June, 2005

Annulment

Sometimes it doesn’t take long to find out the person you just married is a raving lunatic.  That mask can come off the day after the wedding, or sooner.  So if the marriage goes stale before the wedding cake does, is it appropriate to get it annulled or do you still have to get a divorce in order to undo your own bout of insanity?

A lot of people like the idea of an annulment because it means you were never married.  It’s like when you were a kid and got a free do-over.    But annulments are actually harder to get than divorces because they are allowed for only limited grounds - which have to be alleged and proven.  There are six of them:

1.Already Married – You only get married once – at least once at a time.  Seems like a no-brainer but Mormons and Divorcees who forget about the 90 day Nisi period will have a problem with this one.  The first annulment I did was for a bride who rushed down the aisle 89 days after her first divorce, making it void as a matter of law.

2.Consanguinity or Affinity – You can’t marry your relatives.  Your mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, grandparents, grandchildren – none of them.  Which makes sense.  But in Massachusetts, you also can’t marry your wife’s relatives.  Do we need a law saying you can’t marry your mother-in-law?

3.Insanity – You have to be of sound mind in order to get married.  Now there’s a Catch-22.

4.Minors – Children under 18 have to be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.  Or at least have them give their written permission.  No permission slip, no marriage.

5.Duress – Remember the old movies where the skeezy banker offered not to foreclose on the hot widow if she married him?  Turns out that trick doesn’t even work.  It has to be of your own free will in order to be valid.

The above grounds for an annulment are pretty limited.  So the legislature gives us a sixth hook to hang our hat on for the “I married a lunatic” candidates:

6.Fraud – You can get your marriage declared null and void if you can show a) you were induced to enter into the marriage through the fraudulent representations of your   spouse; and b) that once you discovered the truth, you killed any further marital relationship with him.

One of the things about fraud is you have to be specific.  You can’t just say “He was a total liar.”  You have to give examples like: “He only married me to get a green card.”  Whatever the specific fraud, you have to prove it and that equates to a “fault” divorce.  We got rid of “fault divorces” because they were unnecessarily protracted and expensive.  And if you are getting divorced after only a few months of marriage, there is nothing to fight over.  So the more civilized route to go is the “no fault divorce.”  No mudslinging needed.  Badda-boom badda-bing, you are in and out in no time.  Ready to try it again.