Annulments in Colorado

If you’re wondering whether your marriage qualifies for an annulment, officially called a declaration of invalidity in Colorado, the law treats it as if the marriage never legally existed, rather than ending an existing one the way a divorce does.

Colorado recognizes a specific, limited set of grounds you would need to show: one spouse was under the legal age of consent, one spouse was already married to someone else, one spouse lacked the mental capacity to consent due to a disability or intoxication, the marriage was never consummated and the other spouse did not know why, the marriage was between close relatives, or one spouse was induced to marry through fraud. Most of these grounds have to be raised within six months to a year of discovering them, though there is no deadline for bigamy. Annulments are harder to prove than an uncontested divorce, so if you think your situation might qualify, it is worth reviewing the specifics with an attorney early.