# Moral/religious issues aside, what's illegal about polygamy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 12, 2011, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791 "2011-07-12T20:24:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791/21 "2011-07-13T09:00:14Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > What strikes me about the law, though, is that if I am married but separated, and living in Utah with my new conjugal partner, I’m guilty of bigamy. Huh? How so? I thought bigamy applies when you marry a second person without knowledge of the first (neither spouse knows of the other). If you are separated and living in Utah I am not even sure this law would apply. At worst it is adultery albeit while waiting for a divorce to finalize seems more a technicality than real adultery. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791/22 "2011-07-13T10:25:51Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > At issue is the ancient English common law concept of Adultery. Adultery used to be a **crime**. IOW you could go to jail for it. Now its strictly a civil matter (i.e. its grounds for divorce & favorable alimony etc.) I’m not a lawyer but to me that means that no DA anyplace should be able to prosecute anyone for it, criminally. Not _used to be_ – still is, in many states. For example, here in Minnesota statutes 609.3, adultery is a crime punishable by a year in jail and a $3,000 fine. (But only a married woman (and her paramour) can be charged with it – a married man can’t be charged with adultery.) And a charge can only be brought by a complaint from the woman’s husband. Really a very sexist law still on the books. Seems to treat a married woman as ‘property’ of her husband, and adultery is a crime because it’s a devaluation of that property! ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791/23 "2011-07-13T12:01:08Z")
> [@SecondJudith](#): > > Wait, married couples living with a housemate is illegal in Utah? > [@UDS](#): > > “Cohabit”, despite the etymology, doesn’t just mean “live with”. It means “live together conjugally, in the manner of a husband and wife”. That seems like a non-definition to me. Is it somewhere legally defined what “in the manner of a husband and wife” means? Is it code for having sex? And if one (or both) of the married couple were having sex with someone who wasn’t living with them, would they be legally in the clear? ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791/24 "2011-07-13T15:12:33Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > I see it as an example of one of the great founding concepts of America, let community standards work itself out. Worked so far… Yup, never any problem with communities having different standards. Well except for that slavery and Jim Crow thing. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791/25 "2011-07-13T17:07:25Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I thought bigamy applies when you marry a second person without knowledge of the first (neither spouse knows of the other). That’s where it starts to get mixed up with fraud. Maybe spouse A would be okay with spouse B also marrying spouse C. And maybe not. But if B marries C in secret, A never gets a chance to find out. And likewise with C, if B never tells C about A. But the problems caused by lying and concealing really don’t have anything to do with the _number_ of people involved… ---
**Author:** ![thelabdude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dc4da7/32.png) [@thelabdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelabdude)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2011, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791/26 "2011-07-13T20:21:06Z")
I really think it is religious persecution. Unless you say you are doing it for religious reasons, these days, almost any sort of adult living arraignment is expected to be tolerated. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791/27 "2011-07-14T04:51:53Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I thought bigamy applies when you marry a second person without knowledge of the first (neither spouse knows of the other). You thought wrong. In most jurisdictions, if you marry Spouse A, and then marry Spouse B while knowing that your marriage to Spouse A has not been terminated by death, divorce or annulment, you are guilty of bigamy. Whether Spouse B knows about Spouse A or vice versa is irrelevant. (Though it will be relevant to the question of whether Spouse B is also guilty bigamy, since marrying somebody when you are unmarried, but you know that they are already married, is also bigamy.) But the position in Utah is stricter. Based on the quote from the Utah Criminal Code obligingly provided by **Nuveena** in post #9 if, knowing that your marriage to A has not been terminated by death, divorce or annulment, you marry _ **or cohabit with** _ B, you are guilty of bigamy. There doesn’t - at least as far as the provision is quoted - appear to be any let-out for someone who is married to but separated from A and who cohabits with B. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > That seems like a non-definition [of “cohabit”] to me. Is it somewhere legally defined what “in the manner of a husband and wife” means? Is it code for having sex? And if one (or both) of the married couple were having sex with someone who wasn’t living with them, would they be legally in the clear? Excellent questions. IANAUtahL, but I am going to hazard a guess that “cohabit” is defined, either in legislation or through case law, in a way which embraces only people living in conjugal relationships. If it were not so then a married couple (or a separated person) taking in lodgers would be guilty of bigamy. Indeed, a married couple living with their own children or the parents of one of them would be guilty of bigamy. It is impossible that that is the intention of the legislature, even in Utah. As for a married person having sex with a second partner who doesn’t live with them, that’s not bigamy. “Cohabit” doesn’t mean “have sex with”; it means something like “live together in a conjugal relationship which includes, or presumptively or normally includes, having sex”. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2011, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791/28 "2011-07-14T12:05:46Z")
I found this comment on a [blog](http://althouse.blogspot.com/2006/05/utah-supreme-court-applies-state.html): [QUOTE=Charlie Foster on 5/18/06] The Utah Supreme Court has noted that “the term ‘cohabitation’ does not lend itself to a universal definition that is applicable in all settings.” Haddow v. Haddow, 707 P.2d 669, 671 (Utah 1985). Thus, “the meaning of [cohabitation] depends upon the context in which it is used.” Id. Utah case law has discussed the meaning of cohabitation in a variety of factual contexts. See State v. Green, 2004 UT 76, ¶48, 99 P.3d 820 (explaining that, in the context of a criminal bigamy prosecution, the dictionary definitions of to “‘live together in a sexual relationship, especially when not legally married’” and to “‘dwell together as, or as if, husband or wife’” were both acceptable definitions of the word “cohabit”) (citations omitted); Haddow, 707 P.2d at 671-72 (defining “cohabitation” in an alimony termination proceeding as “‘[t]o live together as husband and wife’” with the key elements being “common residency and sexual contact evidencing a conjugal association”) (citations omitted). Keene v. Bonser, 2005 UT App 37. [/QUOTE] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/moral-religious-issues-aside-whats-illegal-about-polygamy/588791.md?page=1)