If I marry overseas but only return by myself (and will it matter where?) am I married in the US, and what does that effect? Taxes, marriage here, etc.? What if I never hear from my long lost for-ee-ner spouse? Do I have to disolve the marriage here or back there or neither?
My marriage in Australia has been recognised by the U.S. government for immigration purposes (my wife got a green card based on the marriage) and for income tax purposes (we file jointly).
I can only address taxes, but it’s a very weird issue on its own. Unless there’s some kind of treaty (such as we have with Canada and Mexico), you are considered married, but cannot choose Married Filing Joint status unless the spouse qualifies as a resident alien. (For example, they could meet that by living here for 183 days). So these people generally have to choose Married Filing Separate which is the worst possible filing status as far as tax credits and deductions. If they meet some additional qualifications, they might be able to file as Single or Head of Household.
What really makes this messy is that no Human Resources department knows this. They tell the immigrants to have withholding done based on being married and including the deductions and credits for kids. Then the poor folks owe a fortune when they file in April and find out that HR people don’t know the first thing about taxes.
You end up with a divorce mess. I know someone that is in limbo after marrying a German while stationed there. You’ll have to get things done in both countries and if the spouse is uncooperative once it’s done in the foreign country, good luck on getting it legally finished here.
Where and how do you divorce her? You know, when you get tired of all that Aussie drinking behavior that seemed so cute years ago. 
Since we both reside in Ohio, I assume we can divorce here. Australia would recognise the divorce, under section 104(3) of the Family Law Act:
I got married in Hong Kong and divorced while my ex was living in Ireland and I was nominally living in the UK. Only had to get divorced in the UK (particularly handy because Ireland’s divorce laws are draconian). I sent the paperwork to Ireland and she returned it direct to the court in London. It was easy and painless.
Interesting question. Could a man visiting the US with his young bride be arrested for statutory rape?
Eww.
Notice I said if the spouse doesn’t cooperate. This case is a spiteful hateful spouse and the court system over there would have to be petitioned by the USA spouse to get the other to file the stuff for here. The German spouse will not return any paperwork or cooperate in any way. The spouse in the USA has given up and decided to live with partners instead of marrying.
Is this a tax law thing? Because you certainly do not automatically qualify as a resident alien by simply living here for 183 days.
Which is why every HR person I’ve ever met won’t answer these questions. Because it’s the employee’s responsibility to understand the tax implications of how they complete their withholding.
Assuming you’re a US citizen, your foreign marriage is not recognized by the US unless you file some paperwork showing that you got married. For foreigners the paperwork is their passport, basically.
A marriage which is not recognized by the government of the country where you got married (for example, in Spain it is possible to get a religious marriage with no civil validity) will not be recognized by the US, as you won’t be able to get a legally-binding marriage certificate. I think a same-sex marriage will not be recognized either (but then, in Spain at least an American can’t enter a same-sex marriage, due to SSM not existing at the federal level in the US).
So even before we get into whether it counts for taxes or not, being recognized as married requires meeting certain conditions and informing your embassy or consulate.
niblet_head, I’ve never been a “resident alien” in the “green card” sense, but I’ve been one for tax purposes for five years (meaning I had to file taxes with IRS). It’s one of those terms where you need to specify more than people usually do.
Residence for tax purposes and residence for immigration purposes are two different things. As far as I understand, you are resident for tax purposes by being in the U.S. for 183 days or more during the tax year. That does not affect your immigration status, and you could be present on any kind of visa, or with a green card (permanent residence card). On the other hand, a person on a green card will not be resident for tax purposes if they spend 183 days or more of the tax year outside the U.S. (though doing that might endanger their permanent residence status).
That’s what I figured, but I don’t know tax law like I know immigration law. (Sidenote, most people are shocked to realize that an undocumented alien is required to file taxes. The IRS - at least when I was working in the immigration field - doesn’t give a crap if you legally earned the money, it just wants its share!)
Oh, and on the topic of the OP, I once had a Mexican client who was under the common, but mistaken, belief that once he crossed the border, his Mexican marriage was no longer valid.
Uh, no.
Imagine how fun THAT conversation was - with him and his US citizen wife - to have to tell them a) no, you’re still married to your first wife, which means b) you’re NOT legally married to your US citizen wife, and c) before we can proceed you have to get divorced in Mexico and finally, d) you just put yourself in serious jeopardy and it might not be a good idea to file your app at all since you’ve been in the US illegally for more than a year plus you committed bigamy!
So what happens if a man from a place where polygamy is legal comes to the US with his four legal wives? Are three of them not married here? Are any of them married? Just the first one?
IANAL, but no. Statutory rape requires that the parties not be married to eachother (many US states have lower marriagable ages than ages of consent). I know for a fact that this is the law on Pennsylvannia (I served on a jury in a statutory rape case). I think any foreign marriage would be recognized as long as it was; valid where celebrated; not bigamous, and the spouses were not of the same sex.
Yes, it’s a tax thing, but it pops up in immigration cases now and again. For example, I had a married couple with the wife a US citizen living in the US, but her Canadian husband hadn’t managed to get through immigrant visa processing to come to the U.S. by the time taxes were due. We had to write a long, messy explanation of why they had filed taxes as “Married Filing Separately” so that there was no confusion about the validity of their marriage.
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal
But what if you marry in another country, and don’t do anything to have it recognized here, then you marry here…is it still bigamy? Does it matter on the country? E.g., the Mexico example?
No.
In fact, a US man can marry a young bride (under the statutory age limit) in many of the US states, provided he gets parental consent.