GR 137110; (August, 2000) (Digest)
G.R. No. 137110 ; August 1, 2000
VINCENT PAUL G. MERCADO a.k.a. VINCENT G. MERCADO, petitioner, vs. CONSUELO TAN, respondent.
FACTS
Petitioner Vincent Paul G. Mercado was lawfully married to Ma. Thelma Oliva on April 10, 1976. While this first marriage was still subsisting, he contracted a second marriage with respondent Consuelo Tan on June 27, 1991. A child was born from this second union. Subsequently, on October 5, 1992, Tan filed a letter-complaint for bigamy against Mercado. It was only on November 13, 1992, after the bigamy complaint was filed, that Mercado initiated an action for the declaration of nullity of his first marriage to Oliva. The Regional Trial Court of Cebu declared that first marriage null and void in a Decision dated May 6, 1993.
ISSUE
Whether the subsequent judicial declaration of nullity of the first marriage absolves the petitioner of criminal liability for bigamy, which was committed prior to such declaration.
RULING
No, the subsequent judicial declaration does not absolve the petitioner. The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction for bigamy. The crime of bigamy, under Article 349 of the Revised Penal Code, is consummated at the moment a person contracts a second marriage before the first marriage has been legally dissolved. All the essential elements of the crime were present when Mercado married Tan: (1) a valid first marriage, (2) that marriage was not yet legally dissolved, (3) he contracted a second marriage, and (4) the second marriage had all the essential requisites for validity.
The Court emphasized that for purposes of contracting a subsequent marriage, Article 40 of the Family Code mandates that the absolute nullity of a prior marriage must be based solely on a final judgment declaring such previous marriage void. This judicial declaration must precede the celebration of the subsequent marriage. Here, the nullity decree was obtained only after Mercado had already contracted the second marriage and after the criminal charge for bigamy had been instituted. His prior marriage was therefore legally existing and undissolved at the critical time he married Tan. The subsequent judicial declaration has no retroactive effect to extinguish his criminal liability, which attached at the moment the bigamous marriage was celebrated. The law requires a judicial declaration precisely to establish the nullity of the first marriage conclusively before a new marital union is entered, preventing the very situation where a person unilaterally assumes a marriage is void and remarries at peril.