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Sometimes the law treats an invalid marriage as valid if one person tricked the other into
thinking they are married. If so, a court might not allow the deceiver to declare the marriage
invalid. In legal terms, the court "estops" the deceiver from denying that the marriage exists. In
addition, a court may find that the doctrine of laches (long delay) prevents even the innocent
party, who originally did not know about the invalid marriage, from having the marriage declared
invalid if he or she did nothing for a long time after learning that the marriage was not valid.