In Malaysia, a couple filed a joint petition for annulling their marriage, arguing they didn’t consummate it. But the High Court of Kuala Lumpur dismissed the request viewed as a “shortcut for divorce.”
In Malaysia, a married couple who sought to annul their marriage saw their petition dismissed by a family judge of the High Court of Kuala Lumpur.
The couple married in June 2022, but soon after, they agreed to annul their marriage because they had no interest in remaining married to each other. They claimed they had never lived as husband and wife.
A joint petition filed by both petitioners sought for nullity of marriage on the premise they didn’t consummate the marriage.
But for the High Court of Kuala Lumpur, a marriage can be annulled when it has not been consummated only because of “the incapacity of either party to consummate it.” According to the Malaysian Marriage and Divorce Act, this incapacity refers to the “inability to have sexual intercourse based on physical abnormality or psychological impotence.” A person who suffers from “invincible repugnance to the act of intercourse with the other” may be regarded as incapable of consummating the marriage. This was not the case for the couple who both did not wish to consummate the marriage. It was not the case for the couple who did not wish to consummate the marriage.
Filing a joint petition was a “glaring mistake” as the refusal to consummate must be on the part of a respondent, which the petition didn’t have.
The family judge of the High Court of Kuala Lumpur, Puan Evrol Mariette Peters, notes in the ruling published on March 28 that the couple agreed not to consummate the marriage and end it, which in her view, “did not amount to a just excuse.”
She added that a petition for nullity “is not, and should never be filed as a shortcut to divorce” and stated the petition was “nothing but an abuse of the process of Court.”
The married couple “should realize that registration renders a marriage valid, and with legal consequences. It is not something that should be viewed lightly,” the Court added.
As a consequence, the husband and the wife cannot revert their legal status to single. But they can still file a joint divorce petition.
