THIS entry should have been entitled "Random Discovery #6", but I realized that this thought has been floating randomly in my mind since law school days so it does not really count as a discovery. I watched this report on TV that talked about illegitimate children, and the topic for this entry came up in my mind.
Do you know that there are such people as forever illegitimate children from married parents? What I mean is, these children have parents who are married to each other, but for some specific legal reason, they are still considered illegitimate.
Here's how such a thing could happen in the Philippines:
When unmarried Mr. X has sexual intercourse with unmarried Miss Y, they produce an illegitimate offspring who can be subsequently legitimated upon the marriage of Mr. X and Miss Y. Unfortunately, this process of legitimation does not apply when one or both parties are already married to different people at the time that the sexual intercourse took place - even when one or both of the pre-existing marriages is later on declared void or annulled by a court.
This was the legal quandary Sharon Cuneta found herself in when she discovered (presumably much to her chagrin) that she could never be legitimated even after her father, the late Pasay City Mayor Pablo Cuneta, married her mother. Apparently, Ate Shawie was conceived at a time when the late Mayor was still married to someone else.
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