Annulment - how long to wait?

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lacoloratura

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I hope this is the right place to post this. I tried to click the link for how to choose the right forum, but I kept getting the message that my computer couldn’t find the server…

I am in the process of a divorce (a very good decision; we are still friends, just should never have gotten married in the first place), and was told by the annulment advocate in my parish that the Church wants people to wait at least a year after their divorce to start the annulment process. The reasoning is that the person will be better able to give objective testimony. Can anyone give me some feedback on this? Will it hurt my chances of actually being granted the annulment if I start the process too soon? For reasons I won’t get into here, I am certain that objectivity is not an issue for me even now. I suppose there isn’t really any hurry, but I would like to get things settled. I also have a couple of witnesses who are not getting any younger - perhaps that sounds cold, but one person who could have been very significant has already passed away (my uncle, a Jesuit, who refused to officiate at my wedding), so it seems a very real issue to me.

Any advice?
 
The church advocates are very helpful, but do contact your diocesan tribunal for further instruction. It may be a recommendation to wait one year, but it is not necessary; each persons circumstance is different, so you must discern based on your own situation using guidelines that the Church may set forth.
 
I have heard of problems from waiting too long due to people not remembering things, hard to get ahold of people who have moved, etc.

Go with whatever the recommendation is, then proceed forward, don’t wait.
 
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kaj3:
The church advocates are very helpful, but do contact your diocesan tribunal for further instruction. It may be a recommendation to wait one year, but it is not necessary; each persons circumstance is different, so you must discern based on your own situation using guidelines that the Church may set forth.
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I think this is very sound advice. My first advocate in the diocese where my divorce took place was very nasty, very rule-bound and one-dimensional. You would have thought it was her personal decision, instead of the tribunal. In the diocese where I obtained the decree of nullity, there was still paperwork and all, but the advocate was much nicer, much more suited to her job.
 
One of my relatives was divorced - the divorce was the spouse’s initiative. The spouses parents were willing to testify that the spouse had never understood marriage as permanent.

Their priest advised a year’s wait. Since it was the same priest who had instructed the spouse in RCIA and had prepared them for marriage, I questioned his objectivity, since the chief grounds were his incompetence, and advised immediate action.

I think the procedure was started fairly quickly and went through without incident.
 
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