In Orange County, marriages are terminated using one of three legal remedies.

(1) Nullity; (2) legal Separation; or (3) Marital Dissolution.

Should you seek a nullity, is it an option? It depends. Primarily on whether the validity of your marriage is in doubt. The main difference between martial dissolution and nullity of a marriage is that they they are based on opposing assumptions.

A typical divorce action (marital dissolution action) is used to terminate a valid marriage on grounds that arise after the parties have been married for a period of time. Conversely, a nullity is brought because the petitioner (the filing party) believes that because of fraud or other defects in the marriage process that no valid marriage ever occurred.

So, in effect, a nullity action seeks to answer a question. Was there a valid marriage? The court is tasked with finding an answer.

So is your marriage valid? A marriage may be invalid from the beginning because of irregularities in the statutory formalization procedures, which are ordinarily obtaining the license, solemnization and authentication. However, it also may be void or voidable because of other legal imperfections including but not limited to incest, bigamy, inducement by fraud or force, or where a party or both parties are under the age of consent at the time of the marriage.

Supposing nullity is a viable option remember that there are disadvantages of a nullity proceeding, including but not limited to the following. You must proving grounds for a judgment of nullity. This is likely to be difficult and costly to prove. There are also potential statutes of limitations hurdles. And, fault play no role in a marriage dissolution proceeding. In a nullity proceeding, however, issues of innocence or fault are essential issues that relate to questions of support and an attorney fees and costs award, as well as determining 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).

Even though there are clearly disadvantages of nullity, there are many benefits of Nullity as well including but not limited to the following. Will you please visit my site linked below to read about the benefits. And will you please schedule a free, confidential consultation while you’re there.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 7:58 am and is filed under Divorce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.