WATCH this woman Lourdes.  She married Socrates in 1976. In the year 1983, while her marriage to Socrates was still subsisting, she married Silverio. You get the drift? In 2004, the daughter of Silverio by a previous marriage sued Lourdes for bigamy. Lourdes countered that she cannot be sued for bigamy as her marriage to Socrates was annulled in 2003 and the annulment declared that her marriage to Socrates was void ab initio, or from the very beginning and therefore there is no marriage to talk about. The RTC agreed with Lourdes and dismissed the bigamy case. The Supreme Court disagreed saying that bigamy, as penalized under Art. 349 of the Revised Penal Code, have the following elements: a) the offender has been legally married; b) the marriage has not been fully dissolved or, in case his or her spouse is absent, the absent spouse could not yet be presumed dead according to the Civil Code; c) that he contracts a second or subsequent marriage; and d) the second or subsequent marriage has all the essential requisites for validity. These elements are all present in the case of Lourdes. She cannot just marry again in 1983 while her 1976 marriage was not yet annulled. It was annulled only in 2003. As laid down in the case of Mercado vs. Tan (G.R. No. 137110, August 1, 2000), the subsequent judicial declaration of nullity of the first marriage was immaterial because prior to the declaration of nullity, the crime of bigamy had already been consummated. Even if the accused eventually obtained a declaration that his first marriage was void ab initio, the point is, both the first and the second marriage were subsisting before the first marriage was annulled (Abunado vs. People. G.R. No. 159218, March 30, 2004 [ 622 SCRA 562]). It is essential in the prosecution for bigamy that the second marriage, having all the essential elements, would be valid were it not for the subsistence of the first marriage. Parties to the marriage should not be permitted to judge for themselves its nullity, for the same must be submitted to the judgment of competent courts and only when the nullity of the marriage is so declared can it be held as void, and so long as there is no such declaration the presumption is that the marriage exists. This is the ruling in Montañes vs. Cipriano (G.R. No. 181089, Oct. 22, 2012). With this information, all those relatives of Lourdes and those contemplating on marrying again, secure first an annulment before plunging again into the vast chasm of mystery called marriage. E-mail: joepallugna@yahoo.com