Rooted in the inherited culture of patriarchy, violence against women and their children remains a pervasive social issue in the Philippines. Though strong thrusts to address this problem have been instituted in the legal system, the enduring lack of direct remedy for battered wives to completely sever ties with their abusive husbands poses as a significant gap in their access to justice. With the absence of absolute divorce in the Philippines in general, battered women are left to explore alternative legal remedies to address this problem, such as the filing a petition for declaration of absolute nullity of void marriage under Article 36 of the Family Code on psychological incapacity. However, since 1988 until 2021, there have only been 13 nullity cases granted by the Supreme Court on the ground of psychological incapacity.
Finally, in the 2021 case of Tan-Andal v. Andal, the Supreme Court reconfigured the concept of psychological incapacity from a medical concept to a purely legal one. This gave rise to a significant change in the trend of Supreme Court rulings. The survey of cases since Tan-Andal reveals that majority—63% of cases on nullity of marriage under Article 36—obtained favorable rulings. More importantly, 81% of the cases filed by battered women alleging domestic violence by their husbands as manifestation of the latter’s psychological incapacity have been granted by the Supreme Court. In effect, therefore, the new interpretation of Article 36 of the Family Code under Tan-Andal, in terms of number of cases granted, perceptibly improved the access to justice of battered women in the Philippines.