Each week we select a legal term or phrase that’s commonly misunderstood, interesting, or could make you rethink a spur-of-the-moment marriage to that person you just met in Vegas. This week’s word is the latter.

Written by: Lauren E. Trent

Given the media hype often surrounding celebrity annulments, it is no surprise that the process is commonly misunderstood as an easy way out of a bad decision. Divorce is something we all understand — for whatever reason the parties ask the courts to end a completely valid marriage. It is often a long process, including standard waiting periods before the divorce will be final. Petitioning for an annulment, on the other hand, means asking a court to immediately declare the marriage invalid. Since an annulment treats a marriage as if it never happened (which may be highly attractive, depending on who you married), it will only be granted in very limited circumstances.

Under most states’ laws, grounds for annulment exist if the marriage was unlawful, where there was fraud, duress, undue influence, or a party did not have the capacity to consent to marriage. Duress and undue influence are simple concepts: it’s about pressuring one party into the marriage or taking advantage of them to the extent that they do not exercise free will. An unlawful marriage might involve people who are too closely related under state law, or where one party was already married. Fraud may come up where one party lied to the other about something important in order to convince them to marry. The significance of a lie warranting annulment varies from state to state, but the quintessential example would be “You’re the father of my baby and I want us to be a family.” (Sadly, “Of course we’ll share household work equally!” does not constitute fraud.)

How about the fabled trip to Vegas that results in a marriage to a stranger? A court might find that one or both parties did not have the capacity to consent to a marriage if they were overly intoxicated. Failure to consent could also be any impairment that causes a person to not understand the nature, effect, and consequences of marriage when they entered into it. Minors (as defined by the particular state) are generally considered unable to consent to marriage, though there are circumstances under which a court will find that a valid marriage exists despite a party being underage.

The final way out of that Vegas marriage might be on the grounds that it was a joke. While joke weddings are no laughing matter, courts are likely to let the parties off the hook with an annulment when one or both of them never had any intention of taking on the obligations of marriage in the first place. Just remember: courts consider annulments carefully, and the fact that you just met the bride won’t be reason enough for a judge to declare that the marriage never happened.