Business meetings and board meetings are tiring, time-consuming, sometimes dragging.
The best part is after the meeting. After discussing the serious and semi-serious items on the agenda, we move on to the fun topics. Fun could be anything— about family, travels, love, and other people’s lives. Not to laugh at other people, but to learn a lesson or two. To compare them with our own personal experiences so we are guided on what to do and what not to do.
After the Women’s Business Council Meeting, these were the less serious impromptu topics we talked about:
1. Atty. Lorna Kapunan volunteered to hold a talk on annulment, legal separation, pre-nuptial agreements, family code early next year. Unfortunately, I would most likely be in the United States on that scheduled day. Sayang!
2. She will also guide us in writing a holographic living will and testament. It would be an actual document she would ask us to prepare.
I keep saying this but I myself have not done it—- all of us should and must have a written living will, even if we are not wealthy. Even if you only have 10,000 pesos in savings account and an ATM card, you should plan who to give that to when you say goodbye to mundong ibabaw. Instructions on what to do with your clothes, bags, shoes, daster, etc. Where to donate them, etc. The need to have this document becomes greater if you have a lot of properties and if you have double or triple families.
3. We also talked about church and legal annulments. We were 9 or ten at the meeting and at least four were either separated or annulled. My seatmate told me I am one of the lucky ones who are still happily married. I told her my husband and I quarrel a lot too. But she said it’s a different kind of quarrel.
4.
The process of annulment is tedious. There are court hearings wherein the former spouses are both required to appear in court at the same time. My friend said during the hearing of their annulment case, her husband’s mistress was even sitting at the very front row. Nanay ko po.
It’s not always the men who are at fault. There are also many cases wherein the wife abandoned her husband and small children to be with another man, and in this case, the husband is the one asking for an annulment.
