annulment

thumb|alt=refer to caption|In a scene from the Mahabharata, [[Abhimanyu learns that his marriage to Vatsala has been annulled.]]

Annulment is a legal procedure within secular and religious legal systems for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almost as if it had never taken place. In legal terminology, an annulment makes a void marriage or a voidable marriage null.