Does a Catholic who marries outside the Catholic Church – and then gets divorced – also need a church annulment?

No. However there are two stipulations: (1) The Catholic party goes through a wedding ceremony outside of the Catholic Church without permission from the Church. (2) Subsequent to the wedding ceremony the union was not blessed by the Catholic Church.

The reason for this is that Catholics are bound by church law to be married in the presence of a priest or deacon. This law is called the form of marriage. If a Catholic does not follow this law, then the Church does not recognize their wedding ceremony as valid in church law.

So if the Catholic party subsequently divorces, he or she is free to marry in the Church because the wedding was never legally binding in church law.

The Catholic party will however need to go through a simple process to prove that the two stipulations mentioned above were in place at the time of the wedding. This process is called a lack of form petition and it is completed with three documents.

In order to facilitate this process a divorced Catholic should make an appointment with someone in their parish and bring the following three documents (1) the wedding license, (2) the divorce decree, and (3) a recent copy of their Catholic baptismal certificate.

When the lack of form petition is granted – which only takes a matter of weeks –both parties to the wedding are free to marry in the Church.