Poll: Are annulments to easily obtained?

[pittsburghjeff]

One interesting thought.

I just got married 4 months ago.

The priest sat down with us and went over a list of questions about our psychological and mental maturity. He asked us if either of us have ever been in counseling. He asked us if there was some outside pressure forcing us to get married. He asked us if we were open to children.

Now let’s assume down the road I wanted an annulment. You would think that based on my answers on that questionarre I would have a hard time claiming a defect at the time of the marriage. I don’t know how so many people are successful in obtaining annulments.

 

[darcee]

Because most people didn’t have the advantage of talking to your priest first.

A good number of people receiving annulments were married previously outside the church, divorced, converted (or reverted) and now wish to set things right.

-D

 

[timbo1980]

condan:

I personally have never heard of an annullment that wasn’t granted. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Good question. Has anyone ever met anyone who’s request for an annulment wasn’t granted? Maybe I should have posted this as my poll instead.

 

[skyjumpr]

condan:

I personally have never heard of an annulment that wasn’t granted. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

I think you have to look a little deeper into the annulment process to understand why it appears that many are granted. I’m going by what I remember of the process from a discussion I heard given by a member of a triunal. I may be a little off on the facts but this should be a pretty good overview.

Most queries for annulments start with the local parish priest. If the priest determines, based upon the initial information, that there’s no or very little chance that a “decree of nullity” will be granted then that particular case generally ends there. If it appears that there may be a cause for a “decree of nullity” then the case can be forwarded onto the diocese triunal office. They can decide based upon the initial information that there is no cause and the process can stop at that point. If they decide that there may be cause then the investigation process would continue at that point.

In a nut shell, triunals generally only take cases where there is a good chance that a finding of nullity will be met. They in a sense weed out the cases not meeting minimal requirements. Without that basic understanding people who look only at the numbers get impression that the majority of cases are granted “decrees of nullity”. When, you take into consideration that many of the cases never even make it to the the investigation process then the numbers make more sense.

I must also add that even though the triunals will look at the evidence for a possible cause the marriages are considered valid until evidence proves otherwise.

If anyone finds my recollections wrong on any parts of this please correct me.

Michael