One-sided findings

This case of Dennis and Amy is another case of a marriage turning sour after a whirlwind romance.

Dennis was already working abroad but decided to return here in order to finish his course in business management at an exclusive boys’ school. While staying with his parents at a rented apartelle, he met Amy also studying at an exclusive girls’ school who was a next door neighbor.

After a month of courtship, Dennis and Amy became intimate and their intimacy ultimately led to her pregnancy after more than just a year of being sweethearts. Then on her eight month of pregnancy they got married in civil rites. After marriage they moved to Amy’s place, although they remained dependent on their parents.

When Amy delivered a baby girl, Dennis had to borrow funds from Amy’s best friends to settle the hospital bills. He remained jobless and dependent on his father for support until he finished his college course two years later.

Before Dennis finished his college course it was Amy who took care of the family needs working part time as aerobics instructor and later on as a full time employee in a pharmaceutical company. Being the one with fixed income, Amy shouldered all the family’s expenses like rental, food and other bills.

After Dennis finished college, he found a job selling encyclopedia for three months. Then he found a job as a car salesman in a multinational car dealer. But it is still Amy who shouldered all the household expenses and their child’s schooling because of Dennis’ irregular income. In fact he even spent his first sales commission on a celebratory bash with his friends.

After just eight months of work in the car company, Dennis had an illicit relation with a lady co-employee. When Amy discovered his infidelity, communications between them became rare until they started to sleep in separate rooms, thereby affecting their sexual relationship.

To appease Amy, Dennis gave her a brand new car as a birthday gift. Later on he asked her for two blank checks allegedly for the car’s insurance coverage. Subsequently however, she found out that the checks were not used for the car insurance but for Dennis’ personal needs. Worse, she also found out that the car itself was not yet paid, forcing her to rely on her father-in-law to pay part of the car cost with her shouldering the balance.

To make matters worse,, Dennis was fired from his job after running away with company funds. In fact he was sued, arrested and incarcerated for estafa. After Amy and her mother bailed him out, she discovered that Dennis had also swindled his clients some of whom also threatened her and her mother and sister.

After more than six years of marriage, Dennis was forced to leave the conjugal home because Amy asked him for time and space to think it over. A month later she refused his attempt at reconciliation. When Dennis threatened to commit suicide, Amy and her family left the house to live in another place concealed from him.

Then a year later, Amy finally filed a petition before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) for the declaration of the nullity of their marriage because of Dennis’ psychological incapacity. She presented herself as a witness and testified that Dennis was immature, deceitful, without remorse for his dishonesty and lacked affection. Also presented were the psychiatrist and her findings based on what Amy told her that Dennis has a personality which is inadequate, immature and irresponsible which are mere extensions of his misconduct during childhood. Since Dennis did not even appear and present his evidence, the RTC granted Amy’s petition and declared her marriage to Dennis a nullity. Was the RTC correct?

No. The characteristics of Dennis as described by Amy do not necessarily constitute a case of psychological incapacity. Although indicative of immaturity, it was not necessarily a medically rooted psychological affliction. Emotional immaturity and irresponsibility do not equate with psychological incapacity. Nor were his supposed sexual infidelity and criminal offenses manifestations of psychological incapacity. If at all, they would constitute grounds for an action for legal separation under Article 55 of the Family Code.

Although Amy’s expert witness, the psychiatrist, concluded that Dennis was psychologically incapacitated even before the parties’ marriage, such findings were admittedly based only on the information given by Amy herself, who at the time of her interview was already headstrong in her resolve to have her marriage with Dennis nullified, and harbored ill feelings against him. Besides such findings were one-sided because Dennis was not himself subjected to actual psychiatric evaluation; and that he did not also participate in the proceedings (Mendoza vs. Republic, G.R. 157649, November 12, 2012, 685 SCRA, 16).

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