A man suffering from bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, was granted an annulment of his marriage in the High Court earlier this year, according to a judgment released this month.
He was granted the annulment on the grounds that he was not capable of sustaining a normal marital relationship with the woman he married.
In the judgment, Mr Justice Kevin O'Higgins said most people with this disorder were totally capable of normal marital relationships. He also found that the wife, by seeking a legal separation, had effectively repudiated the marriage.
Annulments are rare, but, despite the legalisation of divorce, they still occur. The implications of a marriage annulment are that no marriage ever existed, therefore no obligations exist between spouses, and the requirements of the divorce legislation, that "proper provision" be made for the spouses and dependent children, do not exist.
In this case the couple married in 1994, when the man was 46 years old. He was a successful businessman, but his business had suffered as a result of his mental illness. The couple separated in 1999, and the wife started separation proceedings. The husband started nullity proceedings in 2001. A financial arrangement was entered into between the parties, and the wife dropped her objections to the nullity.
The main ground examined by Mr Justice O'Higgins was the claim that the man was not capable of giving a full, free or informed consent to the marriage, and that he was not capable, because of his psychiatric illness, of entering into and sustaining a normal marital relationship.
The hearing took six days, much of it devoted to psychiatric evidence about the mental condition of the husband, who had been receiving treatment for his bipolar disorder since 1991.
After considering evidence about his mental state around the time of the marriage, and hearing from the man himself, Mr Justice O'Higgins concluded that he was capable of exercising the judgment to get married, so the marriage could not be invalidated on the grounds of consent.
He then considered whether the man was capable of entering into and sustaining a normal marital relationship. "It would be wrong," said Mr Justice O'Higgins when he had finished summing up the medical evidence, "to accept uncritically the evidence of medical experts, no matter how distinguished. To do so would, in effect, be to substitute the opinion of the medical person involved for the decision of the court itself."
He found the balance of the opinions of the medical experts, combined with evidence from the man's parish priest, who had experience in Catholic marriage tribunals, suggested the man was incapable of sustaining a marital relationship because of his illness.