Luisito Pulido married Nora Arcon in 1983. Years later, while that marriage was still on record, he married Rowena Baleda. When Nora discovered the second marriage, she filed a criminal complaint for bigamy against Pulido.

Pulido admitted that he had contracted a second marriage. He argued, however, that he could not be guilty of bigamy because both marriages were void.

According to him, his first marriage to Nora was void for lack of a valid marriage license. His second marriage to Rowena was likewise void because it allegedly lacked a valid marriage ceremony. During the proceedings, the courts eventually declared both marriages void—the first for lack of a valid marriage license, and the second because it was bigamous in nature.

Despite this, both the Regional Trial Court and the Court of Appeals convicted Pulido of bigamy. They relied on long-standing Supreme Court decisions holding that even if a prior marriage was void, a person could not invoke that nullity as a defense unless he had first obtained a judicial declaration of nullity before entering into the second marriage. Since Pulido secured the declaration only after contracting the second marriage, the lower courts ruled that the crime had already been committed.

Did the Supreme Court affirm long-standing tradition?

No, it did not. The Court reversed itself. It abandoned its earlier rulings and acquitted Pulido.

According to the Supreme Court, one of the essential elements of bigamy is the existence of a valid first marriage. A marriage that is void ab initio is considered void from the very beginning. In the eyes of the law, it is treated as though it never existed. If the first marriage is void, then one of the essential elements of bigamy is absent.

The Court further explained that Article 40 of the Family Code—which requires a judicial declaration of nullity before a person may remarry—serves a specific purpose. It governs the validity of a subsequent marriage for purposes of remarriage. It does not prevent an accused in a criminal case from proving that the first marriage was void in order to defeat a charge of bigamy.

For this reason, the Supreme Court ruled that a judicial declaration of nullity obtained after the second marriage may still be invoked as a defense in a prosecution for bigamy. The Court likewise held that a judicial declaration that the second marriage was void may also constitute a valid defense where appropriate, abandoning earlier decisions that had held otherwise.

Accordingly, the Supreme Court acquitted Pulido of bigamy and expressly abandoned its previous jurisprudence to the extent that it required a prior judicial declaration of nullity before an accused could rely on the void nature of a marriage as a defense in a criminal prosecution for bigamy.

Pulido v. People of the Philippines. G.R. No. 220149, July 27, 2021