Short answer. No. A decree of legal separation entitles the spouses to live separately, but the Family Code is explicit that the marriage bonds are not severed. You remain married, and remarrying on the strength of a legal separation decree would be contracting a marriage while an existing one subsists.

What the law says

The spouses shall be entitled to live separately from each other, but the marriage bonds shall not be severed

Family Code, Article 63 — Effects of the Decree of Legal Separation. Read the full provision →

The decree separates the household, not the status

This is the single most misunderstood point in Philippine family law, and Article 63 of the Family Code settles it in one clause: the spouses shall be entitled to live separately from each other, but the marriage bonds shall not be severed. Legal separation is relief from the obligation to live together and from a shared property regime. It is not a dissolution of the marriage. A person holding a decree of legal separation is still, in the eyes of the law, a married person, and describes themselves accurately only that way.

What legal separation is actually for

If it does not end the marriage, why seek it? Because of what Article 63 does deliver: the right to live apart, the dissolution and liquidation of the absolute community or conjugal partnership, forfeiture of the offending spouse's share in the net profits, and the loss of that spouse's intestate rights to inherit from the innocent spouse. For a spouse whose immediate problem is financial entanglement with someone whose conduct falls within the grounds listed in Article 55 — violence, abandonment, drug addiction, infidelity and the rest — those are substantial protections, obtained without proving a ground for nullity.

Remarriage needs a different case entirely

Capacity to remarry comes only from a marriage that has been declared void or annulled, or from a spouse's death, and each of those is a different action with different grounds, different evidence and a different prescriptive period. Filing for legal separation does not begin that process, and a decree does not shorten it. If your real objective is to be free to marry again, the choice of case matters more than anything else you will decide, and it is worth settling that question with counsel at the outset rather than after a decree that cannot give you what you came for.

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.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.