incurable physical incapacity to consummate the marriage, and a serious, incurable sexually transmissible disease.
Consent-based grounds: age, insanity, fraud, and intimidation
The first four grounds all go to consent. A spouse who was eighteen to twenty years old when they married without parental consent can seek annulment on that basis. A spouse who was of unsound mind at the time of the wedding is another ground, as is a spouse whose consent to marry was obtained through fraud, such as concealment of facts the other party would have considered material. Consent obtained through force, intimidation, or undue influence is the fourth ground; the law treats a marriage entered into under duress the same way it treats one entered into by deception.
Physical grounds: incapacity and disease
The remaining two grounds are physical rather than about consent. A marriage can be annulled if either spouse was physically incapable of consummating the marriage with the other, and that incapacity is both ongoing and appears to be incurable. The same applies where either spouse was afflicted, at the time of the marriage, with a serious and apparently incurable sexually transmissible disease. Both grounds require the condition to have existed when the couple married — a condition that developed afterward does not fall under Article 45.
Living together afterward can waive some of these grounds
Several of these grounds can effectively disappear through the couple's own later conduct. If the underage spouse freely continued living together with the other as husband and wife after turning twenty-one, that consent problem is treated as cured. The same is true for insanity once the spouse regains reason and chooses to stay married, for fraud once the deceived spouse learns the full truth and continues cohabiting anyway, and for force or intimidation once it ends and the spouse remains in the marriage. This does not apply to the physical grounds involving incapacity or disease, which the law does not treat as curable by continued cohabitation.