IMHO, to keep this a GQ we ought to look strictly at what the laws say, and not try to guess what real-life prosecutors and judges, subject to shifting moral and political winds, would do.
Since none of the cited statutes exclude people married outside the state (and the Wisconsin law explicitly includes them) it seems the Somewherian man and 11 of his wives would be felons if they cohabited and if he did not divorce wife No. 1. (A statute that compels people to divorce!) If he did divorce her, it appears he could live with all 12 (Except in Utah, ironically.) Then again, it appears some states have laws against simple fornication!
It appears that if I married Janet but then moved to Wisconsin or Utah with Chrissy, I would be a bigamist. If I moved to Michigan I would not, unless I actually tried to marry Chrissy.
Sorry I was unclear. I meant receiving two licenses without having legally terminated one of them, kind of like simultaneously submitting a manuscript to two publishers doesn’t mean mailing them out at the same moment and simultaneously accepting two jobs doesn’t mean you have both employers on a conference call. Perhaps it was a sloppy phrase to use in a thread about legal issues.
Wow. Kind of badly written. Sort of suggests same-sex marriage is okay:
(1) A person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person.
I know it doesn’t, and there are probable other statutes that can be read to preclude same sex marriage, but in the letter-of-the-law sense, that says a man may have a husband or a wife.
Bad grammar like that will win the same-sex marriage argument somewhere.
Also, isn’t there a difference between bigamy and polygamy. I’ve always thought that in bigamy, one person was married to at least two others: man marries one woman then marries another woman but they are separate marriages.
In polygamy, at least three people join together in the same marriage.
I’m also interested in how they will keep polygamy illegal. Incest is already a crime. Forced marriages are already a crime. Statutory rape is already a crime.
Consensual acts between adults capable of making their own decisions is not a crime. And where there are laws against it, those laws are being ruled unconstitutional.
Back to the op: the criminal part of bigamy/polygamy is having more than one spouse. Under current law, you can only have one at a time.