Court annuls marriage with a history of beatings

Elena Baeva

Oct 30th 2009, 15:09

You will be surprised to see the full list of reasons the annulment has been granted for. I wish someone could compile such statistics since the introduction of separation. The only difference between the granted and denied will be the amount of €€ petitioners spent on lawyers. IMHO

Malvin Debono

Oct 29th 2009, 19:10

@Tony Abela. A court can annull a marriage but this only takes care of the civil aspect of marriage. If one applies for a church annullment and this is granted than the judgement can be filed in the civil court and the courts usually automatically grant an annullment based on this. The problem is that although the terms for an annullment are similar between church and state, the outcomes of equal proceedings are not necessarily so similar. An annullment cannot substitue divorce as there must be very justifiable grounds for an annullment to be granted and these usually have to do with the consent of the parties when they get married. If a marriage breaks down after the wedding then this does not necessarily mean that there are grounds for an annullment.

P.Cassar

Oct 29th 2009, 18:52

Extremely interesting case for Malta.
A learned local Catholic Church statement would be very welcome.

Joseph Camilleri

Oct 29th 2009, 18:40

@Tony Abela
The Civil Courts have annulled hundreds of marriages. The power to annul a marriage rests with both the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities as each has the right to declare that, in their view, there was no valid marriage. Abroad, in countries like England, Italy or France, a Civil Court can decide to annul a marriage or to grant a divorce. There are different legal effects in either case. In Malta, since divorce has not yet been legalised, couples must seek a civil annulment if they wish to have the right to marry again in a civil marriage. The Courts are showing a human face in the case of marriages that are obviously traumatic (because of violence, incompatibility or other reasons) for either or both of the spouses. But the case of the 'marriage' of this young couple is another confirmation, if one more is needed, of the urgent need for the legalisation of divorce.

R. Muscat

Oct 29th 2009, 18:40

I beleive they were not married by the Church. I think they had only the civil marrage and that's why the court could consider this marrage asd null without any intervention from the Church. This is just my openion, maybe I'm wrong!

Stephen Piccinino

Oct 29th 2009, 18:09

@ tony abela

When the Church annuls a marriage, it declares that the marriage never took place. In all the other cases the marriage will stand.

wally vella-zarb

Oct 29th 2009, 18:05

Tony Abela, please do not confuse two separate things. There is the 'Church' marriage and there is the Civil marriage. The Court can, and does, annul civil marriages, irrespective of what the Church does. There are several conditions whereby a civil marriage can be declared 'null' and 'void', as if it never happened. Divorce is different in that the marriage was (as in, used to be) valid.

Persons whose marriage has been annulled are free to marry again. Separated persons cannot marry again.

Peter Korsten

Oct 29th 2009, 17:10

@Tony Abela:

Well of course the court can annul a marriage. It happens all the time. If somebody is a bigamist, the second marriage has to be annulled, for example.

But because there's no divorce in Malta, a lot of marriages get annulled instead.

Jesmond Micallef

Oct 29th 2009, 17:00

Whatever arguments follow here, wether civil or not, this young man should also be made to undergo professional assistance, for his own benefit, really.

Good decision.

Galea. L

Oct 29th 2009, 16:51

tony abela
You are wrong. The Court can annul a marriage and the parties can marry again. Only if they want to marry again in Church do they have to go to the Church Tribunal. But remember that annulment is different from divorce. Annulment means that the marriage was not valid and had never existed due to the consent of the part(ies) being vitiated according to law. Divorce means that there was a valid marriage which for the Church is indissoluble and can therefore never be annulled.

tony abela

Oct 29th 2009, 16:12

Did I get this right? The Court annuled a marriage. I thought that only the Churchcan annul marriages and the State has to have the divorce as a Law. So what is all the fuss about Divorce or No Divorce? Can somebody explain as I beleive this is the first time I heard of Civil Annulment of Marriage, normally I thought it was Separation.

John Azzopardi

Oct 29th 2009, 15:48

A referendum on divorce would be grossly unjust. Why should citizens who want divorce legislation be deprived of and be subjected to the whims of others who are either misguided or misinformed or fundamentalistically Catholic? Divorce legislation should be available for those who want to make use of it. As simple as that. The entire world has divorce (except the fanatically Catholic Philippines and Malta). It is preposterous to pretend that the Maltese are better moralists than the rest of the world put together.

Adriano Spiteri

Oct 29th 2009, 15:19

If the court didn't annul the marriage,
this lady would have had to endure all the hardships for one bad decision

Divorce would assure that a person's life
is not compomised by judges or majority-voting

Referendum on divorce is crazy