MANILA, 14 February 2008 — The number of marriages in the Philippines has been on the decline in the past years, while petitions for civil annulments are rising 15 percent a year, government records show.
A report by the National Statistics Office (NSO) showed that 2004 figure of 582,281 couples who tied the knot was down two percent from the 2003 total of 593,553 weddings.
Translated to daily weddings, some 1,626 pairs were wedded in 2003, while there were only 1,591 pairs who got married every day in 2004.
Registered marriages revealed that married couples preferred civil weddings (47.4 percent). The rest were either we in church, Muslim or tribal rites.
Women tend to marry earlier than men, NSO further found out. Women who got married were at 24.7 age, men were at 27.4 age range.
A big 39.3 percent or 228,936 women were in the age bracket of 20-24 years. Men, 39.3 percent or 191, 708 were in 25-29 age brackets.
The number of teenage brides who were 18 and 19-year olds increased four-fold at 77, 038. Men and women who were in their 50s who got married numbered 19,707 and 8, 812 respectively.
The month of April, surprisingly, was the favorite wedding month in the past five years.
Some 65,168 weddings were solemnized during this month in 2004, an average of 2,172 daily marriages.
The National Capital Region (Manila and satellite cities) had the highest number of marriages at 92,921, followed by Calabarzon (Calamba-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal-Quezon) at 76, 800 and Central Luzon (Bulacan, Bataan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Zambales, Nueva Ecija and Aurora) at 72, 861.
The Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, comprising Basilan, Lanao Del Sur, Maguindanao, Sharif Kabunsuan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi plus the city of Marawi, had the lowest number of solemnized marriages at 2, 624 or a small 0.5 percent.
In another report, the Office of the Solicitor General noted an increase in the number of petitions for civil annulments, and that two in five young adults want divorce to be made legal.
Worse, more people are living together without getting married.
Last year 7,753 cases were filed in the courts for annulment, compared with 4,529 in 2001, Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera said. “We are disturbed with the surge in the number of annulments of marriage filed,” she told reporters.
Devanadera said cases had risen annually over the past seven years in a country where the Roman Catholic Church still holds considerable sway over the moral conduct of the majority of its 90 million people.
The state is required by the constitution to protect the institution of marriage, which may only be dissolved with a court finding of either lack of parental consent for unions involving minors, insanity, fraud, force, intimidation or undue influence, impotence and sexually-transmissible disease.
The courts may also declare marriages null for technical reasons as well as bigamy, polygamy, incest, and psychological incapacity.
Fewer than 100 annulments a year are granted by the church where it can be proven the marriage was not consummated.
Official data from the National Statistical Coordination Board yesterday found that 40 percent of adults aged 15 to 24 agreed to a bill that would legalize divorce.
The number of Filipinos choosing to live with their partners rather than marry also rose steadily from 5.3 million to eight million over the 10 years to 2003, according to the data.
Eighteen percent of young Filipino adults were willing to enter into live-in arrangements, while 24 percent approved of women engaging in pre-marital sex or going into relationships that do not lead to marriage, the figures showed.
“The statistics as presented here reveal changing marriage characteristics of our Filipino women and most importantly the changing attitudes of our youth,” the board’s director Romulo Virola said.
“It is also evident that the character of union among Filipino youth is changing because formal marriage has declined and cohabitation has increased.” (With input from Agence France Presse)
