Legal Question in Civil Rights Law in Philippines

Re: marriage

you can check it out with the local civil registry or at the National Census STatistics Office

Re: marriage

A marriage to be valid must comply with the following provisions of the Family Code:

Art. 2. No marriage shall be valid, unless these essential requisites are present:

(1) Legal capacity of the contracting parties who must be a male and a female; and

(2) Consent freely given in the presence of the solemnizing officer.

Art. 3. The formal requisites of marriage are:

(1) Authority of the solemnizing officer;

(2) A valid marriage license except in the cases provided for in Chapter 2 of this Title; and

(3) A marriage ceremony which takes place with the appearance of the contracting parties before the solemnizing officer and their personal declaration that they take each other as husband and wife in the presence of not less than two witnesses of legal age.

Art. 4. The absence of any of the essential or formal requisites shall render the marriage void ab initio, except as stated in Article 35 (2).

Thus, in the absence of compliance with the foregoing your marriage can be argued as void.However, it is another thing to prove that you did not comply with the foregoing essential and formal requisites of marriage. The problem is if you have a marriage contract that has been registered before the local civil registrar of the place where your marriage was alleged to have been solemnized. And thereafter, the same was registered with the NSO. There is a presumption of regularity in the performance of duty enjoyed by the government official concerned regarding the issuance and registration of your marriage contract. You have to overcome this presumption by proving your allegations that it was your mother in law who processed the documents and you just signed it without any marriage ceremony.Then waking up one day you are married. You have to file a case to declare your marriage as void.