Busted-up marriages are necessarily fraught with emotion and huge personal investment. I think it is false to say that each person can best judge their own case. Choosing yourself as judge, is choosing a biased judge. If you had any real honesty, you would recuse yourself from the bench.
“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...
As one who is being trained to do RCIA and working with another lay person as well as with my parish deacon, in the training sesson, was told that in regards to marriage issues for those who want to become Catholic, the parish priest has to be called in.