Short answer. Yes. Article 135 lists judicial declaration of your spouse as an absentee among the sufficient causes for judicial separation of property. Better still, for this specific ground, presenting the final judgment declaring the absence is enough basis for the court to grant the decree.
What the law says
That the spouse of the petitioner has been judicially declared an absentee
Family Code, Article 135 — Sufficient Causes for Judicial Separation of Property. Read the full provision →
What the law says
In the cases provided for in Numbers (1), (2) and (3), the presentation of the final judgment against the guilty or absent spouse shall be enough basis for the grant of the decree of judicial separation of property.
Family Code, Article 135 — Sufficient Causes for Judicial Separation of Property. Read the full provision →
Declared absence is named directly as a ground
Article 135 lists this exact circumstance among its recognized causes. That the spouse of the petitioner has been judicially declared an absentee. If your spouse has already gone through the separate legal process of being judicially declared an absentee, that declaration itself gives you a recognized basis under this article to petition for judicial separation of property, without needing to independently prove some further wrongdoing.
This ground comes with a real practical shortcut
Unlike some of the other grounds listed in the article, this one benefits from a simplified proof standard. In the cases provided for in Numbers (1), (2) and (3), the presentation of the final judgment against the guilty or absent spouse shall be enough basis for the grant of the decree of judicial separation of property. Since your spouse's absentee status falls under Number (2), you do not need to re-litigate or re-prove the underlying facts of the absence — presenting the final judgment that already declared it is sufficient on its own.
Why this ground is treated as self-sufficient
The reasoning behind this shortcut is straightforward: a judicial declaration of absence is already the product of its own court proceeding, where the fact of absence was already established to the standard that process requires. Requiring the petitioner to prove the same absence all over again in the separation-of-property case would duplicate work a court has already done, so the article lets the existing judgment carry that weight directly.
What this means for moving forward
If you already hold a final judgment declaring your spouse an absentee, Article 135 gives you a straightforward path: that judgment itself is enough basis for the court to grant judicial separation of property, without additional evidentiary hurdles on the absence question. This article does not itself detail the filing procedure for the separation-of-property petition, so the practical next step is bringing that final judgment before the appropriate court in a properly filed petition.
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.
- David A. Noveras vs. Leticia T. Noveras AM. No. P-06-2227 August 19, 2014 Office of the Court Administrator vs. Atty. Mario N. Melchor, Former Clerk of Court VI, RTC, Br. 16, Naval, Biliran (now Presiding Judge, MCTC, Calubian-San Isidro, Leyte), G.R. No. 188289, August 20, 2014 — read the decision on LawPhil →