Till death do us part

Roman Catholic Italy is witnessing a boom in posthumous annulments, with an increasing number of marriages hitting the rocks soon after one of the partners is lowered into the ground.

The surge in annulments is down in large part to an outbreak of widow wars, with first wives using church courts to make sure their matrimonial replacements don't receive the inheritance they thought was coming in the event of the husband's death.

Under Canon law, divorce is forbidden and annulments may be granted only if it is proven that a marriage was invalid when contracted.

As recently as 1982, Rome's unbending opposition to divorce meant that only 287 requests for annulments were examined by the prelates who are judges at the court in the renaissance Palazzo della Cancelleria building.

The Rota examines requests by royalty and heads of state and appeal cases passed from lower ecclesiastical courts for other Catholics. By 2002, however, the number of cases being heard each year had shot up to 1280.

The prosperous ecclesiastical lawyers at the Holy Rota, the church court that cancels wedding vows, are enjoying a windfall, charging a minimum of $6625 and, in some cases, 10 times as much.

The Pope has repeatedly admonished the Rota judges against granting annulments too easily and John Paul is expected to reiterate his conservative stance when he opens the Holy Rota's judicial year in a ceremony at the court next week.

Much of the increase in work for the tribunal is due to acrimonious "post-mortem" applications.

Joining the first wives club in the legal fray are widowers wanting to annul their first marriage to a dead bride so they can favour children of a second wife in their wills; and children of a first marriage who want to annul their dead father's second wedding so to avoid being disinherited.

"The Holy Rota is bursting with cases because of a new tendency by those who believe they have the right to 'posthumous' annulments," the Italian daily La Stampa reported.

The 20 judges of the Rota are struggling with a backlog of cases, meaning the average waiting time for a hearing is two years. The wait can be worth it, with some hearings drawing the curtain on family melodramas. One woman from northern Italy asked for her marriage to be annulled on the grounds that her husband made her work as a streetwalker to earn money for a down payment on a mortgage.

But church sources say boredom between well-off partners and the "culture of divorce" in Italy and other countries are more common motives for applications.

MPs from Italy's former communist Democratic Party meanwhile are trying to close a loophole in Italian law under which husbands who obtain an annulment in a church court are not obliged to pay alimony to their former wives.

- INDEPENDENT