I imagine that a legal/civil annulment is something not found in most states. I’ve never heard of it in law school, nor in any state I’ve lived in.
Can someone tell me more?
Don’t most states have liberal divorce laws that let couples divorce easily if they both agree?
You are right. California was the first state to allow No-Fault Divorce in civil law beginning in 1969l After that other states quickly followed, and as of August 2010, all 50 states have added no-fault divorce laws to the books.
However, generally speaking annulments are unnecessary for civil marriages. An annulment is a declaration that a marriage was never valid to begin with and, therefore, never existed. A divorce is the actual dissolution of a validly existing marriage.
Almost all civil marriages are legally valid so an annulment is usually legally irrelevant. When most people want to divorce they have a legally existing marriage in the eyes of the state and therefore must get a civil divorce to dissolve the marriage. The only way to get the civil version of an annulment would be if a court found evidence that the marriage was not legally valid for some legal reason (e.g. one the parties was underage at the time of the marriage) then the court could declare the marriage void. This is very rare and and doesn't apply to most people who are looking to civilly remarry.
However, from a Catholic perspective there is a huge moral difference between an annulment and a divorce, because the Catholic Church teaches that a valid sacramental marriage between two baptized individuals is indissoluble. By Divine law, a Catholic can only marry if they have never been validly married, a validly married Catholic, can never marry again until the death of the spouse.