Supreme Court of the Philippines voids marriage over false cohabitation affidavit

The Supreme Court of the Philippines has voided a marriage after determining that a couple falsely claimed to have lived together for five years to bypass the legal requirement for a marriage license.

Under Article 34 of the Family Code, couples who have lived together as husband and wife for at least five years without legal impediment to marry may marry without a license. The couple in question had lived together since 2003 but executed an affidavit of cohabitation claiming six years of continuous residence to secure the exemption. However, the husband had worked in Israel from 2006 to 2009, an absence that the courts ruled interrupted the required continuous period of cohabitation.

The husband filed a petition in 2013 to declare the marriage void, arguing the affidavit was false due to his time abroad. While the Office of the Solicitor General argued that cohabitation does not require constant physical presence, the Supreme Court's Third Division upheld previous rulings from the Regional Trial Court and the Court of Appeals, maintaining that a valid marriage license is a formal requisite of marriage and the affidavit could not serve as a substitute.