Italian couple's marriage annulled after wife thought about having affair

An Italian couple's marriage has been annulled on the basis that the wife had contemplated having an affair, even though she stopped short of committing adultery. Italy's highest court upheld a ruling by a church tribunal and a lower court, both of which decided that the woman's contemplation of having an affair, or affairs, was sufficient for the marriage to be annulled.

The unusual case, believed to establish a precedent in Italian law, began when the husband went to a church tribunal in Modena in northern Italy asking for his marriage to be dissolved. He told the tribunal that his wife had often talked about having an open marriage, although she had "never put the idea into practice".



The tribunal agreed with him that the marriage should be annulled, but his wife took the case to a civil court in Bologna and from there to Italy's highest appeals court in Rome. In its ruling, the judges from the Cassazione Court in Rome wrote: "We fully support the lower court's findings, despite there being no evidence of the woman having relationships with other men."

Under the judgment, the wife will not be entitled to claim alimony from her former husband. Privacy rules prevented the couple's names, ages and occupations from being divulged.