Legal Separation Assistance in the Philippines

At Duran & Duran-Schulze Law, we specializes with family law. We are committed to offer legal services, help you identify the specific grounds for legal separation applicable to your case, and guide you through the process.

Legal Separation

Legal Separation is a judicial process wherein the spouses are to live separately from each other and the obligation of mutual support between the spouses stops, but the marriage bond is not severed. Legally separated couples are not permitted to remarry, since their marriage is still considered valid and subsisting.

Even if you are legally separated from your spouse, the second marriage is still considered invalid and void.

Apart from legal separation, the spouses can put an end to their union or marriage by filing for any of the following remedies:

• Annulment
• Declaration of Nullity of Marriage
• Recognition of Foreign Divorce Decree

Grounds for Legal Separation

Article 55 of the Family Code provides the grounds to petition for legal separation:

• Repeated physical violence or grossly abusive conduct directed against the petitioner, a common child, or a child of the petitioner;
• Physical violence or moral pressure to compel the petitioner to change religious or political affiliation;
• Attempt of respondent to corrupt or induce the petitioner, a common child, or a child of the petitioner, to engage in prostitution, or connivance in such corruption or inducement;
• Final judgment sentencing the respondent to imprisonment of more than six years, even if pardoned;
• Drug addiction or habitual alcoholism of the respondent;
• Lesbianism or homosexuality of the respondent;
• Contracting by the respondent of a subsequent bigamous marriage, whether in the Philippines or abroad;
• Sexual infidelity or perversion;
• Attempt by the respondent against the life of the petitioner; or
• Abandonment of petitioner by respondent without justifiable cause for more than one year.