SECOND DIVISION
[ G.R. No. 265808, January 22, 2025 ]
LEONCIO L. MELOCOTON, PETITIONER, VS. JENNIFER B. PRING AND THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES, RESPONDENTS.
CONCURRENCE
LAZARO-JAVIER, J.:
The ponencia upheld the validity of the marriage between petitioner Leoncio L. Melocoton (Melocoton) and Jennifer B. Pring (Pring), ordaining that though Melocoton did not raise the status of his marriage with Pring as an issue, the same is intertwined or closely related with his appeal on their property relations. Thus, the Court of Appeals correctly ruled upon the validity of their marriage.
I concur with the ponencia's sound disquisition and further submit that while Melocoton limited his appeal only to contest Pring's alleged share in the subject properties, the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), on behalf of the Republic, notably assailed the trial court's finding that Melocoton and Pring's marriage is bigamous.1 In fact, the OSG argued that Melocoton failed to prove that his first marriage with Susan Jimenez (Jimenez) was valid and subsisting when he married Pring.2 Clearly, therefore, the validity of Melocoton and Pring's marriage was still very much an issue on appeal. I thus agree that the case has not attained finality as regards this particular issue.
Here, Melocoton hinges his allegations solely on one piece of documentary evidence: the marriage certificate of his first marriage with Jimenez. He claims that such is enough proof that his marriage with Jimenez was valid and subsisting when he married Pring.
I disagree. In my view, the Court of Appeals correctly ordained that the marriage certificate is insufficient to prove that Melocoton' s first marriage was still valid at the time of the second marriage. As aptly ratiocinated by the appellate court:3
While the marriage certificate is the primary proof of marriage, the fact that the same marriage subsists is not always reflected in the marriage certificate. For one-thing, the death of a spouse, which surely dissolves a marriage will not show in the marriage certificate. For another thing, a spouse who acquired a foreign citizenship and got divorced in the foreign jurisdiction, may not have her marriage certificate in the Philippines automatically or timely updated.
Only cancellation of marriage by final and executory order of the competent court may be reflected in the marriage certificate. This is usually printed on the margin of the marriage certificate by the Office of the Civil Register General and the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Thus, a marriage subsists until it is annulled or one of the spouses is dead. At the very least, proof of life of the prior spouse at the time when the second marriage was contracted should be presented as evidence if one is to allege bigamy.
So, with only the certificate of marriage—a photocopy of only the front page at that—in recorded evidence here, We know nothing of the status of Leoncio's first marriage. Although, Leoncio testified in passing that his prior wife is now in the United States of America, this statement is self-serving and offers nothing of evidentiary value unless corroborated.
Indeed, before a marriage may be annulled on the ground of bigamy, it must be duly shown that the second marriage being assailed as bigamous was contracted during the subsistence of the first marriage. Thus, in Iwasawa v. Gangan,4 the Court agreed that the marriage between the parties is bigamous when the totality of the evidence on record sufficiently showed that: (1) respondent married Arambulo on June 20, 1994 in Manila; (2) respondent contracted a second marriage with petitioner on November 28, 2002 in Pasay City; (3) there was no judicial declaration of nullity of marriage of respondent with Arambulo when she married petitioner; and (4) Arambulo died only on July 14, 2009.
Compared to Iwasawa, the evidence here is sorely lacking. Worse, the marriage certificate relied upon by Melocoton is a mere photocopy, and an incomplete one, as it consists only of the first page. Sans any other evidence apart from his bare allegations, the real status of Melocoton' s first marriage when he married anew cannot be ascertained. Consequently, it cannot be said that Melocoton was able to prove that his second marriage with Pring is bigamous.
In any case, semper praesumitur pro matrimonio. The presumption is always in favor of the validity of the marriage.(awÞhi(5 Thus, doubt being present in this case, it must be presumed that Melocoton and Pring's marriage is valid instead of void for being bigamous. Consequently, the subject properties are conjugal in nature.
Thus, I vote to DENY the Petition for Review on Certiorari and affirm the Decision dated May 16, 2022 and Resolution dated December 13, 2022 of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. CV No. 05413-MIN, declaring the marriage of petitioner Leoncio L. Melocoton and respondent Jennifer B. Pring valid.
Footnotes
1 Ponencia, pp. 3-4.
2 Id.
3 Decision dated May 16, 2022 of the Court of Appeals in CA-G.R. CV No. 05413-MIN, pp. 7-8.
4 717 Phil. 825 (2013) [Per J. Villarama, Jr., First Division].
5 Alcantara v. Alcantara, 558 Phil. 192 (2007) [Per J. Chico-Nazario, Third Division].
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