It took a while for Mavi Veratta Millora to understand that her marriage was not a fairytale. In the tip it turned out to be quite the alternative – her husband, she says, was unemployed and unfaithful, and the hassle to maintain her home running left her exhausted.
“I needed to kick him out of our lives since it had grow to be unhealthy and toxic for our kids,” Millora tells The Independent from Manila, Philippines. Her 4 children, having grown up in a conflicted household, encouraged her to go away the wedding. Her eldest was 16 or 17 years old on the time, she recalls.
After years of emotional turmoil, she decided to separate from her husband. It has been almost 12 years since. Her children have grown up. She has regained her strength and is doing a lot better in life. But the person legally stays her husband and may still stake claim to the family property.
“You cannot freely move on along with your life, especially in terms of the properties and all that you’ve worked for, in your children,” she says.
Today, Millora is fighting for the best to divorce within the Philippines, the one country on the earth besides the Vatican where divorce is against the law.
In May this 12 months, the lower house of the Philippines’ parliament passed the Absolute Divorce Bill, laws that would finally give those in unhealthy and unhappy marriages the best to use for a divorce. The bill passed the House of Representatives and is awaiting Senate approval. It goals to set out quite a few legal grounds for divorce, including abuse, infidelity, and abandonment.
As each an activist and a girl who stands to achieve from the brand new law, its progress through parliament is an enormous victory for Millora, although she still expects a bumpy road ahead. She will not be just fighting for a legal right, but against a predominantly Catholic culture where divorce still carries huge stigma and the church holds significant influence.
According to the 2020 census by the Philippine Statistics Authority, roughly 1.6 million Filipinos were recorded as annulled, separated, or divorced. In addition to divorce obtained abroad, Filipino Muslims are allowed limited divorces under Islamic law.
But support for divorce is growing, whilst the Catholic Church and conservative lawmakers strongly oppose the bill. A survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations research institution in March found that fifty per cent of Filipino adults support the legalisation of divorce, while 31 per cent oppose it.
More women besides Millora are finding the boldness to make news of their separation from their spouses public – unthinkable even just a few years ago. Those who oppose divorce see it as “anathema to Filipino culture” and fear it would legalise promiscuity, break up families and be detrimental to children, based on a 2007 paper by legal expert Charmian K Gloria.
AJ Alfafara, 47, set out as an advocate for divorce legalisation after realising the hostile impact the illegality of it was having on women. She believes the dearth of an choice to divorce is fundamentally “unfair”.
She tells The Independent: “The inability to legally dissolve a wedding within the Philippines leaves many trapped in abusive and unfulfilling relationships, which may have detrimental effects on mental health and financial stability.”
She believes that “legalising divorce would offer a way for people to flee harmful situations and gain a fresh start, improving their well-being and fairness within the distribution of marital assets and responsibilities.”
Alfafara says that folks might make mistakes in selecting their partners but “it’s essential to legally recognise those that have suffered in unhappy marriages”.
“You can’t just brush it off. The emotional scars are deep, and it affects your whole being,” Clarissa Avendano, an activist who tried and didn’t end her marriage through the Philippines’ existing system, tells The Independent. “It will not be easy to maneuver on.”
When president Ferdinand Marcos Jr took office in 2022, he showed openness to legalising divorce, acknowledging that while some cases might warrant it, the method shouldn’t be overly simplistic.
Even though Filipinos can pursue legal separation, which allows spouses to live apart and voids shared property rights, it doesn’t formally dissolve the wedding. The country’s Family Code also has a strict set of conditions through which a separation is permitted, including abandonment, repeated acts of domestic violence and being sentenced to greater than six years in prison.
They also can apply for annulment – a costly process that demands solid proof that the wedding was invalid to start with, or if one partner is incapable of consummating the wedding – or a declaration that they were never legally married in the primary place, resembling if one or each partners was under the age of 18.
The Catholic Church argues that there is no such thing as a need for divorce within the country because these provisions are sufficient.
Avendano, 52, says pursuing annulment takes years and is a draining process.
Her late husband used to physically assault her and had a drinking problem, she says as she tears up. She tolerated his behaviour for years but at some point her late husband hit her 15-year-old child. For her, that was the turning point.
“He will not be only harming me, he’s harming my child,” she thought to herself.
Shattered after years of abusive partnership, Avendano left the wedding. After paying a lawyer 250,000 Philippine pesos (roughly £3,360), nothing happened. Three years later, she gave up the hope of annulment. Even though the wealthy can possibly afford these costs, the poorest among the many country’s 116 million population are left more vulnerable.
Avendano, who suffered in a foul marriage for years, is now committed to supporting others in similar situations.
“Technically and practically, individuals who got legally separated and annulment – they still must have this divorce, just because for the legally separated they can’t be (re)married, and for annulment, you probably did not recognise that there was a wedding,” Millora says of the annulment process.
“We need to acknowledge that we got married and once upon a time, we were so in love, and we were in search of our eternally and happily ever after, but we didn’t know that we wouldn’t have a fairytale.” For a few of us “it’s happily never after”, Millora says.
Millora is the secretary general of Divorce Pilipinas Coalition, an advocacy group.
“Divorce will not be about making it easy to remarry but about giving people a probability to correct past mistakes and achieve legal recognition for his or her children,” Millora emphasises.
There stays strong opposition to the proposed divorce bill. The bill narrowly passed the lower house on its third reading, with 126 votes in favour, 109 against, and 20 abstentions.
Its principal writer, Edcel Lagman, stays hopeful about its prospects within the Senate.
“I’m optimistic that before the tip of the sitting parliament in 2025, we are going to join the community of countries in legalising divorce,” Lagman said.
High-profile senators, meanwhile, have advocated for expanding costly annulment procedures as an alternative. A big coalition of anti-divorce groups argues that divorce would harm families, while some campaigners suggest making legal separation more cost-effective for cases of abuse.
In June, over 40 organisations united to create the Super Coalition Against Divorce, aiming “to work together to stop anti-family and anti-life laws from being passed in Congress”, based on a Facebook post by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.
“Divorce breaks up families on a colossal scale,” said Tim Laws, a campaigner for the Alliance for the Family Foundation Philippines, Inc.
Even though support for legalisation is growing, there’s caution. Women speak in hushed tones if there are problems in a wedding. “Many are frightened about what their neighbours will say,” Millora says. Women, even survivors of domestic abuse, are scared to come back out in public for fear of being expelled from the church or being penalised for supporting divorce.
Miljoy Malicdem, one other advocate working with Divorce Pilipinas Coalition, says: “I need to encourage those like me to come back out and be strong.”
At the center of this sisterhood is the resolve of those women to assist others achieve freedom. She says they understand how women suffer in patriarchal systems and are willing to take one step at a time to dismantle it. Having known the pain of a foul marriage, they’re forming networks of empathy amongst those that are struggling down the identical path.
