Can I Get an Annulment Instead of a Divorce?

Can I get an annulment?

Probably not. I get this call regularly - usually from someone a few weeks or months into a marriage they'd very much like to un-ring - and the answer disappoints nearly everyone who asks. So let's talk about what an annulment actually is, who qualifies, and why the news isn't as bad as it sounds.

What an annulment actually is

Missouri law doesn't technically use the word "annulment" - the courts call it a declaration of invalidity of marriage. The name is instructive: a divorce ends a valid marriage, while an annulment is a court declaring that the marriage was never valid in the first place. In other words, an annulment isn't a faster way out of a marriage; it's a finding that, legally speaking, there was never a marriage to get out of. That's a big thing to ask a court to declare, and courts treat it accordingly.

The grounds (i.e., why most people don't qualify)

To have a marriage declared invalid, something has to have been fundamentally wrong at the moment you said "I do." The classic grounds: one spouse was still married to someone else (bigamy), the spouses are too closely related, one spouse was underage without proper consent, one spouse lacked the mental capacity to consent, or the marriage was induced by a fraud that goes to the essence of the marriage itself. These are, you'll notice, rare and dramatic circumstances. They make for good television and very few actual cases.

The short-marriage myth

Now for the misconception that generates most of the calls: "We've only been married three months - can't we just get it annulled?" This doesn't exist in Missouri. There is no rule that a sufficiently short marriage can be annulled, and no marriage-return window like some retail exchange policy. A valid marriage that lasted six weeks ends the same way as a valid marriage that lasted thirty years - by divorce. Length of the marriage has nothing to do with it; validity at the start is the whole ballgame.

Similarly not grounds for annulment, despite popular belief: regretting it, never living together, never sharing finances, or the marriage having been "a mistake." The court doesn't ask whether the marriage was wise - only whether it was valid.

The good news

Here's the part where the news improves. The people calling about annulments almost always have very little tangled up together - short marriage, no children, no shared property to speak of - which makes them ideal candidates for exactly the kind of case I handle. An uncontested divorce for a couple with a short marriage and a simple estate is about as smooth as this process gets: attorney fee starting at $850, the $150 filing fee, the mandatory 30-day waiting period, and a final Judgment typically within 45 to 60 days, usually with neither party ever appearing in court. Not quite the eraser people are hoping for when they call asking about an annulment, but pretty close, and considerably more attainable.

Thank you for reading. Please feel free to contact me for more information.