Psychological Incapacity In Philippine Marriages

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL INCAPACITY?
Characteristics of Psychological Incapacity

Dr. Gerardo Ty Veloso enumerates the following general characteristics of psychological incapacity (Handbook on the Family Code of the Philippines, Alicia V. Sempio-Diy, 1988, 45-46):

1. Gravity. There exists a difficulty in carrying out the normal and ordinary duties of marriage as well as family life compared to the average couple under ordinary circumstances.

2. Antecedence. The incapacity takes its roots prior to the marriage although its overt manifestations appear only subsequent thereto.

3. Incurability. The party is without sufficient means, material or otherwise, to remedy such incapacity.

There are neither exact descriptions nor examples of psychological incapacity. The drafters of the Family Code of the Philippines desire to provide the courts much leeway in its interpretation. They intend said interpretations to be on a case-to-case basis and guided by the following factors: a) experience; b) the findings of experts and researchers in psychological disciplines; and c)by decisions of Church tribunals, which although not binding, are nevertheless persuasive (ibid.,43)
Indications of a person with Psychological Incapacity

Despite the relative interpretation accorded to psychological incapacity, Dr. Veloso lays down a few instances indicative of said disorder, namely (ibid., 44-45):

a) homosexuality in men or lesbianism in women (attachment to the same sex for sexual fulfillment);

b) satyriasis in men or nymphomania in women ( excessive and promiscuous sex hunger);

c) extremely low intelligence;

d) immaturity, i.e. lack of an effective sense of rational judgment and responsibility, otherwise peculiar to infants ( like refusal of the husband to support the family or excessive dependence on parents or peer group approval);

e) epilepsy, with permanently recurring mal-adaptive manifestations;

f) habitual alcoholism, or the condition by which a person lives for the next drink and the next drink and the next drink; and

g) criminality, or the condition by which a person consistently gets in trouble with the law or with socially established norms of conduct.

In addition, retired Court of Appeals Associate Justice Alicia V. Sempio-Diy reveals in her book, Handbook on the Family Code of the Philippines that Father Healy and another expert on church annulments, Archbishop Oscar Cruz, elucidate the following manifestations as additional indicators (ibid., 45):

a) the refusal of the wife to dwell with the husband after the marriage without fault on the part of the latter; or to have sex with the husband; or to have children;

b) when either party or both of them labor under an affliction that makes common life as husband and wife impossible or unbearable such as compulsive gambling; or unbearable jealousy on the part of one party or other psychic or psychological causes of like import and gravity; and

c) manifestations of sociopathic anomalies in husbands like sadism or infliction of physical violence on the wife; constitutional laziness or indolence; drug dependence or addiction; or some kind of psychosexual anomaly

Indeed, psychological incapacity is a disorder difficult to prove. Its general characteristics must first be clearly manifest before it can be used as a ground in severing marital relations.