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Monday, June 26, 2006
Editorial: Solo flights
TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, when Jill’s husband walked out of their lives, she had a lot of broken pieces to paste together. (Real names withheld.)
She had to make her two toddlers, aged 3 ½ and 2 years, understand they had nothing to do with their father’s departure. Her broken parents cried when they realized how she kept it from them that her husband beat her, cocked his gun at her, and bawled her out in public places.
The career in investments she built teetered dangerously after hubby created a public scandal, beating her in front of clients and colleagues until her manager locked her inside the bank vault.
Looking back, Jill, now 52 and a successful entrepreneur, says that, apart from her faith, family and friends, she leaned on one person: the long-time helper who cared for her since she was a girl.
“Bahala nga gibiyaan ko’g bana. Ayaw lang ko biya-i, Nanay (never mind if my husband deserted me, just don’t leave me),” she told her yaya then when Jill was just 25 and struggling to be her children’s provider, mother and friend.
Today, single parents can rely on a more supportive legal and institutional climate, an improvement favoring the four to five couples in Cebu City that split and seek annulment every week from January to May this year.
“Social reality”
Even from the standpoint of numbers, the track record of marriages has slightly improved. As Karlon N. Rama reported in Sun.Star Cebu’s three-part special report on “Going solo” (June 20-22, 2006), marriages dissolved in 2003 at a rate of almost seven a week or “practically one couple every 24 hours.”
The social reality of dissolving marriages crosses boundaries, affecting the marginalized as well as the educated and well-off. That most of those filing petitions for annulment are rich may indicate that annulment remains beyond individuals with limited resources.
Marie, 53, recalls that her church annulment, filed in 1987 and granted in 1988, cost her P5,000. The lawyer’s fee and incidentals for her 1997 civil annulment cost around P50,000. A close friend shelled out P150,000 for the lawyer handling her annulment petition two years ago.
For Jill and Marie, their church and civil annulments symbolized a “cleaning of the slate,” a necessary formality to close a chapter and move on in their life. Their ex-husbands never gave child support but both women say they were just relieved to be free of them. The women relied on their careers and investments to put their children through college.
For Emma, 35, a market vendor, annulment’s promise of freedom draws a more gut-level reaction: she wants to put her children and herself beyond the reach of her drug-addict husband after he tried to roast them alive.
In Jujemay G. Awit’s June 21 special report “Escaping hell,” Emma is at her wit’s end, especially as neither police detention, barangay protection orders nor jail has kept her husband at bay. As her earnings barely cover the daily needs of six children, Emma has been advised to approach the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Free Legal Aid for help in seeking annulment.
Patching holes
While it is human to err, it is much more human to avoid or recover from mistakes.
In Pachico A. Seares’ and Rianne C. Tecson’s special reports, published last June 20 and 21 respectively, pre-nuptial agreements or pre-nups are not yet widely practiced in the country except among celebrities.
Given the trend of separations and annulments, a pre-nup (or marriage settlement, according to Philippine laws) protects contracting parties by delineating “how they will share or divide their properties once they tie the knot.” This contract is executed and notarized before the marriage.
When things do not work out between a couple, solo parents can turn to the dry and legal for comfort. In the June 22 closing of the special report, Tecson writes about the benefits to be availed of through Republic Act (RA) 8972, or the Solo Parents Welfare Act of 2000.
Barangay Councilor Fortunato Abangan of Langtad, Naga town heads the Municipal Federation of Solo Parents Club in Naga. According to Tecson’s special report, Naga tops the list of solo parents given an identification card or certificate of eligibility by the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
Since nine in 10 single parents, representing 91 percent, live below the poverty line, the DSWD-registered solo parents are more after the health, livelihood and psycho-social services provided for by RA 8972.
Perhaps the years have only dulled a little the stigma of going solo. But for the women, men and children surviving broken marriages, the lessons have gone down well, if not with grace.
“Single parents have to realize that they have nobody else to rely on but themselves," Abangan told Sun.Star Cebu’s Tecson. “Raising children alone is indeed not easy but it’s not impossible either.”
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 26, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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