What does it matter? Generally, when they are visiting here, they aren’t doing anything involving the legal system where marital status comes into relevance.
It happens a whole lot here in Minnesota, down at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Arabs come for treatment, and bring a whole bunch of wives with, sometimes renting a whole floor of a hotel. The hospital only recognizes one (usually the ‘senior wife’) as legal next of kin, authorized to make medical decisions*. They just ignore the others, legally – they are family members for visitation, etc., but have no legal recognition. Frankly, their legal status doesn’t come up much.
*In practice, due to Muslim disrespect for women, it’s quite common for Arabs to bring a male relative with, and give them the medical power of attorney.
As a rule, if you marry A in Country X in a ceremony which is valid by the laws of Country X, then the marriage is recognised by the laws of the US states. This would not be so if the relationship was not capable of being a marriage – e.g. it’s polygamous, it’s a same-sex marriage. It makes no difference whether you were in country X temporarily or indefinitely, or indeed legally or illegally.
If you then come back to the US, do nothing about registering or recording your marriage to B for tax, immigration or other purposes, but also do nothing about getting a divorce from A, and them marry B while A is still alive, yes, it’s bigamy. You’re married to A, and you go through a purported ceremony of marriage with B; that’s pretty much the classic definition of bigamy.
Here’s the fly in the ointment… could the young bride complain of spousal rape? If she was forced into marriage, and then forced into intercourse with the man… just saying…
Depends on the local law, but in a jurisdiction which recognises spousal rape as a crime, the issue is not whether the spouse consented to the marriage, but consented to the sexual intercourse.
Thus an “underage bride” can complain of spousal rape. But the fact that she is underage is not relevant; whatever her age, if she did not consent to sexual intercourse, she has been raped.
The scenario I was thinking of was that the couple’s marriage be legit in their own country but not recognized in the US (the same scenario, I think, as in the OP). For instance if a man in Backwardistan legally married a ten-year-old girl there, and had sex with her in the US, could he be convicted of statutory rape? No? What if they both later became US citizens? What if they were both US citizens who traveled there to get married? What if the bride was 17 (legal to be married in that state) but she was the man’s 2nd wife?
I guess what I was thinking, (and it wasn’t phrased this way), but the guy could really be shooting himself in the foot by bringing his underage bride here (or to any country with spousal rape laws). My guess would be that a country that allows men to marry 12 year olds, doesn’t have particularly stringent rape laws, especially concerning spousal rape. So he marries her in that country, brings her here, forces sex on her (like he usually does), but now she can run off and have the law on her side.
Standard question in conflict of laws. The answer is more political than legal. Usually courts give comity to the laws and decisions of other juridictions unless they go against public policy of the own juridiction. Not merely against the law. So on the issue marriage if a court is convinced that the marriage is has been validly contracted in another juridiction they will allow it. Here however public policy seems to dictate against allowing such a marriage to continue.
One example of a marriage that would not be recognised in the US would be a same-sex marriage performed in Canada. There are no residency requirements in Canada, so two Americans could come here and get married, but whether or not it is recognised down south will depend on the law of the state they live in. It won’t be recognised by the federal government, as far as I can tell.
I got married overseas and did not yet complete my divorce from the non us wife and came to the US and got married to a US citizen and got the green card and later the US citizen.
The divorce paper came after four years from the non us wife and later(after 7 years) divorced my us citizen wife and got married third time to a non us wife overseas … would my child from my first wife be eligible for immigration visa ??? Note that this was over 10 years ago.
Yikes! I have been filing my US taxes as single. I thought I was required to (since the US did not recognize my foreign same-sex marriage at the outset, and my spouse has no ties to the USA). Now that they recognize SSM, I guess I was supposed to change status, and probably file back taxes for the years for which they changed their minds. Good thing this is all so simple…
In answer to the OP, if you’re in a foreign same-sex marriage, you are sometimes married and sometimes not depending where you are, but that’s obviously not the intent of your question.
What an icky scenario. BUT the “like he usually does” is questionable. IANAL, but in the US a 12 year old could enthusiastically participate in coitus, but it still wouldn’t be consensual because 12 year olds can not legally consent = therefore it is statutory rape. However, if a 12 year old is legally permitted to marry with parental consent, she is no longer legally a child, but is emancipated AFAIK. So while she could be the victim of spousal rape (no still means no) not every sexual contact with her husband would be intrinsically rape.
Or you could even be undocumented. The IRS just uses a TIN instead of a SSN, and doesn’t care if the person is here legally or not. (“That’s not my department!”) Many (maybe most?) undocumented workers pay payroll tax.