I am 33 years old and I got married 12 years ago in Nigeria to some one I had just met. He lived in Germany and he wanted me to come to Germany to live with him but told me he needed my passport(British passport) to take back with him to show the German authorities and inform them his wife was coming over soon. He left with my passport but it was seized at the airport. He called me to tell me my passport had been seized and that was the last time I heard from him. The marriage was never consummated. How can I have this marriage annulled. I only know his name and know nothing else about him, I also do not have a copy of the marrage certificate. I currently reside in the UK.

November 27, 2008 by Anonymous

I am so sorry to hear of your marriage experience. It may sound difficult and complex to extract yourself from this situation,but in reality it is not. What you must do is look separately at each aspect of the problem.
The first issue is to jurisdiction, and to which Court in which country you must apply. You say that you now reside in the UK. In itself this is not necessarily enough to give the UK courts jurisdiction to dissolve the marriage. For them to do so you must have UK domicile. This is a fixed intention to live and remain in the UK. I suspect that as a British passport holder you will have this, and I would not envisage any jurisdiction problems in making an application to what would be any UK County Court with divorce jurisdiction.
The next issue is grounds to present a nullity petition, and very clearly you have this as the marriage was not consumated.
The third and final barrier is service of the petition, with you not knowing where your husband now lives. What you will have to do is advertise the
issue of your nullity petition in a newspaper covering the area you most likely believe he is living. Not knowing where he lives is not a bar to
obtaining a decree, it is only necessary for you to
show the court that you have done everything possible to bring the petition to his notice.

Permalink