Divorce Bill promoter’s wife is not petitioning for divorce, but for declaration that marriage is null and void
Divorce Bill promoter Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando will not be facing his second divorce under the legislation for which his current marriage, he had claimed at the time, was the catalyst.
His second wife, Carmen Ciantar, with whom he contracted marriage in August 2012 after they both divorced their previous spouses under the new law, petitioned the courts just 20 months later to have the marriage declared null and void.
The grounds include “psychological anomalies” that make the individual incapable of understanding and fulfilling the rights, duties and responsibilities of married life and “the exclusion of the conjugal act”.
The list of witnesses includes the police, the neighbours, Magistrate Consuelo Herrera, Magistrate Carol Peralta, the secretary at the Malta Council for Science and Technology, Pullicino Orlando’s lawyer Alex Perici Calascione, parents, children from former marriages, and so on.
Petitioning for divorce requires a four-year hiatus after separation, but petitioning to have the marriage declared null and void can be done immediately. Yet whereas a divorce can be concluded within days once the papers are filed and requires no witnesses or painful and embarrassing evidence, proceedings for declaration of nullity drag on for a long while because evidence and witnesses have to be brought and the case proven in what is generally a very testing process that includes a litany of highly personal details that divorce simply avoids.
Yet Carmen Ciantar appears to be prepared to go through all this to make the point that she was never married to Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.
He went through all that hassle to secure divorce legislation (or so he said) and he only got to use it once.
I must emphasise that this is only newsworthy because of the leading role Pullicino Orlando played in campaigning for divorce, and how he brought the country to a standstill because he claimed he was being denied the right to marry this particular woman. It would not and should not be up for discussion or reportage otherwise.
The two names I have taken out of the list of witnesses are those of private citizens.
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He will put on a “Why always me?” T-shirt and hog the limelight.
Eskludew il-prolazzjoni tal-ulied means that they agreed not to have children. That’s a ground for annulment.
They can always claim that their marriage was not consummated.
Wonder who will be defending him?
[Daphne – I am given to understand that he is not contesting it.]
Why should he contest it?
That does not mean that the annulment will be automatically granted.
What. A. Farce.
Good one! Will they buy it? After all, if I remember well, she was shacking up with him for ten years, and it’s only now that she found out what was obvious to everyone else?
She really needs to learn what ‘dating’ is for.
Probably she was too much interested in the money and in the power to be gained from him to think about what a relationship is made up of. You know sweetie, she is that sort of schemer.
I am glad that Consuelo Scerri Herrera has been called as a witness.
The experience will be much more interesting than gossiping at the dinner table.
“psychological anomalies” – I think we’d all concur with that.
He is possessed by leprechauns that cause him to drink.
Annulment is not always granted. Ms Ciantar was with Jeffrey for a very long time and I am sure she came to know him inside out.
If she wanted a child she could have done it when she was younger.
I am sure that she was fully conscious of what she was doing when she married him.
True. She was too blinded by what she could gain. This is the only way this woman knows to arrive somewhere in her life.
Did Malta pass through all that hassle of divorce legislation in order to introduce into Malta a divorce that was supposed to be different from a Nevada style quickie divorce and when the proposer did not/could not consummate the marriage act as will be proved by the forensic luminaries being called to testify!
I was always under the impression that the PN took its mission seriously.
How it ever accepted this fraud of a man in its fold is beyond me.
He should have been with PL from day one.
He should never have been afforded the luxury of rubbing shoulders with PN.
He is pure scum.
Jeffrey Pullicino somehow reminds me of Henry VIII, his battles with the Pope, and his procession of wives.
Psychological anomalies. Interesting. This means that we may have a court sentence declaring that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is psychologically unfit.
Life under Labour is becoming more interesting by the minute. Bring in the clowns.
“Officers, what offence have these men done?
DOGBERRY
Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.”
She had enough time to decide and prepare herself for marriage. They were together for ten whole years.
The so-called blended marriages are doomed to fail because of the baggage the partners bring with them to the new union.