IMELDA MANALAYSAY PILAPIL, petitioner,

vs.
HON. CORONA IBAY-SOMERA, in her capacity as Presiding Judge of the Regional Trial
Court of Manila, Branch XXVI; HON. LUIS C. VICTOR, in his capacity as the City Fiscal
of Manila; and ERICH EKKEHARD GEILING, respondents.

G.R. No. 80116 June 30, 1989

REGALADO, J.:

FACTS: An ill-starred marriage of a Filipina and a foreigner which ended in a foreign absolute
divorce, only to be followed by a criminal infidelity suit of the latter against the former, provides
Us the opportunity to lay down a decisional rule on what hitherto appears to be an unresolved
jurisdictional question.

On September 7, 1979, petitioner Imelda Manalaysay Pilapil, a Filipino citizen, and private
respondent Erich Ekkehard Geiling, a German national, were married before the Registrar of
Births, Marriages and Deaths at Friedensweiler in the Federal Republic of Germany. The
marriage started auspiciously enough, and the couple lived together for some time in Malate,
Manila where their only child, Isabella Pilapil Geiling, was born on April 20, 1980. Thereafter,
marital discord set in, with mutual recriminations between the spouses, followed by a separation
de facto between them.

After about three and a half years of marriage, such connubial disharmony eventuated in private
respondent initiating a divorce proceeding against petitioner in Germany before the Schoneberg
Local Court in January, 1983. He claimed that there was failure of their marriage and that they
had been living apart since April, 1982. On January 15, 1986, Division 20 of the Schoneberg
Local Court, Federal Republic of Germany, promulgated a decree of divorce on the ground of
failure of marriage of the spouses. The custody of the child was granted to petitioner. On June
27, 1986, or more than five months after the issuance of the divorce decree, private respondent
filed two complaints for adultery before the City Fiscal of Manila alleging that, while still
married to said respondent, petitioner had an affair with a certain William Chia as early as 1982
and with yet another man named Jesus Chua sometime in 1983.

ISSUES: Whether or not private respondent Geiling can prosecute petitioner on the ground of
adultery even though they are no longer husband and wife as decree of divorce was already
issued.

RULING: Pursuant to his national law, private respondent is no longer the husband of
petitioner. He would have no standing to sue in the case below as petitioner's husband entitled to
exercise control over conjugal assets.