Annulment - diocese waited 2 years to tell us ex spouse hadn’t replied to them - 2 years, should have been 30-60 days

[LucyRita]

My fiancé had a very short marriage in the past in which they were barely in the same city most of the time, and there were several other major clear factors that according to catholic teaching make a marriage invalid.

We began the annulment process 3 years ago. It’s been very painful of course dragging up the past.

2 years ago the diocese reached out to the ex spouse. She clearly got the mail because she responded by writing a nasty message to my fiancé.

However because she wants to sabotage him, she never replied to the church.

This was 2 years ago. I am 34 years old. I want children. We could have had a child in that time. I’m getting to the age where it gets harder. What happened to the church being pro life?

Yesterday we got a piece of mail from the diocese. saying that they can’t move forward because they couldn’t reach the ex. They asked for update contact information which meant fiancé had to reach out to her family which was unpleasant.

I just found out from another post here that the church is SUPPOSED to give the ex a mere 30 or at most 60 days to reply or the case moves on.

I am basically heartbroken and devastated. They clearly broke protocol waiting TWO YEARS for the ex to reply. I am horrified. Every minute that goes by means less fertility for me and also we are older and have less energy.

This was an open shut case by any metric and I’m appalled the church didn’t bother for 2 years to contact us on this. Our diocese broke the protocol.

I don’t understand how this happened. Did they lose our case in a cabinet somewhere and just found it?

I am appalled that the church would put my own chance at having a family at risk. And this on the heels of a priest telling me to just get over the abuse coverups. But yet we are being treated like criminals for wanting marriage.

Is there anything I can do to expedite this, everything is filed and I want to maybe hire a canon lawyer for ourselves to speak up about them breaking protocol letting the ex ruin my life.

 

[Convert3]

This doesn’t make sense. My ex never responded, and my annulment was complete in four months.

 

[LucyRita]

Yeah I know. I’m just basically appalled at this point.

We did everything properly.

Why is a vengeful ex spouse messing up my life with the church’s support?

 

[dollysro]

First and foremost, I am very sorry this happened. Very.
It seems your fiance didn’t have the very best advocate. It’s so, so important.
However:

My fiancé had a very short marriage in the past in which they were barely in the same city most of the time

This is not a valid reason for an annulment.

We began the annulment process 3 years ago.

I have heard the term “we” when instead, it is “he” or “she” or “me” unless the “we” includes the two spouses from the original marriage.

What happened to the church being pro life?

The Church is pro-life. And pro-marriage.

This was an open shut case by any metric

That call is for the tribunal, not for the spouses, to make.

I am appalled that the church would put my own chance at having a family at risk.

The Church is not putting you at risk at all. Because your fiance should not even be dating while he is still married in the eyes of the Church.

I want to maybe hire a canon lawyer for ourselves to speak up about them breaking protocol letting the ex ruin my life.

A good canon lawyer is worth their weight in gold. But I doubt one would take up the case of the Church ruining your life. You are not in the equation in their minds.
I know this sounds harsh and believe me, I went through the process with many questions and came out better for it.
You may be encouraged to marry civilly and have your marriage convalidated later. I always caution those thinking of going this route, a convalidation needs to be requested; it is not a given.
I hope and pray for a wonderful outcome of all your fiance is going through, and for you as well

 

[LucyRita]

Thanks. By the way when I make those statements I mean from the POV of a lay person who understands canon law and from common sense it seems open and shut, not claiming that I’m a canon lawyer but just saying it isn’t a vague unclear case; at the time of the marriage there were several certainties that would invalidate the marriage according to my knowledge.

I also never claimed that the short length etc was a reason to invalidate it. I merely use those facts to illustrate the full situation.

I’m not clear why you doubt a canon lawyer would work with us. The diocese waited 2 years rather than their 30 day policy. A canon lawyer could help us deal with that and maybe move things faster. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t.

By “we” I mean myself and my fiancé. He did all the paperwork and contacts, I emotionally supported him and told him what I know about the process. We are in it together.

That’s fine if you want to just repeat the church is pro life but it is in no way pro life to delay a marriage and possibly use up my fertile years for some bureaucracy and dropping the ball entirely.

 

[Horton]

So in those two years what exactly did your fiance do to keep his annulment moving? How many calls did he make? How emails did he send?

That’s fine if you want to just repeat the church is pro life but it is in no way pro life to delay a marriage and possibly use up my fertile years for some bureaucracy and dropping the ball entirely.

The Church has nothing to do with your ability to have a child, only you do. The Church is not delaying your marriage, that again is on you.

I mean from the POV of a lay person who understands canon law

I would question where your knowledge of canon law came from. I’m sure no diocese has a hard and fast rule about time frames, let alone a set in stone “30 day policy”.

2 years ago the diocese reached out to the ex spouse. She clearly got the mail because she responded by writing a nasty message to my fiancé.

However because she wants to sabotage him, she never replied to the church.

She doesn’t have to reply. Reaching out to a spouse is done as a courtesy. One can get an annulment without the spouses participation.

I just found out from another post here that the church is SUPPOSED to give the ex a mere 30 or at most 60 days to reply or the case moves on.

So you are getting you knowledge of canon law on CAF?

Is there anything I can do to expedite this

There is nothing YOU can do about any of this. YOU are not a party to the case.

speak up about them breaking protocol letting the ex ruin my life.

How do you really know they broke protocol?

If you feel the ex is ruining your life, that is on you. The only people who “ruin” our lives are the people we let do it.

 

[puer.dei]

Did the tribunal give your boyfriend an advocate? If so, that’s who he should be working with. If not, he needs to request one asap.

 

[MNathaniel]

That’s fine if you want to just repeat the church is pro life but it is in no way pro life to delay a marriage and possibly use up my fertile years for some bureaucracy and dropping the ball entirely.

I’m genuinely sorry to hear about the shocking situation you and your fiance found yourselves in. At the same time, and it may feel further enraging to hear this, but… from the way you’re describing things, your local parish bureaucracy is not the only party that “dropped the ball entirely”. I have a friend who just went through an annulment, and he stayed in regular contact with the relevant officials. I don’t know if a single month ever passed, that he didn’t speak to someone involved, and inquire about progress.

You say the office had a record showing exactly what the problem was, but – somehow – someone made a mistake (maybe totally overwhelmed with other work, thought they emailed you but didn’t, and your file ended up in a “ball in their court now” pile), and they never connected successfully with you.

That said, surely if you had called the office even once, they could have told you exactly what the issue was. So… Did neither you nor your fiancé ever follow up with the office to ask why the long silence? Not after 30 days… 60 days… 3 months… 4 months… 6 months… one year… one and a half years… two years?

I genuinely cannot understand how on a topic this important to you and your fiancé (like you said, this is your fertility and marriage we’re talking about here), you weren’t following up to make sure your case didn’t fall behind some filing cabinet (as it clearly did) and slip through a crack.

I honestly don’t mean this to say: “100% of the blame on you! 0% of the blame on them!” but you’re coming out swinging and angry here, and you do seem to put 100% of the blame on this local office, whereas in reality (because the world is fallen), mistakes happen, and we are all responsible for following up on things that are important to us, whether we’re customers trying to contact a corporation, citizens trying to resolve an issue with government, or laypeople trying to figure something out within the Church. All humans are fallible and the only constant in life is that everyone messes up sometimes. If we don’t follow up, a mess gets bigger than it needs to, and that genuinely sucks for everyone – but when we don’t follow up we do bear partial responsibility. And I don’t see you finding inner peace about this unless you accept your and your fiancé’s role in what’s transpired, and forgive those who made the initial mistake.

 

[MNathaniel]

Again, I don’t mean this to be a jerk, and I honestly hope the annulment process goes completely smoothly from here (and you and your fiancé have a happy marriage, and those children you long for!). Just, in the name of your own inner peace (and also charity towards others, and also preventing anything similar happening in future)… maybe consider a lesson to take away from this and apply moving forward, about following up on important processes. Maybe God will use the lesson learned from this incident to save you from an even bigger mess in future. Again, God bless And I hope all goes fantastically from here, and that God blesses you with a happy marriage and healthy children.

 

[1ke]

My fiancé had a very short marriage in the past in which they were barely in the same city most of the time, and there were several other major clear factors that according to catholic teaching make a marriage invalid.

This is speculation. You don’t know this.

I just found out from another post here that the church is SUPPOSED to give the ex a mere 30 or at most 60 days to reply or the case moves on.

If by “on here” you mean Catholic Answers, then you need to understand that this is not an official place for such information, and each diocesan tribunal has its own protocols which might vary from what you read on here.

This was an open shut case by any metric

If it were, then it would have been done 3 years ago.

I’m appalled the church didn’t bother for 2 years to contact us on this. Our diocese broke the protocol.

Well, since you don’t know your diocesan procedures you don’t know that they “broke” anything.

Your fiancé didn’t follow up for 2 years? I’d say a big part of the responsibility is on HIM.

Did they lose our case in a cabinet somewhere and just found it?

Your fiancé needs to ask his advocate.

I am appalled that the church would put my own chance at having a family at risk.

Because it’s all about you?

YOU aren’t any part of this tribunal process. YOU aren’t in consideration here at all.

You chose to date and become engaged to someone who isn’t free to marry, and frankly might never be. A decree of nullity is NOT guaranteed.

So, step back and recognize YOUR part in all of this too. And your fiancé doesn’t seem to be too concerned about it, since he didn’t do anything for 2 years.

Is there anything I can do to expedite this, everything is filed

You can talk to the tribal and your advocate.

I want to maybe hire a canon lawyer for ourselves

That is certainly something your fiancé can do. It might be a very good idea to talk to a canon lawyer.

to speak up about them breaking protocol

Slow your roll, you don’t know that anyone “broke protocol”.

letting the ex ruin my life.

Your own choices seem to at the root of your current situation, not his ex. She has no power of you or the nullity case.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Another here who will warn against “hearsay” on the internet. Unless you see this 60 day timeframe published as policy on your Diocesan Tribunal website, it is simply a poster giving you a suggestion."

We advocates are forbidden to give time frames, set expectations like “your marriage will be found invalid” of “slam dunk”. I would be relieved of my position as advocate.

This may sound very harsh, however, this marks the vital importance of only dating those who are free to marry. This way someone does not end up so deeply involved that they consider leaving the Church when the prior marriage is found valid.

Your fiancee needs to talk to his advocate, as this is his process.

This is not a pro life issue, as you are not commanded to marry this man. You are free to go date someone who is free to marry, begin the marriage prep process and be married in the Church when that is complete.

 

[Anicette]

I see that you are deeply hurt, you can be because you wait for nothing and are afraid of not having children one day. You are hurt because you think you had done all things the right way, that’s mean in the “legalist” way.

I see that another moral lesson from me will hurt more, and make you more angry, but,
honestly,

• you should never have choose to engaged to this man who is married in the Church.
• you don’t know if is previous marriage is null nor not. It is not to you to determine, and surely not by what your fiancé says. He is also likely to exagerate the bad sides to please you. It is up to the Church’s tribunal.
• Sadly, the marriage tribunal don’t care at all for you and your fertility. You don’t even exist for them. It is not your marriage and annulement process. It is the process of this man and his wife. The process are usually very LONG and many (I am sure the majority where I lived, that is not your geographical area) are past menaupose, cohabit with a new partner for years or decades and only try the annulement process when they want to marry again with the new partner. I am not sure that many waits like you for a spouse that is not available to get married sacramentally. We can deplore the choice of these persons and the fact that the Church does not care any more about the fertile years.
• now, you have a choice to make. Either wait, maybe a long time for him, or marry quickly in a civil marriage or leave him. And you have to determine what you wants to do if you marry him or wait for him and his previous marriage is valid. Of course you know what your options are if you wants to stay in a catholic “legality”.

It is not easy as a situation. i would not like to get at your place.

God bless you.

 

[LucyRita]

Of course he has been very proactive in this whole process. We didn’t know until yesterday that the church had not heard from her, we assumed since she replied to us and that the church had not mentioned to us until now that it was not an issue. This is with regular contact with his advocate. I don’t know where you got that somehow this was on us and we didn’t know. He’s been as proactive as humanly possible with all the factors he can control.

 

[LucyRita]

Not going to reply any more to this as most of the answers are full of either speculation (ie things you imagined) about what we must have done wrong or uncharitable replies. So much for support. Thanks for the repeated exhortations that I am nobody, really carrying Jesus’ message there.

 

[LucyRita]

Yes he made tons of calls, why are you immediately uncharitably jumping to judging my fiancé and implying he’s not really on board here? Why would your response to this stressful situation be to try and plant seeds of doubt there?

Although you want to try to assign blame here, and insult us, the best advice isn’t always to constantly harass a bureaucracy to move faster. we did as much as possible with prudence, but no raising it to the level of harassment when we were told the “process was happening” wouldn’t be a good idea, you are just trying to pass the responsibility rather than think critically here about this situation.

The church broke protocol by waiting 2 years for the spouse to respond and ignoring

What I know if canon law is my own research and speaking extensively to canon lawyers. Why are you castigating me for looking for answers on an ANSWERS forum and implying that’s stupid and yet of course I am to take all your words on this forum to heart I am sure you think.

 

[LucyRita]

Well I did it anyway. I prayed for years and years to bring my the right person and waited single for years and years and this is who arrived and whom I love. And the church should actually practice what they preach. I feel that I have been treated almost like a criminal in this process and yet I am being told that my being scandalized over the abuser coverups, some of which involved people I knew, is something I need to “just get over.” So it seems to me the church is acting like child abuse and coverups? No big deal, its the lay person’s job to move on even if nothing improves. But two Christians want to get married? Let’s treat them like they are bad people. And completely neglect any support. Its’ okay to point out when someone in the church hierarchy made a mistake, without criticizing the church herself, and frankly if someone is unable to do as much they are being too blind to authority at the expense of charity to their neighbor. And yes I understand the “help” here is basically going to be people saying “well you should just die alone and get over it” so I don’t really find that impressive. I doubt anyone here knows what it’s like to have no one else int he world, and my health does make that extra hard.

 

[1ke]

Yes he made tons of calls,

That isn’t the way your first post reads at all. Clearly you didn’t include all the details but the way you wrote it, it sounded like he hadn’t been in contact with the diocese for 2 years.

And you came across very entitled and basically accusing the church of ruining your life and not caring about your fertility because you want a baby.

BUT, “the Church” isn’t involved in his case— a very specific group of people at the tribunal are, and it’s not your case. You being 34 and wanting to start a family is understandable but it doesn’t have anything to do with the case.

The church broke protocol by waiting 2 years for the spouse to respond and ignoring

Again: you don’t know that. Something happened, but we don’t really know what.

Why are you castigating me for looking for answers on an ANSWERS forum

Well, we can’t really answer the question you asked. Because it’s your Bishop who has authority over the tribunal in your diocese. And the tribunal who can answer your questions about their process and can tell you what happened in your case. Or actually tell your fiancé what happened in his case, because you aren’t party to the case.

Yes your fiancé can get assistance from a canon lawyer. I suggest the St Joseph Foundation (stjosephcanonlaw.com)

I feel that I have been treated almost like a criminal in this process

You aren’t in the process. It’s your fiancé.

and yet I am being told that my being scandalized over the abuser coverups, some of which involved people I knew, is something I need to “just get over.”

I’m not sure who told you that, but no we don’t need to just “get over” it. We also shouldn’t blame the entire church for the actions of a few.

But two Christians want to get married? Let’s treat them like they are bad people.

Two Christians who want to get married, one of whom is not free to marry. The Church isn’t treating you like you are a criminal, but neither can it marry you.

And yes I understand the “help” here is basically going to be people saying “well you should just die alone and get over it”

No one is saying that. What people are saying is that you’ve gotten engaged when he isn’t free to marry and it seems you feel entitled to marry him.

It does sound like something happened with the tribunal— Someone dropped the ball, or someone lacked the right training, or something. But no one here knows what and no one here knows next steps— it’s the tribunal who can tell you. And a canon lawyer wouldn’t be a bad idea.

 

[LucyRita]

If you did not read my post which said that the church did not contact us about THIS PARTICULAR ISSUE For over two years when to our knowledge the issue was resolved two years ago, and somehow misread this as us not making any effort, that is on your reading comprehension and your lack of charity towards me assuming the least charitable interpretation instead of reading what I wrote.

I didn’t come here for a bunch of no duh I should’ve just been a living saint and never even bothered liking this guy, but for some kind of emotional support. basically the only reply that wasn’t judging and castigating me and just being extremely hurtful to someone looking for Christian support was the first reply which acknowledged that this situation is weird without spinning a way to make me into the bad guy. Good night. This is the kind of behavior that puts people off the church by the way.

 

[Dlee]

I’m sorry you feel so hurt by this. I, too, am going through the process and cannot get my witnesses to respond. My advocate is contacting the tribunal on my behalf. You said your fiance made tons of calls during this two-year period - did he call the tribunal or his advocate? What did they tell him? I ask only so I can understand the history. It just doesn’t make sense for it to take so long to tell you the ex-wife didn’t respond. I know you don’t want to hear this, but again, in the eyes of the tribunal, you are not a part of this process. The paperwork initially filed by your fiance states that no marriage plans should be made during the process. The tribunal recognizes that your fiance is still married to his ex-wife and not free to date, become engaged, or marry. No one is treating you like a criminal - in all honesty, they are not “treating” or considering your feelings at all. To the tribunal (not the Church) you are not part of the equation. You have no legal standing with them. I know this isn’t what you’re looking for. Has your fiance met with his advocate since you received the letter?

 

[TheLittleLady]

Going out on a limb, is it possible that the news was “as we have not heard from the respondent, the case has taken more time/we need new witnesses?”