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How Is Annulment Different From Divorce

If there is anything Kim Kardashian can teach us, it’s how to spin a very little into a lot, like how she somehow converted an adults-only videotape into a media empire, clothing lines and a personal life that keeps the tabloid presses working overtime. But Kardashian’s divorce from NBA player Kris Humphries is actually worth nothing for a unique family law issue it raises.

The details are probably well-known to any Morristown reader for whom Kardashian and her assorted TV shows are a guilty pleasure: the 31-year-old married the 26-year-old Humphries this summer in a decadent, overblown wedding affair that, naturally, was televised and then filed for divorce just 72 days later.

But instead of agreeing to the divorce, Humphries asked for an annulment. An annulment is essentially a declaration that the marriage was tragically flawed from the beginning in such a way that it never actually came into existence. So why would Humphries want it to seem as if he and Kardashian were never married?

Rumor has it Humphries wants an annulment rather than a divorce because if the marriage is ruled to have never existed, then their prenuptial agreement does not apply. If the prenuptial agreement does not apply, then neither does the confidentiality provision it is said to contain. And if the confidentiality provision does not apply, then Humphries would be free to air Kardashian’s dirty laundry in a tell-all book, front-cover-worthy magazine interview or sit-down with a television show host. Naturally, Kardashian would not like that, so it will be interesting to see whose preference for how the split is handled prevails.

Source: The New York Daily News, “Kim Kardashian claims she was blindsided by Kris Humphries’ annulment filing,” Frank DiGiacomo, Dec. 5, 2011

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