Can You Get An Annulment Instead of a Traditional Divorce?
Legal termination of marriage, in California, happens in one of three ways.
(1) Nullity; (2) Legal Separation; (3) Marital Dissolution.
Are you a candidate for termination via nullity? Perhaps, but this remedy should only be sought where the validity of the marriage is in doubt. The difference between nullity of a marriage and martial dissolution is that they are based on opposing assumptions.
A marital dissolution action is used to terminate an otherwise valid marriage on grounds that arise after marriage. On the other hand, a nullity is pursued because the petitioner (the filing party) believes that at the time of the marriage, no valid marriage ever occurred.
That is, a nullity action asks a question? Was this marriage a valid marriage from the inception? A court must inquire as to whether the marriage was valid from day one.
Is your marriage a valid one or is there some doubt? Were all of your formalization procedures (like obtaining the license, solemnization, and authentication) performed correctly? If not, these could be potential grounds for nullity. However, a marriage may be void or voidable for other reasons including incest, bigamy, inducement by fraud or force, or where one or both parties were minors at the time of the marriage.
Even if a nullity is an option keep in mind that there are some disadvantages of a nullity proceeding, including but not limited to the following. Proving grounds for a judgment of nullity are likely to be more difficult and costly to prove. The party seeking a judgment of nullity may also have to overcome statutes of limitations hurdles. Fault play no role in a marriage dissolution proceeding. In a nullity proceeding, however, issues of innocence or fault are very important for questions of support and an attorney fees and costs award, as well as determining marital (quasi-marital) property rights.
Spouses of an invalid marriage don’t have community property rights. However, the property acquired during the void or voidable marriage that would have been community property if the marriage was valid, may be deemed quasi-marital property and will be divided in a nullity action as if it were community property. This only happens where putative spouse status is established (which means that spouse asserting putative spouse status had a good faith belief that the marriage is valid, he or she didn’t fraudulent induce the marriage).
Nullity actions do clearly have disadvantages but there are many benefits as well. Will you please visit my site linked below to read about the benefits. And will you also please schedule a free, confidential consultation while you’re there. Thank you visit my site now!