HERNANDEZ - v - CA

Dec. 8, 1999, GR 126010

Ponente: Mendoza, J

Facts:

1. On Jan. 1, 1981 petitioner and respondent were married in Cavite. They had 3 children.

2. On July 1992 petitioner filed before the RTC Tagaytay a petition seeking for the annulment of their marriage on the ground of psychological incapacity.

- Respondent failed to perform his obligation to support the family and contribute to the management of the household, devoting most of his time engaging in drinking sprees with his friends

- Respondent cohabited with other woman with whom he had an illegitimate child while having affairs with different women

- Respondent’s promiscuity endangered her health by infecting her with a sexually transmissible disease

- Respondent was irresponsible, immature, and unprepared for the duties of a married life

3. Petitioner prayed that for having abandoned the family, private respondent be ordered to give support to their 3 children in an amount of P9,000/month, that she be awarded custody of their children, and that she be adjudged as the sole owner of a parcel of land purchased during their marriage, as well as the jeep which the respondent took when he left the conjugal home.

4. In October1992, petitioner learned that private respondent left for the Middle East. Since then whereabouts had been unknown.

5. RTC dismissed the petition for annulment of marriage.

“The Court can underscore the fact that the circumstances mentioned by the petitioner in support of her claim that respondent was “psychologically incapacitated” to marry her are among the grounds cited by the law as valid reasons for the grant of legal separation (art 55 of the FC) - not as grounds for a declaration of nullity of marriages or annulment thereof.”

- Art 46 par 3: provisions of the law require the existence of fraud at the time of the celebration of the marriage regarding the transmitted gonorrhoea.

6. CA affirmed RTC decision cited the ruling in Santos vs CA.

Issue: WON the respondent is psychologically incapacitated

Held/Ratio: CA decision AFFIRMED.

In Santos v. Court of Appeals: “Psychological incapacity” should refer to no less than a mental (not physical) incapacity that causes a party to be truly incognitive of the basic marital covenants that concomitantly must be assumed and discharged by the parties to the marriage which, as so expressed by Article 68 of the Family Code, include their mutual obligations to live together, observe love, respect and fidelity and render help and support. There is hardly any doubt that the intendment of the law has been to confine the meaning of “psychological incapacity” to the most serious cases of personality disorders clearly demonstrative of an utter insensitivity or inability to give meaning and significance to the marriage. This psychological condition must exist at the time the marriage is celebrated. The law does not evidently envision, upon the other hand, an inability of the spouse to have sexual relations with the other. This conclusion is implicit under Article 54 of the Family Code which considers children conceived prior to the judicial declaration of nullity of the void marriage to be “legitimate.”

Petitioner failed to establish the fact that at the time they were married, private respondent was suffering from a psychological defect which in fact deprived him of the ability to assume the essential duties of marriage and its concomitant responsibilities.

Private respondent’s alleged habitual alcoholism, sexual infidelity or perversion, and abandonment do not by themselves constitute grounds for finding that he is suffering from a psychological incapacity within the contemplation of the Family Code. It must be shown that these acts are manifestations of a disordered personality which make private respondent completely unable to discharge the essential obligations of the marital state, and not merely due to private respondent’s youth and self-conscious feeling of being handsome, as the appellate court held.

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