We take marriage very serious in Indonesia. You need to meet certain requirements, terms and conditions in order to get legally married. Once you have been issued a marriage certificate, or a marriage book for Moslem couples, your marriage is legally recognized. The terms and conditions for a person to get legally married in Indonesia are, among others:
- Consents by both parties; bride and groom;
- They must be aged 21 years. They must obtain parents’ approval, or either parent if one of them has passed-away, or from their guardian in the even both of them have passed-away.
Consents by both parties are required in order to avoid forced-marriage, or arranged marriage. Both bride and groom must love each other without any force to enter into a matrimony. This is in accordance with our philosophy that marriage is a spiritual bond between a man and a woman as husband and wife with the aim of forming a happy and eternal family (household) based on belief to one and only God. This aim most likely will not be met without consents of both parties.
The idea of having the couples aged 21 years old to get married without parents’ consent, among others, is to have matured spouses in the matrimony as it requires emotional as well as physical efforts.
The Applicant
If you think a marriage does not meet the above terms and conditions, you may file a cancellation to the court of law. An application may be submitted to the court with a jurisdiction as governed by the 1974 Marriage Law. In order to file an annulment application, you must be either:
- You are one of the parties in the marriage, either wife or husband;
- You are the parents of the groom or the bride;
- You are the authorized officer as governed by the Marriage Law;
- Any party related with legal interest to the marriage. This can be, among others, a wife whose husband is getting married again without her approval for committing bigamy.
You need to pay attention to the time frame for filing the annulment with the ground that the marriage conducted under a threat. You have only six (6) months to file for the annulment application to the court. After that, the law will see you accept the situation, and annulment is no longer the case.
Legal Consequences
The marriage annulment will not take affect to your children’s legal status. They are legitimate one, and therefore shall have the legal relationship with their father. The rights and obligations within parental relationship are still in place even the marriage has been canceled.
As for the property, since the marriage declared annulled and therefore it’s not legally recognized since day one, the property division is not applicable between the husband and wife that is not legally free to marry. This may happen especially when the previous marriage still exists and is not yet to be dissolved.
Key Take-away
Marriage annulment has many aspects to meet. Failure to do so will make the court reject your application. Instead of filing for the annulment, I would suggest you to go with a divorce application. You have more leeways and options in pursuing your goals. We have one legal ground that commonly used in the field of practice i.e. irreconcilable differences.
I am Asep Wijaya. Thank you for reading my blogs!
