Divorce and Annulments

Tom- Editing- Work in Progress

Divorce is the ending of a marriage before either of the partner's have died. After a divorce people are allowed to marry again. This page needs sorting into a proper article....

Bigamy and Annulments

Before either party involved in a bigamous marriage could remarry, they had to apply for a declaration of nullity (ie have a court decide that they were indeed correct that the marriage had been bigamous). Obviously any guilty party might have to do more than this to free themselves for another marriage, but that's not the issue here!

I was just helping someone with getting info on their rellies divorce and looked up the address for getting copies of the decree absolute......and I saw this:

The Principal Registry of the Family Division (PRFD) also has responsibility for maintaining the index of all Decrees Absolute (Divorce and Annulments) in England and Wales.

Note the word ANNULMENTS in there!! I guess they therefore have declarations of nullity, which is, in effect, the same thing!!

I had previously not been able to establish where (if anywhere) these records were held!

Here's the address should anyone need it:

The Court Service

Principal Registry of the Family Division

Decree Absolute Searches Room 2.03

First Avenue House

42-49 High Holborn

London

WC1V 6NP

             020 7947 7016        or 7017

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If I remember correctly, "annulments" are a Catholic thing... they don't permit divorce, but get round this by finding some (supposed) snag in the original arrangements which allows them to declare that the marriage wasn't valid in the first place.

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Annulments can be a "Catholic thing", but it is still an annulment if someone is able to obtain a declaration of nulity, because a marriage was illegal at the time it took place.

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Ah, didn't know they had them elsewhere. There's probably some dividing line between an official annulment (which I would assume is only granted if the marriage definitely was illegal) and a religious one (which, I'm told, can sometimes be granted on entirely spurious grounds if the couple just want to get away from each other and the church won't allow a divorce).

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An official annulment is granted by a court so is a civil matter, and the other sort is...well.......a religious matter. Can a person remarry in the eyes of the law following a religious (but not civil) annulment, Michael?

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Don't know, sorry (although I suspect the answer is probably "no"). What I'm quoting from here is from about two paragraphs of a book on Catholicism I happened to be reading, so I don't have many details

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I'm answering this from an Australian Catholic perspective, but I think it is basically the same in most places.

Catholics can have marriages annulled on various grounds. These have been tightened up in the last few decades. The marriage can be annulled if it was considered that one or both parties entered into the marriage wrongly. So if a girl was forced to marry by her parents, or if one party failed to tell the other something that would have stopped the marriage,etc. If a Catholic marriage is annulled, you then get a civil divorce to legalize things, property,etc. A person who has had a marriage annulled can then "remarry" within the rites of the church.

When a person just gets a civil divorce, they cannot "remarry" within the rites.

Sometimes Catholic priests will "officiate" at marriages without the rites of the church. This is usually "frowned" on by the powers that be, but does happen. These marriages are legal, as all Catholic preists are also marriage celebrants

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Sounds the same as in the UK then, except that in the UK if the grounds for the religious annulment were something accepted as making the marriage illegal by the civil system (such as bigamy), you couldn't get a divorce, but would have to get a declaration of nullity instead.

It would only be if the religious reason was not accepted in civil law that a divorce would be required before a person could remarry.

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This promises to be an interesting thread for me...

My paternal grandparents married in 1911 and, in 1917, my grandfather "went off to WW1 and never came back". (Some rumour of having not come back, not because of death but because he'd gone to USA. ) My grandmother married again in 1923, Dec quarter (haven't got the cert yet). Presumably, she must have gone through the desertion/declared-dead route.

On Monday morning, I received, through the post, a photocopy of the 1936 USA social security number application of someone who was either my grandfather or his Doppelganger (DoB, area of birth in UK, signature characteristics, deduced parentage) . According to an e-friend, she has found him in the 1930 census "with a spouse". She found the match when the link was still speculative and I was discounting it because he had an extra initial, but it matches the extra middle name (not a common one) in the SSN application, so I'm pretty confident.

Illegal Marriages

Do you want to know if your rellies broke the law by marrying someone they should not!

According to the Book of Common Prayer 1662

A man may not marry his:

1 Grandmother

2 Grandfather's wife

3 Wife's grandmother

4 Father's sister

5 Mother's sister

6 Father's brother's wife

7 Mother's brother's wife

8 Wife's father's sister

9 Wife's mother's sister

10 Mother

11 Step-mother

12 Wife's mother

13 Daughter

14 Wife's daughter

15 Son's wife

16 Sister

17 Wife's sister

18 Brother's wife

19 Son's daughter

20 Daughter's daughter

21 Son's son's wife

22 Daughter's son's wife

23 Wife's son's daughter

24 Wife's daughter's daughter

25 Brother's daughter

26 Sister's daughter

27 Brother's son's wife

28 Sister's son's wife

29 Wife's brother's daughter

30 Wife's sister's daughter

A woman may not marry her:

1 Grandfather

2 Grandmother's husband

3 Husband's grandfather

4 Father's brother

5 Mother's brother

6 Father's sister's husband

7 Mother's sister's husband

8 Husband's father's brother

9 Husband's mother's brother

10 Father

11 Step-father

12 Husband's father

13 Son

14 Husband's son

15 Daughter's husband

16 Brother

17 Husband's brother

18 Sister's husband

19 Son's son

20 Daughter's son

21 Son's daughter's husband

22 Daughter's daughter's husband

23 Husband's son's son

24 Husband's daughter's son

25 Brother's son

26 Sister's son

27 Brother's daughter's husband

28 Sister's daughter's husband

29 Husband's brother's son

30 Husband's sister's son

1907 Marriage Act – This caused number 17 removed, provided the spouse had died, so a man could marry his deceased wife’s sister.

1921 Marriage Act – Removed number 18 removed

1931 Marriage Act – Numbers 6 & 7, 8 & 9, 27 & 28, 29 & 30 were removed from the list

Many people believe that it was illegal to marry your first cousin, but if there was ever a ban on first cousins marrying then it was prior to 1662