The Church WILL consider your marriage valid if you meet the four points of criteria I listed above.
Where I am getting tripped up is as follows: The Church recognizes ALL marriages but it may (or may not) recognize them as a Sacrament. BIG DIFFERENCE. You were not real worried about the marriage being a sacrament in the Catholic Church when you were baptized (your W) and married via a DIFFERENT FAITH so why now? You said yourself you did NOT care. Now you do when you didn't even care enough to get married in the Catholic faith? Why, because your W didn't want to be married in a Catholic Church. That is why.
Addiction is an IMPEDEMENT and not CRITERIA.
Not being a sacramental marriage is not "grounds" for invalidity. Invalidity is based on INTENT on the day the marriage started. Not what happened AFTER.
You really need to think about this long and hard. I do not have a crystal ball but I am very comfortable saying I do believe your W will file for divorce before 2010 is over - she is waiting on both of you to move and have better jobs so she does not have to pay you support. You will have custody issues to attend to in the LEGAL fashion. If you attempt to go through the steps of the Tribunal to declare your marriage invalid you will need 6-12 outside people to submit a fair amount of paperwork to "back your case up". Do you think it will bode well for you in regard to custody issues/the law that you are so bent on finding out it the marriage was valid? Do you think that will make you look like a well adjusted, stable and capable parent? Do you think your W won't bring that up in the legal sense?
Basically you did what your W wanted (got married in a different church and you said you didn't care in your post above) and once your W decided she was done with the marriage you found religion again and are putting so much effort, based on what "you heard" to prove the marriage was invalid in the eyes of a Church you never got married in? So all this work to prove something that essentially didn't matter to you before - hell, forget "matter" you were not even AWARE of. And this seems like the appropriate path to take instead of working on you?
