Can't find record of his Philippine marriage

Please can someone advise?
My partner was married in the Philippines 14 years ago.
his wife was previously married to an English man in the uk and registered the marriage with the Philippine embassy. SHE then apparently divorced him in the uk while still a Filipino citizen.
She then married my partner in the Philippines a few years later, they have now been separated 3 years and he wants a divorce/annulment. She won't give him the marriage certificate so he can. So we applied to the uk births deaths & marriages for a copy of the certificate as they have always lived in the uk, they have no record of the marriage. So we applied to the Philippines e-census for a certificate in his and her names, yet they sent us the one from her first marriage. We contacted e-census to inquire if they had sent the wrong one, according to them the first marriage is valid so they can't send the second one. Does this mean that she didn't have the foreign divorce recognised in the Philippine family court before having a church wedding with my partner? And Is there anyway to find out?
We are now thinking his marriage was null & void from the start!
We are waiting on legal advise at the moment but I'm sure you can appreciate my partner and I are confused.

Philippines does not allow divorce.
Any divorce petitioned overseas by a Filipino citizen is not recognised under Philippine law.

If the foreign spouse is the petitioner then it's possible to have records indicate this and thereby allow the Filipino Citizen to re-marry.

did you post this the other day ? just apply for a cenomar--that will tell you the status

I read it that they did that already ? Maybe I misread though.

Thanks everyone, yes I did post this privately (I think) a few days ago. Thank you though for the feed back!
We have had a new development today.
It turns out m her first husband applied for divorce, pulled out, she applied, found out she wasn't allowed to, so he followed through with the divorce. That then left him legally free in the uk to remarry, she then didn't applied to the Philippine family court to have the divorce recognised/annulled. She confirmed that today. It was then about 2 years later she had a church wedding with my partner in the Philippines

I hope you get it sorted out, at least now there is a little more clarity to your situation than before and you can move forward with the new information you have.

I am guessing now you will be looking at the annulment process, make sure you hire a reputable lawyer who is well versed in the process and who is known not to rip his clients off too much.

One word of warning, if you visit the Philippines to see your chap then you are committing adultery in the eyes of Philippine law and could be jailed, just be careful and try to ascertain that his ex is happy to go through the annulment process, a few pesos or well chosen presents may be the way forward there, see what your chap has to say on the matter

I don't know how much you know about the Philippines but I have a feeling you're about to learn a lot more about the place.

Good luck and remember all is not lost, the annulment process isn't that bad, its just a pain in the backside that you could well do without.

Thank you all for your replies!
Just to clarify though,
I am English and my partner is English, it's his so called "wife" that's Filipino.
The Philippine e-census can't issue the marriage certificate for the second wedding (my partners) because the first marriage is still valid.
the issue lays with her previous marriage. She Married an English man in a uk civil ceremony, then HE divorced her (we found out today), both (Marriage & divorce) took place in the uk. she had the Marriage registered with the Philippine embassy. she NEVER had the Divorce recognised/annulled by the Philippines. About 2 years later She then married my partner in a CHURCH ceremony in the Philippines.
She has just today confirmed that she never had the divorce recognised through the Philippine family court, she only had a uk divorce.
does this mean we are right in believing e-census when they said the second marriage (my partners) is null & void ?
This is where we are a little stuck and aware waiting on legal confirmation.
I have spent that last 8+ months researching Philippine family law and foreign annulment & trying to find some kind of proof of their marriage, that I'm now being told doesn't exist.
My partners "wife" says ..
"I haven't got a clue"
And she can't even produce a marriage certificate.

"So we applied to the uk births deaths & marriages for a copy of the certificate as they have always lived in the uk, they have no record of the marriage."

so--no record of the marriage in the UK--and none in the philippines--so your partner was never legally married. end of.

That's incredible! I thought as much,
It's just a relief to hear it from someone else! And for my partner, after 14 years believing hes married, as you can imagine he wanted proof it was all a lie,
We are utterly relieved really!
Now comes the task of telling his family and children, but I think some champagne is in order first
Merry Christmas to you all and a huge huge thank you!!!

We have had confirmation from e-census that the certificate they sent us is a cenomar of her marital status. It has her first husbands name and hers.
We told her and now she's going nuts says she has the marriage certificate (the one she told us she threw away) she is acting like a child and throwing abuse because we have told her the second marriage is null & void.
Is there anything she can do to cause us a problem? Can she try to register the certificate in the uk 14 years after the event?
I'd very much appreciate any help or advise
Many thanks

she just wants money out of you

Thank you for the quick response.
Probably, that's all she ever seems to care about. She's now pulled out all her papers and has gone to my partners family with them crying about it.
We are still waiting on legal advice.
She seems to think all she needs is the marriage certificate to my partner to prove the marriage is valid.
We are now asking for a declaration of nullity of marriage from lawyer. Is there anything she can do?

What fun!

(I have a Filipina "ex" who is not always terribly sensible either...)

If the first marriage had not been lawfully dissolved when she re-married she committed bigamy, and the second marriage is void.

Don't expect her to be sensible or helpful.

I have just had a thought - the law that permitted Filipino citizens to record their foreign divorce (if instituted by the foreign partner) in the Philippines was passed under President Arroyo, and it may not have been enacted 14 years ago.

I think that your partner's Filipina "ex-non-wife" would be well advised not to attempt to register her bigamous "marriage certificate" in the UK.

Thank you. This morning She's tried producing a certificate saying the first marriage had been dissolved, she refused to show us the names on said certificate. And yet the e-census certificate we got issued last week says otherwise... She's still married to first husband
She is constantly lying and hiding things, I don't trust a word she says.

You would be well advised not to trust anything she says.

I will now put two and two together; there is a risk that I may arrive at "five", but here goes:

There is a Filipino joke about the "University of Recto" (Knightstrike's posts sometimes refer to it).

Recto is the district of Manila where professional forgers are to be found. Some of them are very good. The Filipino male nurse who was jailed for murdering a couple of patients a year or two back was no nurse at all but had got himself a job in an English hospital on the basis of forged qualifications.

In recent years, the Philippines government has started to make use of IT. This has allowed the government to be far more "joined up" than it used to be, and it is now much more difficult to pass off a Recto forgery than it was even ten years ago. Go back thirty years and half the Filipinos working overseas were on forged passports - not so now!

I wonder if the certificate that your partner's ex-non-wife produced in order to get married originated in Recto?

If so, she has now been caught by her own fraud.

The current CENOMAR is the result of the "joining up" of the Philippines government. The marriage that it shows will be the only valid one.

I never knew that! So the dissolution certificate could well be a fake, that would actually make sense! is there any chance she could be unaware of that?
Also a cenomar of marriage is them sending you the only valid marriages certificate right? They say it's a cenomar but it doesn't say that on the certificate, I'm just trying to dot the i's and cross the t's

I agree with @Methersgate. The CENOMAR in the phils will show the correct information. Seems like the marriage never happened.

If your partner isn't married in the Phils and isn't married in the UK then he isn't married. Saved yourself a ton of grief.

There is not the slightest chance that she is unaware, if my theory is correct. She will have bought it. But she may not have considered the act of buying a forgery as something reprehensible. She may just have thought of it as a practical solution to a problem.

Yes, a Cenomar ("Certificate Of No Record Of Marriage") will either say exactly that - no record of marriage - or it will list the valid marriage.

Right! Thank you all! We only received her first marriage certificate when we applied for her the second and then we emailed for advice and was told it was valid unless the previous husband was dead or Muslim etc which he is none. They couldn't send us the second marriage certificate .
So we are right in believing he isn't married, never has been, there's a possibility of fake dissolution paper and her nastiness is because she's been caught out!
I'm so glad we have already contacted uk solicitors and Philippine lawyers through the direct.gov British embassy in Manila.
We gave her the chance to walk away from the issue and say sorry but she's kicked up a fuss and is now trying to prove us wrong

That's amazing! Thank you!!