How to End Your Marriage - Divorce or Annulment?

Are divorce and annulment the same thing? Well they both are the end of a marriage, but they each have their own ways of ending things. Divorce tends to be a bit more complicated than annulment, but could make more sense for some marriages. Are there restrictions in getting an annulment?

Annulment is a legal way to end the marriage, in a sense making it seem that it never happened in the first place. It effectively erases the marriage making it never valid. It can be initiated by either the husband or the wife and they must prove they have valid reasons for ending the marriage and the means of proving it.

Some reasons that must be proven to be able to annul a marriage are:

Bigamy: that one party is already married to someone else, without the other partner’s knowledge.

Forced Consent: One partner was forced into the marriage under threat or duress and wouldn’t have married their partner otherwise.

Fraud: One partner misrepresented themselves making it appear they were someone they were not.

Marriage Prohibited by Law: Marriage that is illegal to enter into such as with a relative making it incestuous.

Some other reasons are: mental illness or instability, inability to consummate the marriage and underage marriage. Annulment is easier to obtain once proving any of these reasons and somewhat cheaper.

Divorce is more complicated and is the legal ending of a marriage - allowing both parties to remarry. Divorce is not wiped off the records and usually there is property and children involved.

Property division and child custody as well as settlement issues are all a part of the divorce process. Knowing each state’s law on divorce is important to having an easier one. For example some states are ‘fault’ states and others have ‘no-fault’, understanding the differences of these will be a good starting point.

A no-Fault divorce is where no one accepts the blame for the marriage dissolving, and a Fault divorce is where one of the spouses is considered to blame. Of course in this case, this must be proven.