Catholic Wedding Annulment

Plead insanity

It is not something that is often talked about openly, but in any gathering of professional Filipinos, you can be fairly sure that at least one is onto their second or maybe even third marriage.

This is because - as in many aspects of life here - people have found ways to get around the rules.

The main way, if you have got the money to do it, is to get your marriage annulled.

It is as if someone waves a magic wand, and both the wedding and the unhappy-ever-after simply never happened.

All you need is a psychiatrist to say that there is something wrong with either you or your partner, leaving you unable to fulfil the essential obligations of marriage.

Exactly what those obligations are remains somewhat vague - a loophole that has not gone unnoticed by warring couples and their lawyers.

Plead insanity

Joey's story is typical. He works in PR in Manila's business district, and is bright, articulate and confident.

Yet in order for his first marriage to be annulled, he had to declare that he was psychologically incapacitated.

Now I am no expert, but Joey does not look psychologically incapacitated to me.

He has a broad smile and a ready wit - and he even manages to find our meeting place despite my appalling directions.

But a psychiatrist said he was psychologically incapacitated, and a judge agreed. Six months later, and more than $1,000 (£600) poorer, Joey was free to marry again.

It is a legal fudge that seems to work quite well.

Many celebrities have gone down the same route, sometimes more than once, but success is not guaranteed.

I have heard of cases mired in the courts for years, others which have cost $5,000 (£3,000) or even more, and some which have been refused outright.

And it is hardly an option available to everyone.

This is a country where a third of the population live on less than a dollar a day. An annulment is simply too expensive for the vast majority of people.

The result is a two-tier system, where rich people can marry again and poor people cannot.

I have visited many of Manila's slums in the course of my job.

Almost everyone is Catholic, and almost everyone attends Sunday worship - large families filing out of the rabbit warren of precarious structures they call home and piling into the churches.

But, even here, it is not hard to find people who have circumvented the church's rules.

Catholic Wedding Annulment Spotlighted

The announcement the other day that the Vatican had reversed the annulment of former representative Joseph Kennedy II’s first marriage raised some bells for those concerned about [tag]Catholic wedding annulment[/tag].

But in Sydney, Australia, the man responsible for granting about 120 of 600 marriage annulment applications in Australia and New Zealand each year welcomed the spotlight.

Father Christopher Sheehy, a canon lawyer, told The Australian newspaper that “People say there are too many annulments. We say there are too many people marrying invalidly”. Nevertheless, annulment applications are down from around 1000 just 10 years ago.