Annulment in Indiana

Let me explain a few things about annulment in Indiana:

It is certainly not a substitute for dissolution of marriage.

Annulment differs greatly from divorce. Annulment does not dissolve the marriage. Annulment means there never was a marriage.

Annulment has very specific grounds to prove. One cannot just appear before the judge and say that the marriage is irretrievably broken. The grounds for annulment divide into two broad categories.

The first category requires that the petitioner was under 18 years or was mentally incompetent to marry. If the potential client was past 18 years of age when married or appears mentally competent, that leaves the second category of annulment cases.

The second category requires fraud on the part of the non-petitioning party. That fraud must have lead to the petitioner marrying the fraudster. If that were not enough of a difficulty, the statute states that the petitioner living with the spouse after discovering the fraud is an affirmative defense for the respondent.

If you can get past these hurdles, the procedure follows those of divorces. Annulment is another narrow type of legal action. Maybe even more narrow than legal separation.

It has been a while since I had a divorce client inquiring about annulment. Used to be, annulment would come up about every eighteen months or so. I was always curious about the interest in annulments. I never got a good answer for the interest in annulment. When I asked, no religious reasons were offered. I got a vague impression that someone told them that it might be easier or more palatable than a divorce. Some times I was left wondering if someone had watched The Wives of Henry the Eighth one too many times. When I explained annulments, their interest withered.