To annul something means to officially declare that it never legally existed or had no legal force. When a court annuls a marriage, it's saying the marriage was never valid in the first place, which is different from a divorce that ends a valid marriage. It's like finding out a game didn't count because someone broke a fundamental rule from the very start.

Courts can annul contracts, laws, or agreements when they discover something was wrong from the beginning. If you signed a contract to buy something but the seller lied about what they were selling, a judge might annul the contract, meaning it's treated as if it never happened. Some laws get annulled when courts decide they violate the Constitution.

When something is annulled, it's erased from legal history and treated as if it never existed. An annulment is the act or process of annulling something. The word suggests a special kind of cancellation, one that goes back to the very beginning and says, “this never should have existed at all.”