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Annulment for Fraud

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SunnyGal

Junior Member
You have now been given two links with the relevant info.
Neither you nor cbg answered my question:

* I can't find the statute on the New York state pages. I only found it on a law firm's web page. Does anyone know the official link?

Which you could have found yourself if you had, as I did, typed the words New York Annulment Laws into your favorite search engine.
I found stealth2's link on my own. I can't use it because it's on a third party site. I need the page New York State posts its laws online.

I'm posting from overseas, using a crappy vpn. I don't think I'm getting all the results I should be getting.
 

cbg

I'm a Northern Girl
If the site I found is not acceptable to you, I don't know of anything better. Pay a lawyer to do your legal research if the free help provided by volunteers is not to your liking.
 

Just Blue

Senior Member
He married me intending to transport me overseas, drug me and record himself raping me while drugged, and sell the recordings. All the legal stuff with his crime is being handled here.

I prefer the dignity of an annulment. I just need to demonstrate I could qualify for an annullent in NY. I don't have to get the annulment in the US.

Is there any chance you can see your way to answering the questions in my first post now? I would really appreciate it.
I asked an Attorney that posts on here to look at your thread and advise. As I said I don't know how to advise you. I'm sorry that the thing you married is such a POS.
 

SunnyGal

Junior Member
I asked an Attorney that posts on here to look at your thread and advise. As I said I don't know how to advise you. I'm sorry that the thing you married is such a POS.
Thank you for saying this and for pointing someone who may be able to help to the thread. I feel really shaken up by how people are responding in the thread. I may take a couple days before I check back.
 

Just Blue

Senior Member
Thank you for saying this and for pointing someone who may be able to help to the thread. I feel really shaken up by how people are responding in the thread. I may take a couple days before I check back.
They are trying to help you and you are being kinda rude to them . I understand you are going through a very difficult time right now...but try not to take it out on the volunteers...okay? The links provided are very good. OhioGAL may have access to something better suited to your needs.
 

HRZ

Senior Member
Just because husband had supposedly most unsavory plans or fanticies for your future is not per SE a slam dunk reason under NY law to grant an annulment ...unless your lawyer is able to convince the court it fits the definition of fraud .

To marry somebody for the purpose of transporting them elsewhere to drug and film them in various sex acts seems like a big stretch to me . An acquaintance of mine with solid drug connections assured me he could get people to perform almost anything in return for drugs...no need to marry them ...he is not among the living anymore so I cannot ask him to clarify !
 

Just Blue

Senior Member
Just because husband had supposedly most unsavory plans or fanticies for your future is not per SE a slam dunk reason under NY law to grant an annulment ...unless your lawyer is able to convince the court it fits the definition of fraud .

To marry somebody for the purpose of transporting them elsewhere to drug and film them in various sex acts seems like a big stretch to me . An acquaintance of mine with solid drug connections assured me he could get people to perform almost anything in return for drugs...no need to marry them ...he is not among the living anymore so I cannot ask him to clarify !
sigh....

It likely was for some twisted rape video ...there are some really sick and twisted things out there that will pay quite a bit to view that crap.
 

Taxing Matters

Overtaxed Member
The NY statutes that allows for annulment of a marriage based on fraud are found in the NY Domestic Relations Law (Dom. Rel. L.). Dom Rel L. § 7 is the statute that says one may void (annul) a marriage based on several things, including fraud, and Dom. Rel. L. § 140 provides for the action in court to void the marriage.

Most cases involving annulment are not appealed, and only appellate cases are precedent. For that reason, only appellate cases are routinely published and available on legal research sites. You are unlikely to find a database that contains the records of all annullment cases involving fraud in NY for that reason. I am not aware of any such databases.

The basic rule for annulling a marriage in NY is an old one, still good today:

The minds of the parties must meet in one intention. It is a general rule that every misrepresentation of a material fact, made with the intention to induce another to enter into an agreement, and without which he would not have done so, justifies the court in vacating the agreement. It is obvious that no one would obligate himself by a contract if he knew that a material representation, entering into the reason for his consent, was untrue. There is no valid reason for excepting the marriage contract from the general rule.

Svenson v. Svenson, 178 N.Y. 54, 59, 70 N.E. 120, 122 (1904).

The essence of a fraud claim is that the spouse made a material false statement or promise to you prior to marriage to induce you to enter into the marriage, you relied on that statement, and that had the false statement or promise not been made you would not have entered into the marriage. The false statement/promise must have been something fairly significant:

Marriage is a solemn contract. It is not one that may be lightly dissolved. Where the ground relied upon for dissolution is fraud, the fraud contemplated by the statute must be of a nature and import so serious that it destroys the essence of the marriage contract and of a magnitude that the person asserting the fraud as a ground for dissolution would not have entered the marriage contract, if, in advance thereof, the misrepresentations had been revealed.

Di Pillo v. Di Pillo, 17 Misc. 2d 673, 675, 184 N.Y.S.2d 892, 894 (Sup. Ct. 1959).

Your problem is that it appears that rather than relying on a false statement that your spouse made this is instead a situation where he did not disclose what he intended to do after the marriage, if indeed he had that intent prior to the marriage rather than deciding on it after the fact. Here, the case law addresses concealment, too. The NY Court of Appeals (the state's highest court) found that annulment could apply in a case where the husband had failed to disclose to his wife prior the marriage that he had been a German army officer in World War II, a member of the Nazi party, was fanatically anti-semitic and supported Hitler's "final solution" and that they would need to "weed out" her Jewish friends and she would have to stop socializing with them after the marriage:

The continuation of defendant's addiction to this anti-social and fanatical objective after and during marriage, which had been concealed and inferentially misrepresented during courtship, would so plainly make the marital relationship unworkable in this jurisdiction, where the marriage was contracted, that it would depart from the realities to conclude that it was not essential to this married relationship, or that, to defendant's knowledge, plaintiff would have consented to the marriage without its concealment. At least the trier of the fact could so find if evidence is adduced to sustain the allegations of the second cause of action in this pleading.

Kober v. Kober, 16 N.Y.2d 191, 197, 211 N.E.2d 817, 821 (1965).

Rape is a difficult one to work through because one assumes that a sexual relationship is part of a marriage. While it is thankfully no longer the case that the law holds that it is not possible for a husband to rape his wife on the now outdated premise that the wife is obligated to meet the demands of her husband for sex, it still must be shown that your husband intended before the marriage to actually rape you to be fraudulent concealment. If, on the other hand, he had assumed you would consent to what he wanted and the rape then occurred only after he discovered you would not go along that would generally not be fraudulent concealment. So exactly what occurred and the timing of things would matter in trying to make this line of argument for annulment.

The reason that you find few cases of annulment (on any grounds) after the 1970s is that most states, including NY, moved towards providing for no fault divorce in the 1970s. As a result, in most cases today it simply easier to file for and get the no fault divorce than to litigate for annulment. So unless anullment provides the spouse with some benefit that divorce does not there is really no need to go down the annulment route.

If you want to get a feel for how your particular situation would fare in an annulment proceeding in NY, I encourage you to discuss it with a NY family law attorney. From there, you need to figure out what is needed in your country to follow through with annulment.
 

stealth2

Under the Radar Member
Neither you nor cbg answered my question:

* I can't find the statute on the New York state pages. I only found it on a law firm's web page. Does anyone know the official link?



I found stealth2's link on my own. I can't use it because it's on a third party site. I need the page New York State posts its laws online.

I'm posting from overseas, using a crappy vpn. I don't think I'm getting all the results I should be getting.
BTW - if you had actually *looked* you'd have found a link to the NYS law on the page I posted.
 

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