Legal Question in Family Law in Virginia

Re: Annulment

You should consult with a Virginia lawyer to determine the applicability of the law to the facts of your particular case. The following is general legal information concerning annulments in Virginia.

An annulment establishes that a marriage never existed, whereas a divorce terminates the legal status of husband and wife. In both cases the parties may remarry, but there may be important consequences to determining that a marriage never existed, such as avoiding the rights to spousal support and property distribution that flow from the marital status.

There are two types of marriages subject to annulment: void and voidable. A void marriage does not require an action of annulment while a voidable marriage may be annulled by one of the parties. Marriages that are void from the start or void ab initio because they seriously offend the strong public policy of Virginia include the following: bigamous or polygamous marriages, incestuous marriages, same-sex marriages, and underage marriages. Marriages that are merely voidable include the following: marriage based on fraud or duress; lack of capacity to consent by either party; a natural or incurable impotency existing at the time of marriage; conviction of a felony without knowledge of the other; where the wife is pregnant by another at the time of the marriage, without the knowledge of the husband; where the husband has fathered a child born to another within 10 months of the marriage, without the knowledge of the wife; or when either had been a prostitute, without the knowledge of the other.

There is a two year time limit for a party seeking an annulment on the grounds of lack of capacity, fraud or duress, impotency, prior felony conviction, prior conception with another, or prostitution. In addition, the party applying for annulment on such grounds must not have cohabited with the other after knowledge of the facts giving rise to such grounds.

Re: Annulment

No, it would not appear so; a spouse's obsession

with Internet pornography is not a ground for the annulment of a marriage in the Commonwealth.