The Law Reform Committee of the Law Society has called for major changes in the law on marriage nullity. This includes ending the concept of "voidable" marriage, which means marriages can be annulled on grounds such as psychological impotence.
If a marriage is annulled, the courts find that no valid marriage existed in the first place.
The Law Society also recommends the separation of the civil and religious elements in marriage ceremonies, and the introduction of a "clean break" divorce where both parties agree to it.
Despite the introduction of divorce, the number of people seeking the annulment of their marriages has increased, according to Ms Rosemary Horgan, a member of the Law Reform Committee and family law practitioner.
While there was no research on this, the absence of "clean break" divorce undoubtedly contributed to it, she said.
If a marriage is annulled, the legal obligations of marriage do not exist, so there are no financial reliefs such as maintenance attached to a nullity. There was anecdotal evidence that this was one reason parties sought this route out of their marriages, she said.
There were normally two types of ground for nullity, Ms Horgan explained. The first were defects in the marriage contract from the beginning, such as that one party was already married, or under age, which made it impossible for a valid marriage contract to be entered into, so it was "void".
The other type of ground was where a marriage was "voidable", and grew out of the canon law on nullity. Here the parties argued in court that because of, for example, impotence and non-consummation, the marriage was "void".
This ground was extended to "psychological impotence", meaning the person was psychologically incapable of entering a valid marriage. The immaturity of one of the parties at the time of the marriage had also been taken as a ground for making the marriage void or null, she explained.
The Law Society considered that these grounds could be dealt with under existing divorce legislation, leaving nullity to cover the much narrower ground of where the parties could not, for legal reasons, enter a valid contract. When that occurred, according to the report, there should be some financial provisions of a finite kind, to allow people get back on their feet.
The report also recommends that the court should have discretion in relation to the family home and to the residency rights of the "spouse" in an annulled marriage.
The children of an annulled marriage also had rights in relation to the marriage, and they should be represented in court by a guardian ad litem, according to the report.
Because nullity proceedings are often not contested, there is no one to argue the legal and constitutional case for the validity of the marriage. The Law Society recommends that the courts should be able to ask the Attorney General to argue in support of the validity of a marriage where the constitutional imperative to protect the institution requires it.
It also recommends separate civil and religious marriage ceremonies. Mr Geoffrey Shannon, a member of the committee, said there was anecdotal evidence that people thought a church annulment was also a civil annulment, because church marriages included a civil element at the moment.
There were instances of people attempting to enter a second marriage following a church annulment. Such marriages were not valid.
The report calls for specialised regional family courts, with judges trained in family law, echoing an earlier recommendation from the Law Reform Commission.