Text of the provision
Art. 46. Any of the following circumstances shall constitute fraud referred to in Number 3 of the preceding Article:
(1) Non-disclosure of a previous conviction by final judgment of the other party of a crime involving moral turpitude;
(2) Concealment by the wife of the fact that at the time of the marriage, she was pregnant by a man other than her husband;
(3) Concealment of sexually transmissible disease, regardless of its nature, existing at the time of the marriage; or
(4) Concealment of drug addiction, habitual alcoholism or homosexuality or lesbianism existing at the time of the marriage.
No other misrepresentation or deceit as to character, health, rank, fortune or chastity shall constitute such fraud as will give grounds for action for the annulment of marriage.
(86a)
Family Code of the Philippines, Executive Order No. 209, approved July 6, 1987. The Code took effect on August 3, 1988 (Republic v. Orbecido III, G.R. No. 154380, October 5, 2005). Reproduced in full.
What this article means
Article 45(3) makes fraud a ground for annulment — but on its own that word could swallow every disappointed expectation in a marriage. Article 46 exists to stop that. It defines fraud exhaustively: only the four circumstances listed here count, and the closing sentence slams the door on everything else.
The four are all forms of concealment of a serious, pre-existing fact: an undisclosed conviction for a crime of moral turpitude; a wife's concealment that she was pregnant by another man at the time of the marriage; a concealed sexually transmissible disease; and concealed drug addiction, habitual alcoholism, or homosexuality or lesbianism, each existing at the time of the marriage.
The closing sentence is the point
The final paragraph is doing the heavy lifting: no misrepresentation or deceit as to character, health, rank, fortune or chastity is fraud for this purpose. A spouse who lied about their wealth, exaggerated their status, or concealed an ordinary character flaw has not committed the kind of fraud that annuls a marriage. The Supreme Court has applied this exclusivity strictly — the enumeration is closed, not illustrative.
Read this together with Article 45(3) (the ground) and Article 47(3) (the injured party must file within five years of discovering the fraud, and continued cohabitation after discovery ratifies the marriage and bars the action).
Related provisions
- Article 45(3) — fraud as a ground for annulment, which this article defines.
- Article 47 — who may file and the five-year period running from discovery of the fraud.
Cases interpreting this article
- The leading authorities holding the Article 46 enumeration exclusive (so that non-disclosure of a prior relationship or of ordinary character flaws is not a ground) will be added here as each is verified against primary sources.