In Soto v. Reyes-Soto (G.R. No. 249759, April 22, 2026), the Supreme Court's First Division affirmed the nullity of a 33-year marriage after finding that both spouses — not just the one who did not file the petition — were psychologically incapacitated under Article 36 of the Family Code. The husband's Rule 45 petition was denied. The decision does not change the three-requisite test from Tan-Andal v. Andal, but it is a useful, fact-heavy illustration of how that test is applied almost five years on, including two points practitioners run into often: a diagnosis of both spouses can support one petition, and an expert does not need to have personally interviewed both parties for the testimony to hold up.
This case applies Article 36 of the Family Code. Read the provision itself: Family Code, Article 36 — full text, annotation and interpreting cases.
What the Court Actually Held
Juanito Soto and Cassandra Reyes-Soto met as college students in 1979, became a couple while working together at the same bank, and married in September 1983 after Reyes-Soto became pregnant. Their only child, Carmela, was born the following year. Over the next decade, Reyes-Soto experienced what the Court's own account describes as a "monotonous" married life marked by Soto's emotional unavailability, his deference to his mother over his wife on recurring points of conflict, and the absence of intimacy after 1988. Soto worked abroad from 1988, obtained a U.S. divorce in 1994 "out of frustration," and returned to the Philippines permanently only in 2007. Reyes-Soto filed a petition to nullify the marriage under Article 36 in 2013.
The case had an unusually tangled procedural history before it reached the Supreme Court. The Regional Trial Court of Pasig City originally granted the petition in 2016, declaring the marriage void based on the psychological incapacity of both spouses. The Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in 2018, holding the marriage subsisted — only to grant Reyes-Soto's motion for reconsideration in an Amended Decision dated January 25, 2019, reinstating the RTC's nullity finding. Soto brought the case to the Supreme Court, arguing the evidence did not meet the standard set by Tan-Andal v. Andal, decided while his appeal was pending. In a Decision penned by Associate Justice Ricardo R. Rosario, the Court denied Soto's petition and affirmed the CA's Amended Decision: the marriage remains null and void.
The evidentiary record centered on the judicial affidavit and testimony of a psychiatrist who had personally interviewed both spouses (along with a mutual friend and Reyes-Soto's mother) and reviewed a separate clinical psychologist's test results. She diagnosed Reyes-Soto with Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder rooted in a restrictive, comparison-driven childhood, and diagnosed Soto with an Inadequate Personality Disorder marked by an unresolved, oedipal-degree attachment to his own mother that left him unable to relate to his wife as anything other than a maternal figure. The Court found that both disorders were traceable to before the marriage, were, in the legal sense, incurable, and were sufficiently grave to have made a functioning marital partnership impossible for either spouse — not because either was morally at fault, but because neither had the psychological capacity the relationship required.
What Changed, and What Didn't
The governing test is unchanged. The Court applied the framework set by Tan-Andal v. Andal (G.R. No. 196359, May 11, 2021) as refined in its own subsequent case law: psychological incapacity is a legal, not medical, concept, established when three requisites concur — juridical antecedence (the incapacity existed at the time of the marriage, even if it surfaced only later), incurability in the legal rather than clinical sense, and gravity, meaning a genuinely psychic cause rather than mere refusal, neglect, or the ordinary difficulty of making a marriage work. Soto does not add a fourth requirement or move any of the three. What it does is apply that settled test to two recurring, practically important fact patterns.
First, mutual incapacity. The Court did not treat the fact that both spouses were diagnosed as a complication or a reason for skepticism. It examined each spouse's disorder against the three requisites independently, found both satisfied, and nullified the marriage on that combined basis. This confirms that Article 36 does not require identifying a single "incapacitated" party and a single "normal" party seeking relief from that party's shortcomings — a misreading that still circulates informally and can unnecessarily complicate how a petition is framed, or discourage a spouse from filing because they recognize their own contribution to the marriage's failure.
Second, the limits of what makes expert testimony credible. Soto's petition pressed the argument that the psychiatrist's methodology was suspect. The Court rejected this, reiterating that Tan-Andal does not require an expert to have personally interviewed both spouses, and indeed does not require expert testimony at all — psychological incapacity may be proven by the totality of evidence, including lay testimony about a spouse's lived behavior before and during the marriage. What matters is whether the expert's conclusions are anchored in reliable data, meaningfully connected to juridical antecedence, incurability, and gravity, rather than a recitation of clinical labels standing in for that connection. Here, the psychiatrist had in fact interviewed both spouses directly, which the Court noted made the point almost academic on these facts — but it restated the rule in terms broad enough to cover the more common situation where only the petitioning spouse sits for an interview.
Who This Affects
The decision is most directly useful to two groups of prospective clients. The first are couples where both spouses privately recognize that neither functioned well in the marriage — a common and often more honest starting point than framing the case as one spouse's fault. Soto confirms that this does not weaken a nullity petition; if anything, a well-documented mutual incapacity can make the totality-of-evidence picture more complete, not less. The second are petitioners whose access to the respondent-spouse is limited or nonexistent, whether because of estrangement, distance, or an uncooperative former partner who will not sit for a psychological evaluation. Soto reaffirms that this is not fatal to a petition, provided the expert's (or the lay witnesses') account is well-grounded in observed behavior and personal history rather than speculation.
It is worth being precise about what the case does not do. It is an application of Tan-Andal, not a departure from it, and it does not lower the burden of proof, which remains clear and convincing evidence. The 33-year span of documented behavior in Soto — consistent testimony from the petitioner, her sister, and a psychiatrist who interviewed both parties, spanning from courtship through a decades-long separation — is also a reminder that the "totality of evidence" standard rewards a thoroughly built record, not a thin one.
What It Means in Practice
- A nullity petition is not weakened by evidence that both spouses, not only the respondent, were psychologically incapacitated. Both may be found incapacitated in the same case, on the same totality-of-evidence standard.
- An expert witness's credibility does not depend on having personally interviewed the non-petitioning spouse. What matters is whether the expert's conclusions are well-anchored in reliable data connected to the three Tan-Andal requisites.
- A long, well-documented history of the specific behaviors that prevented either spouse from fulfilling marital obligations — not conclusory labels — remains the strongest evidence in an Article 36 case, whether the petition rests on expert testimony, lay testimony, or both.
- Procedural persistence matters: this case took over a decade and two reversals at the Court of Appeals before reaching a final Supreme Court ruling. Clients should be advised realistically about timeline, not just the merits.
This commentary is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For guidance specific to your situation, please consult a licensed attorney.
If you are considering a petition for declaration of nullity or annulment, our firm is available to help. You may reach us via Viber or WhatsApp, call us at 0995 433 5550, or send an email to vivasnobles@gmail.com.