Psychological incapacity: what Tan-Andal changed

Void marriage, annulment, and legal separation are not the same, and the Supreme Court's Tan-Andal ruling reshaped how psychological incapacity is proven.

Almost everyone in the Philippines calls it "annulment." A marriage falls apart, someone wants out, and the word that goes around the family group chat is always the same. But the law gives you three different doors, and walking through the wrong one can cost you years and money.

Three different doors

A marriage is either void from the start, voidable, or valid with the spouses allowed to live apart. The three are not interchangeable.

A void marriage never existed in the eyes of the law. Article 35 of the Family Code (Executive Order No. 209) lists most of them: no marriage license, bigamous marriages, a party below 18, a mistake in the identity of the person you married. Psychological incapacity under Article 36 also makes a marriage void. Because it was void from day one, the case is a petition for declaration of nullity, and Article 39 says that action does not prescribe. You can file it years later.

A voidable marriage is valid until a court annuls it. This is what "annulment" properly means. Article 45 lists the grounds, and each must have existed at the time of the wedding: no parental consent for a party aged 18 to 21, unsound mind, fraud, force or intimidation, impotence, or a serious and incurable sexually transmitted disease. Annulment has deadlines. Article 47 sets prescriptive periods, so waiting too long can shut the door.

Legal separation is the third door, and the most misunderstood. Even after a decree, Article 63 says the marriage bond is not severed. You can live apart and divide property, but neither spouse can remarry. Article 55 lists the grounds, among them repeated violence, drug addiction, and abandonment.

There is still no divorce law in the Philippines. Bills have moved through Congress over the years, but none has become law, so for most couples the real route to a clean legal end is a declaration of nullity.

What Article 36 actually requires

Article 36 voids a marriage where a spouse was, at the time of the celebration, psychologically incapacitated to comply with the essential marital obligations of marriage. Those obligations are the ordinary ones the Code spells out: to live together, observe mutual love, respect and fidelity, and render mutual help and support (Articles 68 to 71).

For a long time this was read narrowly. Two cases, Santos v. Court of Appeals and Republic v. Court of Appeals and Molina, hardened Article 36 into a checklist that in practice demanded a diagnosed mental disorder and a psychologist on the witness stand. Honest petitions failed because the couple could not afford an expert, or because the expert had never examined the other spouse.

What Tan-Andal changed

In Tan-Andal v. Andal (G.R. No. 196359, May 11, 2021), the Supreme Court sitting en banc restated the doctrine. A few points matter for ordinary families:

Psychological incapacity is a legal concept, not a medical one. It need not be a clinically diagnosed illness.

You do not always need a psychologist or psychiatrist. Ordinary witnesses who knew the spouse before the wedding, family and old friends, can describe the behavior, and the judge weighs it.

Psychological incapacity: what Tan-Andal changed

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