Divorce lawyer offers advice on annulments
When a married couple decides enough is enough, their first thought may be to file for divorce and leave each other’s lives and start a new one separately. However, there is another option to end your marriage in the form of an annulment. An annulment will essentially ‘void’ the marriage and treat it as if it never happened, unlike the lengthy process of dividing assets, custody battles, and other aspects of filing for divorce. For legal advice on annulments, contact a Sheffield divorce lawyer today to see if you qualify for an annulment.
Now an annulment may seem like a relatively contemporary concept, with celebrities like Britney Spears shelving it after ‘shotgun’ weddings in Las Vegas, however annulments actually have quite a long and interesting past, with royals throughout the history looking for formats that allow them to escape marriage without resorting to divorce. Henry VIII went so far as to create the Church of England to allow him to escape the marital clutches of one of his many wives (she was the lucky one, she got away with her head!), but had the annulment process been available to him, you may not have needed to go that far.
Let’s discuss exactly what makes divorce annulments different and how they apply to certain marriages. As mentioned above, an annulment will cancel a marriage rather than end it and divide your assets; For this to happen, the marriage will usually need to be in its early stages with no children or common property to argue over. However long term marriages can be annulled but it is just less common due to sharing ownership and guardianship of property and children etc. An article of Kansas family and divorce law states that, “Generally, an annulment requires that there be at least one of the following reasons:
o Misrepresentation or fraud: For example, a spouse lied about the ability to have children, falsely stated that they had reached the age of consent, or failed to say that they were still married to someone else.
o Concealment: For example, concealing an alcohol or drug addiction, a felony conviction, children from a previous relationship, a sexually transmitted disease, or impotence.
o Refusal or inability to consummate the marriage, that is, refusal or inability of one spouse to have sexual relations with the other spouse.
o Misunderstanding — for example, one person wanted children and the other did not.
These are the grounds for civil cancellation. Within the Roman Catholic Church, a couple can obtain a religious annulment after obtaining a civil divorce, so that one or both parties can remarry, within the church or elsewhere, and have the second union recognized by the church”.
An annulment can end a marriage that was never right to begin with, without all the complicated details of who owes what to whom; it may be a viable option for some couples, so if you think your marriage would qualify for such an annulment, seek the legal advice of a Sheffield divorce lawyer.