Italian Court of Cassation (Corte di Cassazione italiana), Joined Sections, No. 16379/2014, 17 July 2014

Recognition of the definitive sentence of nullity of marriage pronounced by the ecclesiastical court in the event of marital cohabitation extended for at least three years from the date of celebration of the concordat marriage.

Articles 2, 3, 29, 30, 31 of the Italian Constitution
L. 25 March 1985 n. 121

Cohabitation as spouses must be understood as an essential element of marriage-relationship, which manifests itself as a habit of common conjugal life, continuous over time, and recognizable through corresponding specific facts and behaviors of the spouses, and as a source of a plurality of inviolable rights, of mandatory duties, including parental responsibilities in the presence of children, legitimate expectations of the same spouses and children, both as individuals and in reciprocal family relationships. In particular, the cohabitation as spouses protracted for at least three years from the date of celebration of the marriage regularly transcribed concordat, connoting the essential institution of marriage in the Italian system, determine a legal situation governed by constitutional, conventional and ordinary rules. Therefore, such cohabitation, also in application of art. 7 of the Italian Constitution and the supreme principle of the secularity of the State, is an obstacle to the declaration of effectiveness in the Italian Republic of the final sentences of nullity of marriage pronounced by the ecclesiastical courts, for any genetic defect of marriage ascertained and declared by the ecclesiastical judge in the canonical system.