Jarillo v. People

Summary

The Supreme Court's Special Third Division denied with finality Victoria Jarillo's Motion for Reconsideration of her bigamy conviction. Jarillo argued that Article 40 of the Family Code, requiring judicial declaration of nullity of a previous marriage before contracting a subsequent one, should not apply to marriages entered into before the Family Code's effectivity. The Court rejected this argument, reaffirming that Article 40 is a procedural rule with retroactive application under Article 256 of the Family Code. The Court emphasized that allowing such arguments would enable bigamists to escape prosecution by claiming void first marriages without prior judicial declarations, thus rendering bigamy provisions nugatory. The resolution reinforces the mandatory nature of obtaining judicial declarations of nullity before subsequent marriages, regardless of when the original marriages were contracted.