Failure to provide child support: a crime?

Due to recent pronouncements, the topic of fathers evading their responsibility to provide child support has generated a discussion among members of the community. But is the failure to provide, already grounds for imprisonment?

For some time now, R.A. No. 9262 or the Anti-Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC) Act, has been a reliable means for protecting the rights of women and children against abuse. It even contains two provisions on penalizing those who refuse to provide financial support to women and their children. 

The first provision is found in Paragraph 2, Sec. 5(e), which states that the following act committed with the purpose or effect of controlling or restricting the woman’s or her child’s movement or conduct is punishable: “xxx 2) Depriving or threatening to deprive the woman or her children of financial support legally due her or her family, or deliberately providing the woman’s children insufficient financial support; xxx.” An individual who then violates this rule is penalized with imprisonment of at least six months and one day to six years. 

Sec. 5(i), the second provision, punishes the act “causing mental or emotional anguish, public ridicule or humiliation to the woman or her child, including but not limited to, repeated verbal and emotional abuse, and denial of financial support or custody of minor children of access to the woman’s child/children.” An individual who then commits this violation can be imprisoned for six years and one day to twelve years. 

On that note, it is necessary to clarify: is the mere failure or denial to provide financial support already punishable under either of the above provisions? 

Recent jurisprudence provides that it is not. The Supreme Court held in Acharon v. People of the Philippines (G.R. No. 224946, November 9, 2021), that the language of Par. 2 Sec. 5(e) is clear: the deprivation of financial support, to be punishable, must have the “purpose or effect of controlling or restricting the woman’s movement or conduct.” If read in its entirety, Sec. 5(e) punishes the acts and employment of machinations that have the effect of either 1) compelling a woman and/or her child to do something unwillingly or (2) preventing her and/or her child from doing something which is within their rights to do. Without these elements, the mere failure to provide support will entail only civil and not criminal liability. 

This especially applies to Sec. 5(i) of the VAWC Act. The Court in the same case explained that the word “denial” is defined as “refusal to satisfy a request or desire” or “the act of not allowing someone to do or have something.” It connotes willfulness, or an active exertion of effort so that one would not be able to have or do something. This may be contrasted with the word “failure”, defined as “the fact of not doing something [one] should have done, which in turn connotes passivity. From the plain meaning of the words used, the act punished under Sec. 5(i) requires a concurrence between intent, freedom, and intelligence in order to consummate the crime. 

For this reason, it must ultimately be proven that the accused had the intent of inflicting mental or emotional anguish upon the woman, thereby inflicting psychological violence upon her, with the willful denial of financial support being the means selected by the accused to accomplish the said purpose.

In addition, the Court emphasized that the obligation to give support is measured “in keeping with the financial capacity of the family” and that the amount of support should be “in proportion to the resources or means of the giver and to the necessities of the recipient.” In other words, when the law requires financial support from the spouse or parent, it does not force such person to give more than what he or she can actually provide. 

It thus follows that while estranged fathers have the obligation to provide financial support to their children, it does not necessarily mean that the mere failure or denial to do so would immediately result in criminal liability and imprisonment under the VAWC Act. Of course, the mothers still have the remedy of filing a civil case for support under the Family Code and the Civil Code to compel the neglecting fathers to fulfill their obligation and provide financial support in proportion to their means and their children’s necessities.