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An annulment is a term that signifies the official nullification of a marriage. It's also known as a decree to nullify. It differs from a divorce because instead of legally ending a marriage, the judge in an annulment case certifies that the marriage never legally existed. In the event of an annulment, assets or marital property are... more »
Many people enter into marriage without knowing everything about their spouses. However, when the divergence of certain facts, such as a criminal history, are held from a person until after the marriage ceremony has taken place, the law believes the person hearing those facts has a right to annul, or nullify, that union on the basis... more »
Like a divorce, annulment ends a marriage. But unlike no-fault divorce, which can be granted for any reason at all simply upon request, annulment has fairly narrow requirements that control eligibility. Whereas divorce terminates a marriage but recognizes its previous existence, annulment treats the spouses as if they were never... more »
If you need to end your current marriage and don't want to go through a divorce, you may want to consider an annulment. However, there are limited legal reasons you can get petition for an annulment. An annulment is a legal petition in which a court will deem a marriage void. Basically getting an annulment for a marriage makes it as... more »
When marriage no longer seems like an option, there are two main courses of action to end the marriage, divorce and annulment. Though both are performed through the court system, an annulment has one key difference. In an annulment, the marriage, as far as the government is concerned, never happened. There are very specific grounds on... more »
Sometimes, it is evident from the very start of a marriage that the whole thing was a mistake....
Filing for divorce is never a pleasant experience, even when the process is simple and the...
Legally, an annulment is defined as a method for declaring a marriage to be null and void. There is a huge difference between a divorce and an... more »
Annulment, in some cases, is a valid option for ending a marriage. For several reasons, it may be preferable to divorce. Couples can only get an... more »
A common misconception is that a marriage can be annulled only in the weeks following the ceremony or in the event of bigamy. However, in most... more »
An annulment wipes your marriage off the books, as if it never happened. But understand that there are two types of annulments: civil (by the... more »
An annulment is a way of ending a marriage by having it declared legally unfounded. When granted, an annulment removes any record of the marriage... more »
Annulment is a legal procedure for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is retroactive: an annulled marriage is considered never to have existed.
In strict legal terminology, (annulment) refers only to making a voidable marriage null; if the marriage is void ab initio, then it is automatically null, although a legal declaration of nullity is required to establish this. The process of obtaining such a declaration is similar to the annulment process. Generally speaking, annulment, despite its retrospective nature, still results in any children born being considered legitimate in the United States and many other countries.
Annulment in the Catholic Church
In the Roman Catholic Church, a marriage is considered to be a valid contract entered into between a man and a woman, and ratified by Divine sanction. In simplest terms, it is necessary that it be marriage that is contracted, that it actually be contracted (i.e., a valid ceremony/contract be performed), and that both parties enter willingly into the contract. If any of these conditions lack, then the marriage is not contracted, Divine sanction is not obtained, and there is in actual (and religious) fact no marriage. An annulment is a finding later that there was no actual marriage contracted in Gods eyes, and therefore no marriage in reality (from the religious point of view), regardless of civil ordinance or appearance to humans.
Therefore, an annulment of a marriage is much more analogous to a finding that a contract of sale was invalid, and hence, that the property for sale must be considered to have never legally transferred possession, than analogous to a divorce, which is more like returning the property after a consummated sale.
These four preconditions give rise to the common fourfold classifications for bases of annulment, defect of form, defect of contract, or unwilling or unable parties.
The contract is defective in form if the marriage ceremony i read more at » http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annulment
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