There are many situations in which the marriage has fallen apart so much that the only thing left to do is divorce. One of the most common ones is physical abuse by the partner, followed by infidelity, lack of communication, and incompatibility. As experts from Survive Divorce say, “Few situations in marriage can leave a woman feeling more powerless and fearing for her safety than being in an abusive relationship with her husband.”
In most of the countries, there would be nothing wrong with that. After all, divorces happen every day. However, there are some countries in which no matter how bad your marriage is, you cannot end it through a divorce. You might be thinking - but it’s the XXI century, how is that possible? As it turns out in many places, there was no established divorce law until recently - take Malta as an example, where it was introduced in 2011. One of the countries is trying to introduce into their law system, however, without any results for now.
So, let’s look closer into this matter, shall we? The two countries in which getting a divorce is illegal are…
Vatican City
Vatican City was established in 1929 as an enclaved independent-city state, on which territory all the Catholic doctrines and laws apply. The Catholics don’t believe in a divorce - for them, a marriage is a permanent union. As it is written in the ‘Catechism of Catholic Church’ - “Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign.”
The only thing that couples can do in a situation when they want to end their marriage is an annulment. However, to do that, they need to have a solid reason. Generally, there are three areas in which a marriage cannot be considered as valid.
The first one is the lack of capacity. For example, someone who is already married or vowed celibacy will not be able to enter a marriage, just like a person who is of an insufficient age (16 for men, 14 for women). The second one is the lack of consent. For a marriage to be valid, both partners have to consent to it. If the partner has a radically different understanding of what is a marriage from the one of the Catholic Church, it is not valid. This also includes people who were forced to get married - their marriage is not considered valid. The last one is the lack of form. If a person decides to have a non-Catholic wedding (because, for example, the other party is protestant and they choose to have a protestant wedding), they need to have a dispensation from their bishop. If they fail to do so, their marriage is invalid.
The Philippines
The Philippines are the second country in which a divorce is illegal. Even if there is evidence of one of the spouses abusing the other or them being addicted to alcohol or/and drugs, the only thing that the law allows is a separation. However, even in this case, both spouses cannot remarry. The only way that you can end a marriage, apart from death, is by getting it annulled. However, not everyone can afford that, which forces them to spend their life being in an unhappy and often abusive relationship.
Annulment of a marriage can be achieved through a civil case, during which you have to prove that the spouse was ‘psychologically incapacitated’ or was forced to enter the marriage and haven’t decided freely to live as husband and wife. Another thing that can serve as a ground for annulment is serious deception, such as if one of the spouses hid a drug addiction, incurable sexually transmitted disease or impotence.
The trial regarding the annulment of a marriage can last even up to 10 years, and even if the process is faster, the legal fees are still around 50% of an annual income of an average Filipino worker. This means that more impoverished families would probably not be able to afford that.
However, just because the divorce is illegal now, it doesn’t mean that people living there haven’t tried to legalize it. The campaigners have been desperately fighting to create a legal path that would allow Filipino citizens to divorce and escape unhappy marriages. The divorce bill has passed its thyroid stage in March of 2018; however, for it to be legal, it has to be signed by the President who is against divorces altogether. At the moment, the only people in the Philippines that can get a divorce are Muslims, according to the Sharia law.
Final Thoughts
Despite it being the XXI century, there are still countries in which getting a divorce is impossible. There might be other ways of ending a marriage - however, they are not available to everyone. In one of the countries, the government is trying to change this situation, but will it succeed? Guess we will see in the future.
References: Bedbible.com
