The existence of annulment prior to the mid-nineteenth century is easily explained. Until 1857, England was a \u22divorceless society.\u22 Accordingly, the only way an unhappy spouse could escape marriage was by seeking an annulment-a declaration that the marriage had never validly existed-from an ecclesiastical court operated by the Catholic Church. According to one family law scholar, \u22annulments [in those times] performed what we would think of as the function of divorces.\u22This explanation, though plausible in that context, fails to account for the continued vitality of annulment in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century America, a time when liberal divorce laws had been on the books in most states for more than a century and the divorce rate had long been on the rise. This article provides the first systematic exploration of the practice of annulment during this period. Based on original annul-ment records, this article presents data showing who sought annulment, the grounds they alleged, as well as what happened in annulment cases in-and out-of court. Beyond drawing a picture of the practice of annul-ment, this article offers insight into why annulment did not-and indeed, still has not-become obsolete, despite increasingly liberal divorce laws.
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