Years ago, I remember a cousin who insisted that a mental retardate could enter into a valid marriage. When asked where she got that idea, she referred to a film that starred Vilma Santos. I saw that movie. Vilma Santos’ character was pregnant with Ricky Davao’s (his film character, that is) baby but his mother, played by Armida Siguion Reyna, wouldn’t allow him to marry her. So, to “give the child a name”, she was married to Davao’s retarded brother, played by Tonton Gutierrez.
It was an impossible plot. One would think that people would be able to tell between fact and fiction but that is not always the case. Movies can mislead in so many ways. Scenes where the lawyer is passionately arguing in front of the judge — may pa-dipa dipa pa — LOL that doesn’t happen in the Philippines where there are no opening and closing statements in a trial.
But, anyway, back to the issue of whether a retard can enter into a marriage, modern legal systems require the consent of both parties as a requisite to a valid marriage. “Consent” means that both parties know that they are entering into a marriage and that it is their intention to enter into a marriage.
In Philippine law, there is a presumption that youth mitigates consent and therefore requires a person to be of a certain age to enter into a valid marriage. There is also a presumption that the mentally ill or mentally handicapped are incapable of giving the kind of consent that can be considered free. In fact, even things like fraud, coercion and duress affect a person’s capacity to give consent so that a person coerced into a marriage may seek to have it annulled later on unless he/she freely cohabits with the other party after the marriage has been performed.
In short, the kind of consent that the law requires is consent freely given.
Consider a man terminally ill with AIDS, partially blind, bedridden and who communicates by grunting. He has TB and meningitis and a Glasgow coma level of 7/15. In that state, he was married. Two months later, he died, leaving his widow entitled to his pension. The dead man’s mother cries foul and seeks to have the marriage declared null and void. It’s not a movie. It’s a real case in South Africa.
The man was physically disabled when he married, no doubt. But were his mental faculties impaired to such a point that he could not have given his consent freely?
I think the widow has a fighting chance.
No legal consultations, sorry, this is a blog.
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