Over the holiday, one of my friends mentioned that his marriage was actually annulled. It was previously understood that he got divorced. My mom, sister, and I were trying to figure out what the differences in grounds for a divorce vs grounds for an annulment are. I always thought it had to do with the amount of time that the marriage actually lasted. My sister (who works in a law firm and is surrounded by attorneys who seem to enjoy answering random legal questions) checked up on it and sent an email this morning, writing:
"Apparently in the state of Oregon there are very few grounds for legal annulment which include:
1) one of the parties was married at the time of remarriage
2) the parties are cousins or better
3) fraud
4) parties were incompetent at the time they entered into the marriage (they were minors or had some mental illness etc.)
5) parties were forced into marriage
The law states nothing about a time limit on annulment. Interesting, eh?
Also, there is the type of annulment that happens in the Catholic Church, but a marriage that was annulled in the Church would have to be legally dissolved somehow either by annulment or divorce."
That clears that up. Now I'm a little perplexed about this guy and his ex-wife/not wife. Does he suffer mental illness? Did he accidentally confess to me that she was really his cousin? What constitutes fraud in a marriage? When Britney Spears married that guy in Vegas, did they get a divorce, or did they have it annulled? I'm sure she could have made a case for mental illness.
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2 comments:
A marriage can't be annulled if one of the parties was married already, and the other party knew or should have known about it. The fraud can't be like "well he was really nice and stuff, now he's an asshole." It has to be like telling your super Catholic husband you're a virgin and that is super important to him and then he finds out later you were a huge slut. Because the virginity was a basis of the marriage, dude could get it annulled. I don'pt know about the Britney Spears thing, but I assume the annulment rules are much more lenient in Nevada.
Another comment from my sis:
"Yeah... I talked to our local family law expert and he says it is VERY DIFFICULT to get an annulment in Oregon. The only one he has done went under the 'already married' category."
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