(Special Proceedings – Husband cannot be forced to live with his wife by Habeas Corpus)
Facts: Erlinda filed with the CA a petition for habeas corpus to have the custody of her husband Potenciano alleging that respondents refused petitioner’s demands to see and visit her husband.
The CA allowed visitation rights to Erlinda for humanitarian consideration but denied the petition for habeas corpus for lack of unlawful restraint or detention of the subject of the petition.
Erlinda seeks to reverse the CA decision dismissing the application for habeas corpus to have the custody of her husband and enforce consortium as the wife.
Potenciano seeks to annul that portion of the CA decision giving Erlinda visitation rights.
Issue: May a wife secure a writ of habeas corpus to compel her husband to live with her in their conjugal dwelling.
Held: No. Marital rights including coverture and living in conjugal dwelling may not be enforced by the extra-ordinary writ of habeas corpus.
A writ of habeas corpus extends to all cases of illegal confinement or detention, or by which the rightful custody of a person is withheld from the one entitled thereto. It is available where a person continuous unlawfully denied of one or more of his constitutional freedom. It is devised as a speedy and effectual remedy to relieve persons from unlawful restrainment, as the best and only sufficient defense of personal freedom.
The essential object and purpose of the writ of habeas corpus is to inquire into all manner of involuntary restraint and to relieve a person therefrom if such restraint is illegal.
A person with full mental capacity coupled with the right choice may not be the subject of visitation rights against free choice. The CA exceeded its authority when it awarded visitation rights in a petition for habeas corpus where Erlinda never even prayed for such right.
No court is empowered as a judicial authority to compel a husband to live with his wife. Coverture cannot be enforced by compulsion of a writ of habeas corpus carried out by the sheriffs or by any other mesne process.
CASE EATER 