What Is Considered Fraud for Annulment in Michigan?
- The Michigan annulment statute is found within the Family Code under the specific category regarding divorce. However, an annulment is not a divorce and does not require any legal proceeding. Unions involving defects against the laws of Michigan are not considered marriages in the first place so a divorce is not an appropriate action. The courts will annul a marriage be declaring it void and removing any record of the union from state records. Under the statute, if one party induced the other to enter into a marital union through fraud and the parties did not cohabitate afterwards, the marriage is void.
- In a 2007 Michigan Court of Appeals case, the plaintiff's estate alleged that he was fraudulently induced to marry a woman based upon her promise to care for him, which she failed to do and he subsequently died. Plaintiff also contended that the woman refused to consummate the marriage. The court held that lack of consummation, on its own, is not sufficient evidence of fraud. The court further held that despite a possible winning case for fraud, the court cannot adequately redress the plaintiff's alleged injuries as he was not living by the time of the trial.
- In a 1940 precedential case, the husband plaintiff sought an annulment from his wife after discovering she was sterile and unable to bear children. The facts of the case presented a finding that the wife led the husband to believe that she wanted to raise a family with him but was in fact unable to reproduce. The court held that when one spouse enters into a marriage upon misrepresentations by the other spouse, the misled spouse is entitled to an annulment as a matter of law.
- In a 1990 case, the plaintiff alleged that his wife induced him to marry her after misrepresenting her age, education, number of previous marriages and two previous pregnancies conceived with the plaintiff. This court in this case disagreed that the preceding misrepresentations amounted to fraud and cited the state's interest in preserving marriage. Relying on the language of a 1940 case, Yanoff v. Yanoff, the court held that fraudulent inducement of a marriage requires conduct of a "nature wholly subversive of the true essence of the parties' relationship, and be shown to have affected the free conduct of the wronged party."