Short answer. No. A marriage between an adopting parent and the child he or she adopted is void from the beginning under the Family Code's public-policy list. Adoption creates the legal relation of parent and child, and the law treats that bond as a bar to marriage exactly as blood would.
What the law says
The following marriages shall be void from the beginning for reasons of public policy: (1) Between collateral blood relatives whether legitimate or illegitimate, up to the fourth civil degree; (2) Between step-parents and step-children; (3) Between parents-in-law and children-in-law; (4) Between the adopting parent and the adopted child;
Family Code, Article 38 — Marriages Void for Public Policy. Read the full provision →
The bar rests on the relation, not on blood
The prohibition is stated flatly: a marriage between the adopting parent and the adopted child is void for reasons of public policy. Nothing in the provision asks whether the two are biologically related, whether the adoption happened in infancy or in adulthood, or whether the adopted person had already reached full age when the marriage was contemplated. The decree of adoption itself is what creates the disqualification, because it places the two in the legal position of parent and child. That legal position, not any genetic link, is the thing the law refuses to let a marriage sit on top of.
Void from the beginning is stronger than annullable
The article does not say such a marriage may be annulled; it says it is void from the beginning. The difference matters in practice. An annullable marriage is valid until a court sets it aside and can be ratified by continued cohabitation once the defect ends. A marriage void from the beginning was never a marriage at all, cannot be cured by the passage of time, by the death of a party, or by everyone involved being content with it. Rights that depend on being a spouse, including those a survivor would normally claim, never attach in the first place.
The list reaches further than the adopter and the adopted
The same public-policy enumeration also voids a marriage between the surviving spouse of the adopting parent and the adopted child, one between an adopted child and a legitimate child of the adopter, and one between two children adopted by the same adopter. In other words, adoption does not create a single point of disqualification; it grafts the adopted person onto a family and the bar follows the graft. Couples who assume the prohibition stops at the adopter personally are often surprised to find their own pairing named separately in the list.
Which document actually settles the question
What decides this is the adoption record, not family memory. Look for the decree of adoption and the birth certificate as it stands in the civil registry today, since an adoption is reflected there and a registrar assessing a marriage application will read the same papers. Informal arrangements matter too: a child raised as one of the family but never legally adopted is not caught by this particular clause, while a legally adopted child is caught even if the household never behaved like one. Bring both documents to a lawyer before any ceremony is arranged rather than after.
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.
- Republic of the Philippines vs. Marelyn Tanedo Manalo, G.R. No. 221029, April 24, 2018 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Abigael An Espina-dan vs. Marco Dan, G.R. No. 209031, April 16, 2018 — read the decision on LawPhil →