Can I get my marriage annulled in Malta instead of divorced?

An annulment and a divorce are fundamentally different in legal effect: a divorce ends a validly existing marriage going forward, while an annulment, governed in Malta by the Marriage Act, Chapter 255 of the Laws of Malta, is a declaration that the marriage was actually invalid from the very beginning due to a defect present at the time consent was given, meaning that, unlike divorce, annulment effectively treats the marriage as if it never validly existed in the eyes of the law from that specific legal standpoint. Article 19 of the Marriage Act sets out an exhaustive list of grounds on which a marriage can be annulled, generally relating to defects in consent or capacity at the time of the marriage itself, such as lack of genuine consent, certain forms of duress or fraud, or specific incapacities recognised under the Act, rather than issues or problems that developed later during the course of the marriage, which is the key distinction from divorce grounds based on separation and breakdown. Given that annulment requires proving a specific defect existed at the time of marriage itself, which can be evidentially more demanding than the separation-based requirements for divorce, it is important to have a family lawyer assess whether your specific circumstances genuinely fit one of the recognised statutory grounds before deciding whether to pursue annulment rather than divorce.