Annulment Is an Easier Process than Divorce, but Difficult to Prove
Video Transcribed: What is the difference between a divorce and an annulment in the state of Oklahoma? I’m James Wirth, a lawyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and that’s the question that we have, annulment and divorce.
Okay, so in either circumstance, this means that you were married and if you’re residing in the state of Oklahoma, Oklahoma has jurisdiction over that marriage at this point. So an annulment means that you’re attacking the entering into that marriage. You’re trying to invalidate that marriage at the very beginning so that you were never married.
It’s difficult to do an annulment. There are certain things that have to be proven. You have to show that there wasn’t a proper meeting of the minds to get married at that time. That could be that one of you is prohibited from getting married based on age or maybe one of them lacked the capacity to get married.
You were too intoxicated to consent to that at the time. Those can be grounds. It turns out that you’re a close family member and you’re not eligible under the statute to get married. There are a lot of different things like that that can invalidate a marriage. If the marriage is invalidated, it’s annulled. It’s like it never happened. It’s void from the moment it was entered. You guys were never married once that is determined.
Divorce, on the other hand, does not invalidate the marriage. It ends the marriage and it dissolves it at that point that the divorce decree is entered, which means that certain orders related to property division, asset division, and spouse support, could all be applicable because the marriage was real and existed and it existed until the court dissolved it.
So those are the differences between annulment and divorce. An additional thing regarding divorces, there’s not a lot you have to prove in order to get a divorce. It is a no-fault state, so you have to prove irreconcilable incompatibility. Practically speaking, if either party just says, “This marriage is not worth trying to repair,” then the court is likely to grant you a divorce based on that. So the standard of getting a divorce is much lower than for annulment where you have to prove various things by a higher burden of proof.
So if you’ve got any questions related to Oklahoma law or family law, you’re going to want to talk to a Tulsa annulment attorney about that privately and confidentially. To get that scheduled with somebody at my office, go online to makelaweasy.com.
