New Controversies On Marriage, Deceit, And Annulment

Twitter was aflame during the week when a user by the name Danky made a post of a 37-year-old bride-to-be who claimed to be 30 years old. The fiancé, who is 31 years, found out that the bride is actually 37 years old only two weeks to their wedding. Opinions were divided on Twitter.

Some say the marriage should be called off on grounds of deceit and breach of trust. Others say age is just a number. My position on such an issue is well documented in previous articles and my book, Life Lessons from Mudipapa.

I shall come back to my position shortly, but the ball is strictly in the court of the fiancé. He can decide to forgive his fiancée and go ahead with the wedding or call it off on grounds of deceit and breach of trust. Whatever route he takes has consequences that he would live with for the rest of his life.

In another case in 2021, a young lady from Idima, Abia State, Elizabeth Chiamaka James, shocked many people when she decided to cancel her wedding hours before the solemnization when she discovered that her husband-to-be was already married with children (Source GWG). Had she done the wedding before she found out, there would have been issues. In our African society, polygamy is allowed, but it is a decision you consciously make, not by deceit; while many Christian denominations do not allow polygamy.

But some people get married before finding out that their fiancé/fiancée is a fraud. So what happens? The aggrieved party either decides to forgive and go on with the marriage or to opt out of the sham. But how does one get out of the sham? This is where it gets interesting.

If the marriage is a civil union, the aggrieved party simply files for divorce on the grounds of deceit. The court usually grants the prayers of the plaintiff (aggrieved party) if he/she proves his/her case. But if the marriage was solemnized in a church where divorce is forbidden, you have a lacuna. Divorce is not allowed because they rely on Mark 10:6–9 and some other parts of the scriptures which says that “from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife,and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Apostle Paul amplified it in 1 Corinthians 7: 10-11. “To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord). A wife must not separate from her husband, but if she does, she must remain unmarried. A man must divorce his wife.”

Now what is divorce? In its simplest form, it is “the legal dissolution of a marriage by a court or other competent body.” This presupposes that there is an existing marriage. You cannot dissolve what does not exist in the first place. As the lawyers say, you cannot build on nothing. A marriage which was based on a false foundation ab initio is null and void. It cannot be counted as having taken place. Now, let us bring in annulment, one of the contentious issues in Christianity.

Annulment simply means that the marriage is void from the beginning based on certain factors, while divorce dissolves a legally contracted marriage. “When people get a divorce, they are still recognized as having been married. When a couple gets an annulment, they are treated as if the marriage never existed.”

Some grounds for annulment include deceit and lack of capacity. For instance, had the two cases above gone ahead, both marriages would have been annulled at the behest of the deceived parties because the marriages would have been contracted based on deceit? In addition, the man who was already married could have gone to jail for bigamy in the US or Europe.

A case of incapacity is an impotent man who deceived a woman into marriage knowing he lacked capacity to consummate the marriage. It is a good ground for annulment. A marriage is not complete until it is consummated. Consummation means that the couple must engage in sexual intercourse (the man inserting his penis into the wife’s vagina) after being declared husband and wife.

Even if they had premarital sex during courtship, it does not count. Consummation is sex after being declared husband and wife. There is a famous case. A military man was posted outside his abode. Before travelling, he decided to get married on the day he was to travel. After the marriage, he left straight for the airport to join other colleagues going on posting. The marriage was not consummated before he left. He was away, let us assume, for six months. By the time he got back, the wife was three months pregnant. There was no need for a paternity test. The marriage was annulled; he married someone else, not remarried.

If a woman had prior abortion which damaged her womb and the doctor had told her she could not get pregnant again, she is under obligation to tell her intending husband. Let him make up his mind whether or not to carry on with the wedding. Also, it is not only impotence that leads to annulment of marriage. If a man knows he is infertile or has low sperm count, he must disclose it to the wife-to-be. The woman can then decide if she is ready to go into marriage that will have great sex, but with risk of not having children.

In fact, marriage, like insurance, should be based on utmost good faith (Uberrimae fidei) and not on let the buyer beware (caveat emptor). During courtship, both parties have a duty to disclose to each other any information that aggravates or alters the usual nature of marriage. Also during courtship, both parties should disclose fully any condition that will make the other party have a second thought about continuing with the relationship. These are material facts. Material facts, in the case of marriage, are factors which would influence a prudent spouse-to-be to decide to go ahead with the marriage or discontinue the process.

Apart from the above, other material facts include terminal ailment, financial indebtedness such as will affect finances gravely after marriage, falsified age, previous convictions, previous marriage or children from previous liaisons. All these cases are straightforward to me, so I do not know why some denominations are accusing others of trying to legitimise divorce through the backdoor in the guise of annulment.

In the midst of the controversy over divorce and annulment, I want to give some posers to readers. The definitions of divorce and annulment are self-explanatory, but with some churches’ strict applications of divorce and annulment, if a marriage is very violent and looks like one spouse or both spouses will lose their lives someday if the marriage subsists, should such spouses be allowed to remain married? What if they go their separate ways, how do you treat the separation? Two, it one spouse abandons his/her marriage for no just cause, what should the stranded spouse do? Take it as sacrifice and stay like that forever? I come in peace.

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