A man and women who are both divorced with several kids each marry in their 50’s. They both have semi-estranged kids who live far away and who are unaware of their marriage. His daughter and her son meet each other, marry and have a baby.
They reconcile and at a Christmas get together discover what has happened. Is there a legal problem for anyone here?
It depends on the state. Assuming you are talking about US law.
Reading through all of the states at **John Mace’s **cite, I don’t see any that have a problem with a relationship between step-siblings, as long as there was no legal adoption. Sibling relationships are frequently prohibited when they are either whole or half blood relations, or adopted, and relationships between a parent and a step-child are prohibited, but step-siblings are in the clear.
I’m fairly certain that I have read about this circumstance – parents marrying and their kids marrying – with no legal consequences.
I actually know a guy who’s older half-brother married his older other-half sister. They were both old enough to be interested when they met. No adoption, no legal problem.
Seems kind of strange and yucky to him though, because he was only a baby when he met each of them…
The reverse happened in my own family. By the time my parents were married, my maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother were already widowed. A few years later the grandparents married each other. So I’m the offspring of two people who were, first, husband and wife; and then, additionally, step-siblings. No problems.
It happened in my family tree some generations back with no legal difficulties. The adult children got married several years after the parents did. The kids had never lived together in the same house because the son was already independent and living thousands of miles away when the older generation married. All the people involved had known each other for many years before the parents’ marriage because they were neighbors.
Some family friends. A & B got married at a fairly young age, had three kids. Many years later, A’s father and B’s mother got married. That is to say, two of the kids grandparents married each other. This did kind of cheat the kids out of a full set of four grandparents but they had that at first.
nm
I never felt cheated in that respect. Rather, I just thought it was weird that other kids had four grandparents (even though I knew that two of mine were dead).
My Dad used to say:
“My brother in law is my sister in law’s son in law.”
He was absolutely correct.
No divorce, death, broken laws, no May/December stuff or laws of the church or state or lack of information. All local Catholics. Same small town.
Not in Michigan.
My maternal grandmother divorced and remarried.
Then his son met my mother (well into adulthood.) They married.
It really only got problematic when my Mom’s husband abused me and they later divorced. Having a nasty divorce but still being related? Awkward as hell. I didn’t even go to my grandpa’s funeral.
Incidentally, this (well, this with the kids marrying first) was a plot point on the TV show One Day at a Time. The couple Barbara and Mark marry. Later her mother Ann and his father Sam marry.
I feel slightly better that this has happened in other families. It’s fucking embarrassing to explain to people.
I lived in a town that was kinda small and there wasn’t too much to do, so eventually half the people divorced their spouses and married other people, who had divorced their spouses. Odd things resulted. Such as:
In high school, there were these two girls. One ultrapopular glamorous sort, who was a cheerleader, A student, very popular. And one who was kind of a wallflower and not very well liked (smart and snarky). So Glam’s father divorced her mother and married Wallflower’s mother, so they were stepsisters. Of course this meant Glam had to include Wallflower in her circle, but that was okay because Glam was basically nice. Fast forward 10 years (give or take a year). Glam was married to a guy twice her age, kind of an oil baron. Wallflower…was married to his son. Who Glam had also dated. So Glam is not just Wallflower’s stepsister, she is her step-mother-in-law. So of Wallflower’s children, is Glam their aunt, or their grandma?
Either I’m not understanding the OP or I’m not understanding the answers.
Here’s what I think **astro **meant:
Setup: Alice and Bob marry and have multiple kids. Separately Charlie and Diane marry and have multiple kids. Later on the Alice / Bob and the Charlie / Diane couples both divorce. Even later Alice meets and marries Charlie and/or Bob meets and marries Diane.
Question: What happens if one of the children from Alice+Bob meets and marries one of the children from Charlie+Diane?
My answer: Nothing out of the ordinary. None of the A+B kids are related in any way to the C+D kids. Them marrying is like any other two completely unrelated people. Because they *are *completely unrelated people. The fact their parents formed a connection later is immaterial.
Yes, the kid-couple(s) can make jokes like “Hey spouse, my father is your step-father!” But they’re jokes. No blood involved.
What am I missing here? 
Nothing, that’s a correct synopsis. I just wondered what happens if people who are unknown step brothers and stepsisters to each other hook up and make babies and the answer is apparently “nothing” whether they are known to each other or not.
I can’t tell you how to feel or anything, obviously, but just wanted to say that if someone explained it to me, I wouldn’t think it was anything to be embarrassed about. 
It’s also a plot point in the manga/anime series Marmalade Boy. The protagonists (Miki and Yuu) first meet as high-school students, because their respective parents are getting divorced, so that Miki’s mother can marry Yuu’s father, and Miki’s father can marry Yuu’s mother. That means they are double step-siblings, but eventually (many episodes later) go on to marry each other. It seems that there is no impediment in Japanese law to this happening.
Lots of people get (re-)married as a result of their parent’s or kids’ romantic involvements. Oddly enough if the e.g. kids are about the right age for each other, odds are their parents are too. And vice versa.
My MIL was widowed at a fairly young age. A few years later one of her nieces was getting married. Next thing you know, Mom’s dating the (also widowed) father of the groom. Once they get hitched, the younger groom’s stepmom is also his aunt.
Speaking just for me, I don’t like the term “step-whatever” for people who never formed a household because the kids had grown first. IOW, my dad’s second wife is his “second wife.” Not my “step-mother”. Not because she’s not a good person; she’s fine. But because she never filled the “mother” role for me, her having met my dad when I was in my 30s. She’s his companion, not my mother. Equally I’m not her son; I’m her husband’s son.
Had they met and married when I was 10 it’d be different; step-whatever would be appropriate then. [/rant]