Some people do not like the stigma attached to the title “divorced” so they often ask during their consultation or initial meeting with their family lawyer if they can proceed to have their marriage annulled and not go through the divorce process. Obtaining an annulment of the marriage is asking the judge to declare that your marriage was not valid to even start off with. How To Get An Annulment.
If you find yourself caught on this thought you need to educate yourself further in order to come to an informed decision, if you want to invest time and money to proceed in this manner. To qualify for an annulment in comparison to a divorce is much more difficult, certain factors have to be established in order to proceed.
What Does An Annulment Entail?
Basically an annulment is a court order. It states that your marriage was never valid from the very beginning. The process is governed by Annulment of Marriage Act (Ontario) for a full read Click here
How To Get An Annulment. You may be able to obtain an annulment if you or your partner lacked the mental capacity to know what you were doing. For example, due to a proven mental health condition or one of the parties were intoxicated, you were mentally not “all” there when you or the other party married.
Another reason for an annulment of marriage is impotence. Impotence is the inability to consummate the marriage which in return renders the marriage voidable. This means that you or the other party was unable to perform sexual intercourse and you were unaware of this fact before you got married. There is an important distinction between “the inability to consummate a marriage and the wilful refusal to do so.” As was stated in an old English case:
“The only question is whether the [spouse] is or is not capable of sexual intercourse, or, if at a present 
incapable, whether that incapacity can be removed…If there be a reasonable probability that the lady can be made capable of a vera copula – of the natural sort of coitus, though without power of conception – I cannot pronounce this marriage void. İncele
