What do you get arrested for if you get arrested for polygomy?

Factual Questions
21

I thought I understood this, but now I’m getting confused.

So, let’s see.

Case one:

Alice and Bob get married. They meet Charlene, who soon moves in with them. Legally, Alice and Bob are wife and husband; Charlene is a mistress or housemate or something, but has no marriage rights; if Alice objected to the situation, Charlene could be out on her ass… but there is only one actual legal marriage involved, right?

Case two.

Alice and Bob get married. Bob meets and lives with Charlene in another city.

The situation is legally the same as case one whether Charlene and Alice know of each other, right?

Now, case three.

Alice and Bob get married. Bob meets Charlene in another city. Bob proposes marriage to Charlene, not telling her of Alice, and Charlene believes Bob is single. Bob is guilty of bigamy at this point, right?

If in case three, Alice, Bob and Charlene all knew of each other and were okay with Bob marrying both women, that would still be bigamy, correct?

I think part of the problem here is that the crimes gathered under the name of bigamy are at least in part misnamed. There should be a crime called ‘marriage fraud’, to cover cases where someone makes false representation of their marriage status.

If, as some posters have mentioned in the case of Utah, people are committing other crimes (welfare fraud?) under the cover of polygamy, those crimes should be dealt with as themselves.

If people still want to outlaw plural marriage simply because of the number of people involved, that should be done explicitly. IMHO, using the name of ‘bigamy’ in cases of marriage fraud confuses the number of participants with the nature of the act.

22

I should add to my post that I think marriages of more than two people should be legal, but I realise that legal and tax structures may need to be updated.

23

Yes, only 1 legal marriage.
But Charlene would be out only if Alice objected strongly enough to get Bob to agree. Otherwise it would just be similar to the common situation where one spouse allows a lazy child to stay in the home, even though the other spouse objects. Until the 2 spouses agree, nothing much will happen.

No, not until Charlene accepts and he actually goes thru with the marriage ceremony. Then he’s guilty.

24

How would the officiant of the marriage ceremony find out, assuming Bob never told, and Alice and Charlene mever met? Do priests, etc, perofrm routine checks?

25

This is exactly what the ‘calling of the banns’ in England is for. I’m not sure whether the system still exists but traditionally the Church (or State) would publish a notice (the banns) that so-and-so had applied to be married and anybody knowing of any legal impediment to this should come forward. Historically, it would have been read from the pulpit in the applicant’s own parish and surrounding parishes; later it would be published in the press for three or four weeks prior to the marriage.
Then, of course, there was the failsafe check at the ceremony itself, “If anybody here knows any lawful impediment”, etc.

I assume a similar system operates in the US.

26

My point was that it was the actual marriage, not the proposal, that was bigamy.

The officiant probably does NOT know, and anyway, is not the authority responsible for prosecuting bigamists. That is most likely the County Attorney, I’d expect.

Incidently, a catholic priest is the one officiant who would be likely to know about an attempted bigamy. The Catholic church does keep records of its members, and records marriages in those records. The records are kept at the church where a catholic was originally baptised, and any request for a catholic marriage is sent to that original parish to be checked, and then entered into the records of the person. An attempt to be married a second time would be exposed by this check.

I don’t think that states keep such centralized records, or check them before issuing marriage licenses. Here in Minnesota, marriage license records used to be kept by the individual county. And I doubt that the 50 states cross check with each other before issuing marriage licenses. The most likely place where a government body might find out about this would be in IRS tax records, if a man tried to file 2 sets of taxes as ‘married couple filing jointly’ with 2 different wives. But I don’t think the IRS is much concerned about that, as long as he pays both sets of taxes.

27

No, actually, they’d be quite concerned. He wouldn’t be “paying both sets of taxes”-- he’d be asking them to review the amount of taxes he’d paid in already according to two different criteria. He might be asking for the same refund twice, in other words. He’d certainly be claiming more exemptions than he ought to get.