parties to a marriage should not be permitted to judge for themselves its nullity, only competent courts having such authority. Prior to such declaration of nullity, the validity of the first marriage is beyond question. A party who contracts a second marriage then assumes the risk of being prosecuted for bigamy.58 The commission that drafted the Family Code considered the Landicho ruling in wording Article 40 of the Family Code:59 Art. 40. The absolute nullity of a previous marriage may be invoked for purposes of remarriage on the basis solely of a final judgment declaring such previous marriage void. 1avvphi1 Should the requirement of judicial declaration of nullity be removed as an element of the crime of bigamy, Article 349 of Revised Penal Code becomes useless. "[A]ll that an adventurous bigamist has to do is to . . . contract a subsequent marriage and escape a bigamy charge by simply claiming that the first marriage is void and that the subsequent marriage is equally void for lack of a prior judicial declaration of nullity of the first."60 Further, "[a] party may even enter into a marriage aware of the absence of a requisite—usually the marriage license—and thereafter contract a subsequent marriage without obtaining a judicial declaration of nullity of the first on the assumption that the first marriage is void."61 For these reasons, the Landicho ruling remains good law. It need not be revisited by this court En Banc as petitioner insists.62 The third element of bigamy is likewise present in this case. Petitioner admitted that he subsequently married Alice G. Eduardo on December 4, 1994.63 As for the last element of bigamy, that the subsequent marriage has all the essential requisites for validity, it is presumed. The crime of bigamy was consummated when petitioner subsequently married Alice without his first marriage to Gina having been judicially declared void.64 With all the elements of bigamy present in this case, petitioner was correctly convicted of the crime charged. 1âwphi 1 III Under the Indeterminate Sentence Law, the maximum term of the penalty that may be imposed on petitioner is that which, in view of the attending circumstances, could be properly imposed under the Revised Penal Code. On the other hand, the minimum term of the penalty shall be within the range of the penalty next lower to that prescribed by the Revised Penal Code for the offense. The court then has the discretion to impose a minimum penalty within the range of the penalty next lower to the prescribed penalty. As for the maximum penalty, the attending circumstances are considered.65 The imposable penalty for bigamy is prision mayor.66 The penalty next lower to that is prision correccional. Prision correccional ranges from six (6) months and one (1) day to six (6) years;67 hence, the minimum penalty can be any period within this range. As for the maximum penalty, it should be within the range of prision mayor in its medium period, there being no mitigating or aggravating circumstances. Prision mayor in its medium period ranges from eight (8) years and one (1) day to 10 years. Petitioner was sentenced to suffer the indeterminate penalty of two (2) years and four (4) months of prision correccional as minimum to eight (8) years and one (1) day of prision mayor as maximum.