As the wedding capital of the world, Sin City sees its fair share of bigamist marriages.
Sometimes bigamy stems from drunken escapades. Sometimes it arises after divorces that were never legally finalized. A few bigamist marriages are the product of polygamist Mormon sects. Others are deliberately entered into by people exploiting Las Vegas’s quickie marriage license laws in a fraudulent attempt to gain assets and escape debts.
However, it occurs, knowingly getting married to more than one person is a serious crime in Nevada. Through investigation, negotiation, and litigation, our Las Vegas criminal defense attorneys may be able to get the charges dropped without a trial.
1. What is bigamy?
The United State Supreme Court in 1878 effectively outlawed any kind of plural marriage such as polygamy or bigamy.
Bigamy is the condition of knowingly having more than one husband or wife simultaneously. Bigamist marriages are automatically void, and they do not affect the validity of the prior marriage.1
Like every other state, Nevada outlaws bigamy. Specifically, NRS 201.160 makes it a crime to remarry if you know your first spouse is still alive.2 Conversely, NRS 201.170 makes it a crime to marry someone whom you know is already married.3 In short, deliberately entering a bigamist union is illegal.
Example: Bradley is cheating on his wife with Mara, who does not realize that Bradley is already married. Bradley lies that work takes him away half the time, which allows him to lead a double life with his unsuspecting wife and mistress on alternate weeks.
Mara really wants to get married though, so to placate her, Bradley takes Mara to a chapel on the Strip and they get married. If caught, Bradley could get convicted of bigamy for knowingly taking a second wife. Mara is not guilty of anything because she had no idea Bradley was already married.
When You Can Lawfully Remarry
You can legally remarry in Nevada only when your prior marriage:
- ended in death,
- was annulled,
- ended in divorce, or
- was never valid to begin with.
Note that Nevada law recognizes marriages from other countries and common-law marriages from other states. Therefore, if you married abroad or have a common law marriage, you still need to end your first marriage before you can remarry. Otherwise, you face criminal charges of bigamy.
Any person who enters into a void marriage may legally marry again without having to formally end the original marriage because Nevada never recognized it anyway.
2. Defenses
In our experience, the following defenses have proven very effective at getting bigamy charges dismissed.
Your First Marriage is Over
It is perfectly legal to marry as many times as you want if any previous marriages have legally ended. As long as you can show that your prior marriage ended in annulment, divorce, or the spouse’s death, bigamy charges should not stand.
“Five Years With No Knowledge” Rule
Sometimes, a spouse abandons their family on purpose, and others have catastrophic accidents and are tragically never found. In either case, it is not criminal bigamy for a deserted spouse to marry again as long as at least five years have passed during which the deserted spouse had no knowledge whether their absent spouse was alive.
If the D.A. cannot show that you knew or should have known that your first spouse was alive, then the bigamy case should be dismissed.
You Did Not Know Your Divorce Was Not Final
There are situations where both parties to the first marriage honestly believed they were divorced. Still, the paperwork was not correctly filed, or some clerical error precluded the divorce from legally going through.
Suppose the defense attorney can show the D.A. that you genuinely intended to divorce and reasonably believed you had completed the divorce process. In that case, chances are decent that any bigamy charges will be dropped because you did not mean to be deceptive or fraudulent.
First Marriage Was Never Valid
Any person entering a void marriage may legally marry again without formally ending the original marriage because Nevada never recognized it anyway.
One example of a void marriage is, of course, a bigamist marriage. So if you can show that your first spouse was already married, it is not bigamy to marry again (though you could still be charged with violating NRS 201.170 for marrying the first spouse knowing they were already married).
Example: Cousins Tommy and Gena get married in Henderson but soon split up. Tommy then gets married to Hannah, a non-relative. When Gena finds out, she calls the police and claims Tommy committed bigamy.
However, Tommy did not commit bigamy. A Nevada marriage is void when the two parties are related to each other closer than second cousins (or cousins by half-blood). So once Tommy shows the court that his first spouse Gena was too closely related (“consanguine”) to him, he should be acquitted of bigamy because their marriage was null to begin with. Furthermore, Tommy’s marriage to Hannah remains valid because he was not legally married to Gena when he married Hannah.
(Note that Tommy and Gena could be charged with incest, which is when relatives closer than second cousins marry.4)
3. Penalties
Bigamy is a category D felony in Nevada, carrying a maximum of:
- Four years in Nevada State Prison, and
- $5,000 in fines.
Note that you may also face civil lawsuits such as for emotional distress and fraud.
Knowingly getting married to more than one person is a serious crime.
4. Additional Reading
For more in-depth information, refer to these scholarly articles:
- Bigamy, Religion, and the Law: the Sister Wives at Court – Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
- The Burden of Proof in Bigamy – The Modern Law Review.
- Bigamy, a Crime Though Unwittingly Committed – University of Cincinnati Law Review.
- Bigamy: Good Faith Belief in the Dissolution of a Former Marriage as a Defense – California Law Review.
- Autonomy, Imperfect Consent, and Polygamist Sex Rights Claims – California Law Review.
See our related article on the Nevada crime of marrying the spouse of another (NRS 201.170).