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Post A Reply Login Name: Password: Message Icon:                                                                       Message: HTML is not enabled. UBB Code™ is enabled. UBB Code™ Images not permitted. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Redskies: [QB] I'll open by saying that I don't know all that much about legal stuff; I just often read and remember "small print". As far as I understand, mizchastain, you're part right and part wrong about English law on this. You're absolutely right that the law allows for a marriage to be annulled - that is, legally making it as if it never existed - due to non-consummation. However, this is absolutely not something that happens automatically. One person in the marriage would have to apply for an annulment, and then a judge would have to agree to grant one. There are some circumstances in which a marriage is automatically considered never to have existed (eg, if one person was still legally married or partnered to someone else), but non-consummation is definitely not one of those things. Even if everyone official in the entire country knew and could prove that a marriage had never been consummated, that marriage is still fully legal. If there is any rule about time with this, it would be a minimum period of time before one could file for an annulment - but I don't remember there being a definitive rule on time with this. One thing where consideration of what is and isn't a valid marriage may be different is in various religious institutions. I know very little about this, but have vague memories of at least some Christian denominations believing that a marriage is only valid if it's been consummated. As mizchastian refers to above, that's also one plank in some people's arguments against marriage equality - that it can't be a marriage if it can't be consummated by vagina-penis sex. Some of these folk make clear and explicit exceptions for cases where consummation is impossible in a woman-man partnership (through physical disability, for example), some um and ah about it and prefer not to mention it, and a few make no exception. As far as I know, whether any church or denomination recognises something as a marriage has no bearing on how the law recognises it. And, may as well, here's what a government resource has to say about the matter http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Governmentcitizensandrights/Divorceseparationandrelationshipbreakdown/Endingamarriageorcivilpartnership/Annullingamarriage/DG_193751 [/QB][/QUOTE]

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