Duress means pressure that overpowers your will. Menace means a threat of evil to come. Both are grounds for divorce in Georgia when they are what produced the marriage.
Where the Words Come From
OCGA 19-5-3(4) lists “[f]orce, menace, duress, or fraud in obtaining the marriage” among the grounds for total divorce, but defines none of them. Bryant v. Bryant, 192 Ga. 114 (1941), is where the Georgia Supreme Court collected the definitions in a divorce case.
Duress
Bryant states the rule this way: “Duress consists in any illegal imprisonment, or legal imprisonment used for an illegal purpose, or threats of bodily or other harm, or other means amounting to coercion or tending to coerce the will of another, and actually inducing him to do an act contrary to his free will.”
That definition, the Court added, “is sufficiently comprehensive to include any conduct which overpowers the will and coerces or constrains the performance of an act which otherwise would not have been performed.”
Note the last clause. The pressure must not only tend to coerce – it must have actually induced you to marry.
Menace
Bryant defines menace as “[t]he show of an intention to inflict evil; a threat; indication of probable evil or catastrophe to come; that which menaces; an impending evil.” The Court added that “[a]ny overt act of a threatening character, short of an actual assault, is a menace.”
What It Looked Like in Practice
In Bryant, a young man was called to his girlfriend’s home, where her father arrived with the town marshal, cursing, and gave him ten minutes to decide whether to marry her. Her brother stood nearby with an axe. The husband testified he feared for his life.
The jury found duress and the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the divorce.
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This post is a quick overview of the law and is not intended as legal advice. Please feel free to contact our office for a consultation if you have questions about this or any other legal aspects regarding your case!