To get a marriage annulled, you file a Petition for Annulment in the county where you or your spouse lives, prove to a judge that a specific legal defect existed at the time of the wedding, and obtain a court order declaring the marriage invalid. Unlike divorce, which ends a marriage that was legally valid, an annulment treats the marriage as though it never happened. Courts grant them only in narrow circumstances, and the evidence bar is higher than most people expect.
One threshold point before anything else: a religious annulment from a church or faith authority has no legal effect on your marital status. It will not change your tax filing status, insurance records, or any government document. Everything below refers to the civil court process.
Grounds You Have to Prove
Mutual agreement between spouses is not enough. You have to show the judge that at least one recognized legal ground existed at the moment you married. The available grounds vary by state, but most jurisdictions recognize:
- Fraud or misrepresentation — one spouse intentionally lied about or concealed something central to the decision to marry, such as the ability to have children, a prior felony conviction, or a secret existing marriage. The deception has to be significant enough that the other spouse would not have agreed to marry had they known. This is the most commonly cited ground.
- Duress — one spouse was coerced or threatened into the marriage and did not freely consent.
- Bigamy — one spouse was still legally married to someone else on the wedding date.
- Incest — the spouses are related by blood more closely than state law permits.
- Mental incapacity — one spouse could not understand the nature of the marriage contract, whether from a serious mental health condition or intoxication.
- Underage marriage — one spouse was below the legal age of consent and married without required parental or judicial approval.
- Physical incapacity — one spouse has an incurable condition preventing sexual relations, and the other spouse did not know before the marriage.
Saying you were deceived is not enough. You need documents, witness testimony, medical records, or other proof that the specific defect existed on the wedding day. Courts scrutinize annulment petitions more heavily than divorce filings because the legal consequence is far more dramatic.
Grounds also fall into two legal categories that affect who can file and how long you have. Bigamy and incest render a marriage void — never legally valid from the start — and either spouse or sometimes a third party can challenge it, usually with no deadline. Fraud, duress, mental incapacity, underage marriage, and physical incapacity make a marriage voidable, meaning it is treated as valid unless and until a court annuls it. Only the wronged spouse can file on voidable grounds, and strict deadlines apply.
Time Limits and Ratification
Most states impose tight deadlines on voidable grounds. Fraud-based petitions typically must be filed within a few years of discovering the deception. Underage claims often have to be brought before the minor reaches a certain age or within a short period after turning 18. Duress claims generally require filing within a reasonable time after the coercion ends. Deadlines vary significantly by state, so check your local rules early.
There is a second, informal time limit that catches people off guard: ratification. If you discover the grounds and then keep living with your spouse as a married couple, a court may decide you accepted the marriage despite its defects. At that point, divorce becomes your only option.
Documents to Gather Before You File
The core filing is a Petition for Annulment, which you can usually download from your state or county court’s self-help website. Before filing, pull together:
- Full legal names, dates of birth, and current addresses for both spouses.
- The date and location of the marriage ceremony.
- A certified copy of the marriage certificate.
- A factual description of the circumstances supporting your legal ground.
- Information on any children of the marriage and any shared property or debt.
- Supporting evidence tailored to your ground.
The evidence piece is where petitions succeed or fail. A bigamy claim calls for proof that the other spouse’s prior marriage was still active, such as a marriage record with no corresponding divorce decree. A fraud claim might require medical records, financial documents, or sworn statements from people who knew about the deception. Mental incapacity or intoxication claims may need medical expert testimony or police reports. The petition alone will not carry the case.
Filing the Petition and Serving Your Spouse
Take the completed petition and supporting documents to the clerk of court in the county where you or your spouse lives. Filing fees range from roughly $100 to $500 depending on the jurisdiction. If you cannot afford the fee, most courts offer a fee waiver application for people who meet income requirements.
After filing, you have to formally notify your spouse that the case exists. This is called service of process, and you cannot do it yourself. A neutral third party — a sheriff’s deputy, constable, or professional process server — has to deliver the filed petition and a court-issued summons to your spouse. Process server fees typically run between $20 and $150 for straightforward in-person delivery, more if the server has trouble locating your spouse. In some states, a cooperative spouse can sign a waiver of service and skip the formal delivery step. Once the papers are delivered, proof of service goes back to the court, and your spouse has 20 to 30 days to file a written response.
If Your Spouse Does Not Respond
When the response deadline passes with no answer, you can ask the court for a default judgment. This usually means filing a motion and then attending a hearing where you present your evidence without opposition. The judge still has to find that legitimate grounds exist; default is not automatic approval. But the absence of a competing story makes it much easier to meet your burden of proof.
If Your Spouse Contests It
If your spouse files a response disputing the annulment, the case moves toward a contested hearing or trial where both sides present evidence and testimony. Contested annulments can take several months to resolve, and outcomes are far less predictable than uncontested cases.
What the Court Decides About Children and Property
Every state protects the legitimacy of children born during a marriage that is later annulled. The annulment does not affect their legal relationship to either parent. A judge will establish parentage and issue custody, visitation, and child support orders using the same standards that apply in divorce. From the children’s perspective, there is essentially no difference between the two.
Property division works differently. Because the marriage technically never existed, the standard rules for splitting marital or community property generally do not apply the same way. Courts often try to return each person to the financial position they were in before the marriage. In practice, each spouse walks away with whatever they brought in, and anything acquired jointly gets divided based on each person’s actual contribution rather than an automatic 50/50 split. This can produce harsh results for a spouse who gave up a career or made financial sacrifices during what they believed was a valid marriage.
That is where the putative spouse doctrine comes in. A putative spouse is someone who entered the marriage with a genuine, good-faith belief that it was legally valid. If you can show you did not know about the defect, many states will treat you as a putative spouse and grant you property rights closer to what you would get in a divorce. Some states also allow courts to award spousal support to a putative spouse, though this varies widely.
Tax and Social Security Consequences
Because an annulment retroactively erases the marriage, it triggers consequences that divorce does not.
Once a court grants the annulment, the IRS considers you to have been unmarried for every year the marriage existed. Any joint returns you filed used the wrong filing status, and you have to file amended returns on Form 1040-X for all affected tax years still within the statute of limitations — generally three years from when the original return was filed or two years from when the tax was paid, whichever is later. On each amended return, you change your filing status to single, or head of household if you qualify.1Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Publication 504 Depending on your income during those years, this may produce a refund or additional tax owed.
Social Security benefits work similarly. If you were receiving benefits that ended because of your marriage, such as survivor benefits or child’s benefits from a prior spouse, an annulment can reinstate them. The Social Security Administration treats an annulled marriage as though it never happened, and benefits can restart as of the month the annulment decree was issued, provided you file a timely application.2Social Security Administration. Social Security Handbook – Reinstatement of Benefits When Marriage Terminates You generally cannot claim spousal or survivor benefits based on the annulled marriage itself, since it legally never existed. One exception: if the annulling court awarded permanent alimony, the SSA may not treat the marriage as if it never happened for benefits purposes, and the claimant can be blocked from reentitlement to benefits that would otherwise be reinstated.3Social Security Administration. SSR 84-1
If the Judge Denies Your Petition
Annulments get denied more often than people expect. The judge may find that the evidence does not support the claimed ground, that the filing was too late, or that you ratified the marriage by continuing to live with your spouse after learning about the defect. A denial does not trap you. You can still file for divorce, which has a much lower evidentiary bar since most states allow no-fault divorce. What you lose is the legal declaration that the marriage never existed, which is what drives the tax and Social Security consequences described above.
When to Hire a Lawyer
An uncontested annulment with clear-cut grounds, no children, and no significant property can sometimes be handled through court self-help resources. The calculation changes the moment any of these enters the picture: your spouse contests the petition, children need custody and support orders, meaningful assets or debts need dividing, or your grounds require complex evidence like proving fraud or mental incapacity. Family law attorneys who handle annulments generally charge hourly rates similar to divorce attorneys, and contested cases with multiple hearings can run into thousands of dollars. Weigh that against what you stand to lose if the petition is denied or property division cuts the wrong way.