When can you annul a marriage?

While there’s no time limit to apply for a void marriage, specific grounds for voidable marriages, such as non-consummation or lack of consent, have time limits, generally within three years.

Annulment (sometimes known as ‘nullity’) is a different way of ending a marriage.

Unlike divorce, you can apply for annulment in the first year of your marriage or any time after. However, if you apply years after the wedding, you might be asked to explain the delay.

You’ll need to show that the marriage:

• was never legally valid (‘void’)
• was legally valid, but meets one of the reasons that makes it ‘voidable’

You can annul a marriage if it was not legally valid in the first place, for example:

• you’re closely related to the person you married
• one or both of you were under 18 (or under 16 if the marriage took place before 27 February 2023)
• one of you was already married or in a civil partnership

If a marriage was never legally valid, the law says that it never existed. However, it is important to obtain legal advice as documentation such as a ‘decree of nullity’ or ‘nullity of marriage order will be required to prove this – for example if you want to get married again.

You can annul a marriage for a number of reasons, such as:

• it was not consummated – you have not had sexual intercourse with the person you married since the wedding (does not apply for same sex couples)
• you did not properly consent to the marriage – for example you were forced into it
• the other person had a sexually transmitted disease (STD) when you got married
• your spouse was pregnant by someone else when you got married
• one spouse is in the process of transitioning to a different gender.

As with divorce, your marriage legally exists until you annul it using one of the reasons above.