The Corte di Cassazione, with ordinance no. 1882 of the 23th January 2019, intervenes on the relationship between ecclesiastical sentence of nullity of marriage and sentence of divorce.

The Supreme Judges, in accordance with the previous judgments of legitimacy, state that "there is no primacy relationship of the pronouncement of nullity, according to canon law, of the marriage concordant on the pronouncement of termination of the civil effects of the same marriage, since these are autonomous proceedings, with different aims and assumptions ".

Also, the ordinance clarifies that the legal title underlying the obligation to maintain the former spouse is based on the ascertainment of the impossibility of the continuation of spiritual and material communion between the spouses themselves and not, however, on the validity of marriage (the subject of the ecclesiastical sentence) since, as the Supreme Judges continue, the "declaration of nullity ex tunc of the matrimonial bond it does not stop any status of divorced, which is a non-existent status, rather determines the decision to divorce the reacquisition of the state free".