Like a divorce, an annulment is the legal end of a marriage—the big difference is that when you get an annulment, it’s as though the marriage never occurred. If someone asks your marital status, instead of saying “divorced,” you can say “single,” and if you want to, you can honestly say you’ve never been married.
Many people think of annulment as just for religious people who want to remarry in the church, but there are actually two types of annulment—civil and religious.
Civil Annulment
A civil annulment is granted by the court, just like a divorce. However, it’s not enough for the two spouses to agree that they both want an annulment, even though that’s sufficient grounds for divorce. Because the annulment means that the marriage never existed, it’s a lot harder to get than a divorce.
The grounds for a civil annulment vary from state to state, but generally fall into the same basic categories:
- Legal Impossibility. A marriage that violates state law can be annulled. That would include marriages between close blood relatives, involving a under-age spouse, or where one spouse lacked the mental capacity to consent.
- Moral Impropriety. A marriage based on misrepresentation or fraud (such as when one spouse lied and that lie was a primary factor in the other spouse's consent) or concealment of a significant negative fact, such as a drug addiction or a prior felony conviction, could also be declared void through an annulment.
- Refusal (or Inability) to Consummate. If one spouse refuses or is unable to have sexual relations, and the other spouse didn’t know about the problem before the marriage, an annulment may be granted.
- Misunderstanding. An annulment will sometimes be granted when one or both spouses entered the marriage with a mistaken belief about something important, such as wanting children.
Most annulments are granted after very short marriages, so it’s most common that there are no marital assets, debts, or children to negotiate about. In a longer-term marriage, however, many states have laws about how marital property and debts should be divided in an annulment. Children of an annulled marriage are still legitimate, and the court can make decisions about custody, visitation, support, as well as alimony.
Religious Annulment
Only a civil annulment actually ends a marriage legally. The purpose of a religious annulment is to allow the person to remarry within the church, usually the Roman Catholic Church, which doesn’t recognize divorce and won’t allow remarriage by a person who’s been divorced. The religious annulment generally follows the civil annulment, so that a subsequent marriage will be recognized by the person’s church.
The grounds for ecclesiastical annulments aren’t always the same as for civil annulments. For example, if the marriage violated a religious tenet, the church would not consider it legal and would annul it, but that wouldn’t necessarily be enough for a civil annulment.
A religious annulment has no legal weight, and doesn’t render any children of the marriage illegitimate under civil law. The question of the children’s legitimacy under church tenets depends on the particular denomination.
Talk with an Attorney
If you are considering annulment, you will probably need the help of an attorney. You must prove the grounds for a civil annulment in court, and a lawyer can help you.
