MANILA, Philippines - Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares filed a bill that seeks to make annulment more accessible to the poor.

House Bill 3952 seeks to recognize spousal violence, infidelity and abandonment as presumptive psychological incapacity, one of the grounds for annulment of marriage.

Troubled couples in the Philippines turn to annulment, or the process of declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, which only terminates a bad marriage, an annulled union is treated as if it never existed.

Getting out of a marriage is sometimes more expensive than getting into one. The process of having an annulment does not only require a lot of money and resources due to court filing and lawyer's fees -- it also takes a lot of time and energy.

It took more than 30 years, for instance, for the Court of Appeals to deny a man's petition for annulment from his estranged wife.