reconized marriage/Philippines????

[th and jv 3]

What no one has come out and said, is that there is no divorce in the Philippines.

If your wife was realy married before then you are not married.

there are two countries in the world where there is no divorce and the Philippines is one of them.

The reason is the strong catholic influence. You are not married and cant get married to her.

The one obscure exception I have found is if her husband is muslim he can divorce her by saying I divorce you

three times. This exception was made to placate the muslim terrorist/ freedom fighters who dont think they

should be controled by the goverment in manila. A muslim woman can not divorce her husband in this fashion so dont bother converting her.

I went through this 20 years ago. If you look on the Filipino Kisses website about 30% of the women say they are

divorced. they are not there is no divorce in the Philippines.

since you are in this deep already; If you are lucky she married an old man when she was young. which would mean

there is a good chance he was already married to someone else before he married her and therefore their marriage is null and void. It would also increase

the chance that he has since died, meaning that she was free to marry.

You can not take her to another country to get divorced. the US will not "recognize it". they will go with the philippine law which would not recognize it. there are annulments in the Philippines generaly reserved for the rich and famous. You can probably pay a few thousand dollars and get an anaulment. There are misc grounds for anaulment like the marriage was not consumated. But more than likely she dosnt fall under any of the grounds available so you would have to pay the big money and tell a big fib. there is an excellent chance your "wife" was perfectly aware of this and with a desperation born of poverty was willing to shoot for it.

dont bother with a fiance visa she dosnt have capacity to marry.

to sum up, If she was married to a muslim man he can divorce her.

Other than that prove that her first marriage was void because the husband had a prior marriage.

or take a chance on trying to "buy" an annulment. Im not sure if you already filed or not.

If you have not filed yet you might get the idea to just not mention the marriage but the Philippines has a national marriage registry which means it would be fairly easy for the consulate to find her prior marriage even if you managed to get a certificate of no prior marriage. also if she had kids with the prIor husband that would be all over

their birth certificates. to really sum it up "YOU'VE BEEN HAD" I went to three different lawyers in the states including at least one who had offices in the Philippines, they all said you are not married and cant get married. Dan

i beg to disagree that annulment in the Philippines is just for the rich and famous.....

i am talking thru experience......

[th and jv 3]

and...blah blah blah... either 50% full of BS 100% of the time or 100% full of BS 50% of the time...either way...that was a lot of BS.

The OP has not provided enough information (yet) to determine whats the best advice.

i agree....... that information is insufficient......

[Brett-Rio 0]

Yes I agree,this was very vague...

My wife was previously married in HongKong,ofcourse to a foriegner of the philippines.They seperated after a couple of years of marriage and just recently divorced so my wife and i could marry.(They have 1 child together)Husband filed the paperwork not my wife,although it was mutual agreement to do so.

Wife and I married soon after she received divorce papers,with out knowing the Philippines needed to acknowledge this divorce.So I am assuming,that our marriage is null and void since we not take papers to philippines to acknowledge her divorce.

What do I do from here?Can not do CR-1 now,what about fiancee visa?Have we caused problems to marry now appling for K-1?Very ignorant to this,not sure what to do????

[pushbrk 13,250]

Yes I agree,this was very vague...

My wife was previously married in HongKong,ofcourse to a foriegner of the philippines.They seperated after a couple of years of marriage and just recently divorced so my wife and i could marry.(They have 1 child together)Husband filed the paperwork not my wife,although it was mutual agreement to do so.

Wife and I married soon after she received divorce papers,with out knowing the Philippines needed to acknowledge this divorce.So I am assuming,that our marriage is null and void since we not take papers to philippines to acknowledge her divorce.

What do I do from here?Can not do CR-1 now,what about fiancee visa?Have we caused problems to marry now appling for K-1?Very ignorant to this,not sure what to do????

This is helpful but in what country was the divorce obtained? Just "WHOM" is not recognizing your marriage? Is it the PI National Statistics Office? How did you register the marriage in the PI?

The answers are probably going to indicate you need to go back and do whatever is needed to get an NSO marriage certificate prior to filing a petition for spouse. Having "married" whether recognized or not will mess up any fiancee visa process.

[-teRe- 9]

Does this make sence,or is this correct?.....My wife and I married in the Philippines,but apparently,they were not notified of my wifes previous divorce"it was not recognized"...does this make our marriage null???????and if so,do i go for fiancee visa?????GRRRR,please help!

When we refer to "Divorce" in the Philippine context, it is not politically correct to say that such country doesn't have a divorce at all. Contrary to what most people know, we do have a divorce, it has two kinds namely; the absolute--which terminates the marriage vinculum between the spouses and allow them to remarry and the relative divorce or more commonly known as "Legal Separation"---which only refers to the separation from bed and board but which does not terminate the marriage ties of the spouses and concomitantly, will not allow the spouses to remarry as there is still an existing marriage bond.

Now, what we have here in the Philippines is just the second kind of divorce---the relative (Legal Separation).

As regards your question, maybe you can qualify and be exact whom are you referring to by "they", did u mean the Phil courts or any other agency or persons? This is crucial cos we have to know what impact they can give to the recognition of your wife's annulment and/or declaration of nullity decree.