Marriage Annulled After Wife Thought About Having an Affair

A landmark ruling went down in Italy recently. A couple's marriage was annulled on the basis that the wife had contemplated having an affair, even though she stopped short of committing adultery. True story.

Italy's highest court upheld a ruling by a church tribunal and a lower court, both of which decided that the woman's contemplation of having an affair, or affairs, was sufficient for the marriage to be annulled. The unusual case, believed to establish a precedent in Italian law, began when the husband went to a church tribunal in Modena in northern Italy asking for his marriage to be dissolved. He told the tribunal that his wife had often talked about having an open marriage, although she had "never put the idea into practice." The tribunal agreed with him that the marriage should be annulled, but his wife took the case to a civil court in Bologna and from there to Italy's highest appeals court in Rome. In its ruling, the judges from the Cassazione Court in Rome wrote: "We fully support the lower court's findings, despite there being no evidence of the woman having relationships with other men."

Because of the unnamed woman's "affair" in her head and the subsequent dissolution of marriage, she will not be entitled to alimony.


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