Wife is anaffective and immature? Not enough to annul the wedding

One cannot pass off a nuptial because one has brought to the altar a woman who is psychically and affectively immature. "Defects" that are not so serious as to be considered a "vizio psichico", the only one relevant for the nullity of marriage under Italia civil law.

The Court of Cassation thus rejected the husband's appeal, which had instead been upheld by the Interdiocesan Ecclesiastical Court, which had 'punished' the woman's ineptitude in understanding the rights and duties of Christian marriage. According to the canonical court, the bride was "affected by psychic immaturity that expressed itself in affective instability, egocentrism, anxieties, insecurities, rigidity of character, distrust, lack of tolerance, lack of realism, with a decisive influence on her relationship with married and family life. And in his conclusions, the expert had no doubts as to the existence at the time of the marriage of a clear and evident "psychic immaturity" and affective "immaturity" of the woman, of a psychogenic nature, better described with its typical symptomatology in the text, and originating as an ideal breeding ground from the imbalance of the parental functions breathed in her family environment".

If the Court of First Instance had been convinced, giving the go-ahead for the deliberation of the sentence adopted on the basis of canon law, the Court of Appeal did not stand for it and translated it all with a diagnosis of "affective and psychic immaturity". Little enough to integrate the deficit that, in the face of a cohabitation exceeding three years, would have allowed, on the basis of Article 120 of the Civil Code, the annulment of the wedding for incapacity to understand of one of the spouses at the moment of the "yes". With a different verdict, perhaps, there would have been too many marriages at risk.