Family Historian User Group

Can “Annulled” be added as an option to marriage status?

There are some suggestions in this thread Annulled Marriages (14770).

I'm going to put my tongue slightly in my cheek and say that "Annulled" means "Never married", so therefore the "Never married" status is appropriate. If there is a Marriage Event then, of course, it looks weird - but that is actually the "legal" truth (which is why my tongue is only slightly in my cheek).

We know that in real life the couple went through a marriage ceremony but the whole point of the annulment is that a reason was discovered why the marriage was not, in fact, legal (for want of a better term). In FH we could insert a Marriage Event, then an Annulment Event and also set the Status to "Never married" - on a diagram the "marriage line" is dotted and in my diagram the marriage event appears - though not the annulment so if I ever had one, I'd need to alter the diagram to show it.

You might think, with some justification, that this is a bit of a clunky work-round.

Adrian, it's clunky but just about works -- two events and one status show what happened.

Much harder to deal with a void marriage -- there's a Marriage Event, and the Status should be 'Never Married' but there isn't a 'Void Marriage' event; the marriage event has to be bestrewn with notes explaining the situation.

I think the way to go is to create a custom annulment event, as Adrian suggests. Your evidence (source) for the annulment can be cited against that event, and any further details entered in the note field for the event. Even if an 'annulled' status were available you would need to record your evidence and details somewhere.

I have a more curious problem: I have just discovered a couple who were married twice, in different parts of the country, with an interval of about three years between the two marriages. I'm sure they were never divorced between the marriages: they appear to have remained together and had at least one child during that period, and they went on to have more. They were quite young at the time of the first marriage (about 18 or 19 at a time when the age of majority was 21) so the only explanation I can think of is that that they didn't have parental consent for the first marriage. I can't decide whether it's worth paying for a copy of one, or both, of the marriage records to see if they shed any light. Meanwhile I have amended my diagram text scheme to show multiple instances of marriage in the same family record, which looks odd.

LornaCraig wrote: ↑

09 Mar 2020 12:35

I have a more curious problem: I have just discovered a couple who were married twice, in different parts of the country, with an interval of about three years between the two marriages. ...
Meanwhile I have amended my diagram text scheme to show multiple instances of marriage in the same family record, which looks odd.

I have a similar situation in the story of my distant relative Wilfred Willett and Eileen Stenhouse (dramatised in the BBC Play for Today "Wilfred and Eileen" - broadcast I believe in November 1981.).

Wilfred was a medical student "much struck" with Eileen Stenhouse in the run up to WW1. They married without parental knowledge and then when Wilfred signed-up the parents insisted they got married; so they did again!
On my tree I "show" the first marriage (not having any reason to doubt its validity at least in the eyes of the law, if not their parents), although the second is recorded in the GEDCOM.

Their story was dramatised because of a very young Eileen going to France to "rescue her husband" - which almost certainly saved his life; he then went on to join the Communist Party (to the horror of his family) and become an Official in the Agricultural Workers Union in Tonbridge as well as writing a series of nature books.

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

09 Mar 2020 11:31

Adrian, it's clunky but just about works -- two events and one status show what happened.

Much harder to deal with a void marriage -- there's a Marriage Event, and the Status should be 'Never Married' but there isn't a 'Void Marriage' event; the marriage event has to be bestrewn with notes explaining the situation.

Is part of the problem that GEDCOM has not kept up with social change?

In data terms we no longer really want to show husband+wife, but two people in a "significant relationship" or one that leads to children.

These relationships are no longer necessarily "to death do us part", so we need some way of indicating the duration of the relationship (if known) - the married field can take a date range ("from ... to ...") and a "cause of death" of the relationship.

We then confuse the type of relationship (casual/passing, never-married ("common-law") and married, partnered, etc.) with the final disposition of the relationship (not consummated, annulled, separated, divorced, widowed, etc.). "Separated" has the added problem that the couple remain legally married/partnered until death or divorce.

LornaCraig wrote: ↑

09 Mar 2020 12:35

I think the way to go is to create a custom annulment event, as Adrian suggests. ...

Minor point - In fact, annulment is already a standard event - no need for a custom event. (Shows you how often most of us use it...)

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

09 Mar 2020 11:31

... Much harder to deal with a void marriage -- there's a Marriage Event, and the Status should be 'Never Married' but there isn't a 'Void Marriage' event; ...

Oh - interesting. There can't be a Void / Voiding event because the marriage was Void by its very nature from the very beginning. Which is distinct from Voidable where the marriage is only Void (as in "Null and Void") if someone actually goes through the legal process to confirm that, yes, as claimed, the marriage failed to satisfy the required conditions and therefore was Void from the start. The event could then be the date of the legal process voiding the marriage. But, by its nature, the status of void is retrospective from the very beginning.... I think. Yes I have read Rebecca Probert and any errors are my fault.

However 1 - I am liable to have more fun from the intellectual challenge of sorting this out than most people will think is worth it. (Well, there are a couple of you out there who, I'm sure will also enjoy the challenge).

However 2 - The vast majority (all?) of my Void marriages are nothing more sinister than marriage to a deceased wife's sister or marriage to a deceased husband's brother. Since these were later made legal, and were presumably regarded as perfectly acceptable by many people, I don't bother with anything more than a note saying something like "Strictly speaking, because this was a marriage to a deceased wife's sister, it wasn't actually a valid marriage ..." In one case, those notes are needed because, at first glance, the couple each went on to commit bigamy - I presume that they must have realised that their deceased wife's sister type marriage was void, so didn't count. Must have needed some explaining to the neighbours!

davidf wrote: ↑

09 Mar 2020 14:27

... we need some way of indicating the duration of the relationship (if known) - the married field can take a date range ("from ... to ...") ...

Although one of the problems is that these days, the very nature of some of these relationships is that it's virtually impossible to allocate start or end dates. At least, not with the GEDCOM date ranges available to us now.

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

09 Mar 2020 14:43

Minor point - In fact, annulment is already a standard event

So it is! I was looking under 'M' hoping to see Marriage Annulment in the list of six other marriage-related facts. Although of course Divorce doesn't come under M so there's no reason why Annulment should.

In response to Davidf, you seem to imply this is a recent phenomenon. But I think you’ll find Henry VIII did quite a bit of voiding and annulling. So it is not a case of Gedcom not keeping pace, but failing to cater for it in the first place!

There seems to be some misunderstanding here. ANUL has been fully supported by GEDCOM as an event since version 4.0 and I'm afraid the Status indicator in Family Historian has nothing whatsoever to do with GEDCOM, or whatever its limitations might/might not be. It's simply a hard coded Calico Pie 'add-on' feature which allows the user to provide a visible indicator of marriage status, i.e. it's a 'Flag'.

The correct use of the 'ANUL' GEDCOM TAG/event would be to record the date on which annulment granted/occurred and, as today, results in the marriage itself being voided from the start of the marriage, i.e. it is treated, legally, as if the marriage event never took place, but doesn't alter the fact that the marriage event did take place and will have been documented; and so should still be recorded, i.e. Henry VIII is always recorded as having had six wives despite the fact that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared 'null and void' by the Archbishop of Canterbury, after the Pope refused to grant a Divorce.

For further info see these (and other) sample GEDCOM articles:

- https://www.tamurajones.net/GEDCOMTags.xhtml (Overview GEDCOM TAG Table towards the bottom of the page)
- http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~pmcbride ... gcappa.htm

Mervyn

I use the status field as a simple indicator on charts to record the state of the relationship on charts if it is other than "standard" i.e. divorced/ separated/ never married. This is fine except that I have a number of "Bigamous" marriages and would like to show this status (say "bigamous marriage"). Since this is an "add on" to Gedcom by FH, the ability to have one's own list of "status" (stati?) would be much appreciated and it is up to the user to decide on any "niceties" they wish to indicate. How such variations would be reflected in narrative reports is another matter altogether.

In GEDCOM, this is we’re I use the MARR.TYPE tag to indicate “common-law”, or “separated” and other types/dispositions of relationships that become like a marriage in various societies and customs!

Yes, that use of TYPE is discussed in FHUG Knowledge Base Recording a Civil Partnership.
It is a pity that FH does not support the TYPE field as per the GEDCOM specification.
See Wish List Fact Descriptor for Civil Union, two Place Travel, Preferred Occupation, etc. and Vote for it.