Santos v. CA, 240 SCRA 20

FACTS: Leouel and Julia were married on September 20, 1986. They were first married before the MTC in Iloilo. Shortly, they married in a church. They lived with Julia’s parents. Soon, she gave birth to their first child. Some disagreements the couple had was the issue of living independently from Julia’s parents. On 18 May 1988, Julia finally left for USA to work as a nurse. Julia, via phone call, promised to return home upon the expiration of her contract in July 1989. She never did. When Leouel got a chance to visit the United States, where he underwent a training program of AFP, he desperately tried to locate, or to somehow get in touch with, Julia but all his efforts were of no avail. Having failed to get Julia to come home, Leouel filed with the RTC a complaint for voiding their marriage on the ground of psychological incapacity. RTC dismissed the complaint. CA affirmed the dismissal. Hence, this petition.

ISSUE: W/N Julia’s failure to return home or at the very least to communicate with him, for more than five years are circumstances that clearly show her being psychologically incapacitated

HELD: No. Justice Sempio-Diy opined that psychological incapacity must be characterized by (a) gravity, (b) juridical antecedence, and (c) incurability. The incapacity must be grave or serious such that the party would be incapable of carrying out the ordinary duties required in marriage; it must be rooted in the history of the party antedating the marriage, although the overt manifestations may emerge only after the marriage; and it must be incurable or, even if it were otherwise, the cure would be beyond the means of the party involved. The intendment of the law has been to confine the meaning of "psychological incapacity" to the most serious cases of personality disorders clearly demonstrative of an utter intensitivity or inability to give meaning and significance to the marriage. The case at bar can ,in no measure at all, come close to the standards required to decree a nullity of marriage.