In Ontario, a marriage annulment is a legal process that declares a marriage to be void, as if it never existed. An annulment is different from a divorce, which ends a valid marriage. Annulment is that certificate that declares that your marriage was not valid from the beginning.
In Canada, the law dealing with marriage annulment bears a resemblance to its counterpart in the US. In Ontario, you might have the option to obtain an annulment in the event that you did not have the capacity to marry, for example, being married already to someone else, being so intoxicated you did not have the foggiest idea what you were doing, being a minor, being constrained into marriage by reason of misrepresentation or coercion, lacking the mental and intellectual capacity.
Another typical justification for annulment is that the marriage is not able to be consummated due to one spouse’s physical reasons and the other spouse did not know this fact before marriage or may be one companion does not know what it meant to get married.
Other justification why individuals pursue annulment maybe that they have a short marriage, have a shift in their perspective right after marriage, or don’t wish to be allied with the stigma of divorce or separation. However, the court will not grant an annulment simply just in view of these reasons but will take detailed consideration of every individual case.
There may be circumstances where the parties were mostly certain that they were married and requested assistance to apply for annulment, however it turned out that the marriage was not registered. On the off chance that you have never applied for a marriage certificate, make sure to run a marriage search to confirm if you have been “lawfully married” before you begin your annulment application.
Oftentimes people wrongly assume that it will be easier to file for annulment than divorce, which is not correct. This is on the grounds that the court has a unique process to get a divorce if you and your partner consent to it.
You can fill out paperwork and do not generally have to go to court and talk to a judge if you only want a divorce and both partners agree. But there is no similar court process to get an annulment in view of just paperwork.
The impact of an annulment is as though you and your partner never got married. In any case, assuming that you are the party who entered into the marriage sincerely, you might have the option to claim for division of property assets and ownership of matrimonial home when applying for annulment. It is essential to keep in mind that property division in the case of annulment differs from a divorce case. Usually in annulment of marriage, the spouse keeps the property which they acquire before entering into the marriage. As far as spousal and child support are concerned in annulment, the spouse is typically not legally required to take care of it because the marriage never actually qualified the essentials of a valid marriage.
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