[babygene]

“The Tribunal needs to be able to get both sides of the story, or a darn convincing reason why they can’t. In this case, the wife declined to give the Tribunal any means to contact her ex.”

Interesting...

My sister in law’s x-husband, after raising 5 kids obtained an annulment. She was informed by letter after the fact and when she complained to the parish priest was told it was out of his hands and he could do nothing. I know this to be a fact.

This was 5 years ago...

[Mrs. Don-o]

Not knowing the facts, but it could have been something objectively defective and documentable such that individual testimony wasn't necessary. Such objective conditions invalidating vows could have been:

• she'd been married before in a marriage presumed to be still valid
• he'd been married before
• she wasn't baptized
• he wasn't baptized
• they were within 3 degrees of consanguinity (I'm not sure exactly how this is defined, but it could be first cousin, second cousin, niece, nephew, uncle, aunt, first-cousin-once-removed, couple of other kinship things there)
• they'd signed a pre-nup agreement indicating they didn't consider the marriage vows to be permanent
• or something else wrong on the document level.

If it wasn't right flat out there in the documents, they'd have HAD to contact her and interview her. Unless the former spouse is strictly no able to be interviewed (missing in a flood disaster and presumed dead, moved and whereabouts unknown, in a coma and not communicative, etc.)

The priest is probably right that it's out of his hands. Especially if it was cut-and-dried on the basis of the documents alone. These things are done at the Diocese level, not at the parish level.