Given that marriages are registered, isn't bigamy an impossible crime? The state would just not marry you a second time right?

@nomenagentis Bigamy tends to be rare since it requires you to do legal paperwork in more than one state and claim that you are not already married. This means that it is a lot easier to prosecute since you they just need to prove false testimony.

@nomenagentis No, it's not impossible. The US does not keep official national records of your marital status, like some other countries do. It follows that in the US you aren't required to present an official national record of marital status to marry.

Your link backing up "also enforced" doesn't seem that convincing evidence. It looks like it's only sometimes being enforced.

@Martin Smith: Lots of things are illegal, but only enforced when some law enforcement officer wants to make an example, get some publicity, or just doesn't like you.

@MartinSmith Yes, well for this case I think enforced once does count as it being enforced. I'll try to find other examples.

This answer is excellent but would be better if it pointed out the legal different in the US between legal marriage and religious marriage. 2, 3 or even 20 people can hold a big ceremony in a church and declare themselves religiously married and not fall foul of the bigamy laws as long as they don't legally marry anyone.

@Murphy I've edited that in, but haven't found a good source, so will probably remove it.

Fair enough, though as written I think what you edited in may be technically incorrect as some states do have rules against cohabiting with someone who's married to someone else or if you're married to someone else and there have been court cases fought about it but none have gone to the supreme court yet. (polyinthemedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/…)

I would note that laws against adultery are pretty much never enforced in the U.S. (in 29 years of living here, I've never heard of it happening even once) and would almost certainly be struck down if challenged. It's a quite common practice in all 50 states, unfortunate as that may be.

@reirab have edited to clarify the first point. The second point was a mistake left over from edits about the difference between polygamy and bigamy. editing to fix.

Hmm... from a quick search I don't see any follow-up articles on that case. I suspect it was not prosecuted, but knowing the outcome would be interesting. It should be noted, though, that there are lots of old laws on the books in the U.S. which are not enforced and would almost certainly be struck down by the courts if someone tried to enforce them. It's not really that uncommon. Adultery laws fall into that category.

@rjzii it's hard to know how common bigamy really is, since it tends not to be prosecuted as such. Instead, it comes up as a basis for annulment or divorce proceedings; that was a plot element in War and Peace, and just this year a congressman from Florida converted a divorce proceeding into an annulment proceeding because his ex-wife's prior marriage was still in effect when they had married ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Grayson#Personal_life .

"You can hold a religious ceremony and declare yourself married to 3, 5, 10 - as many people as you want." - no, that is patently false. That's NOT considered "married" in usa, unless the religious figure acts "by the power invested in me by the state of XYZ" - in which case they don't have authority to marry >2 people.

@DVK no but it is considered married in their religion, which is relevant to what the OP is asking.

@Tim - we JUST went through the whole thing in USA, where the highest court of the land VERY VERY clearly said that "NO, what your - or ANY - religion - says about marriage - is 100% irrelevant. ONLY what the law says". And the law clearly says no poly marriages.

@DVK yes I know the law says that. But the OP may still consider themselves married - whether or not the USA agrees.

Let's take any further argument about the different magisteria of marriage to chat.

@reirab every single article has the same info, and there is nothing in the Arizona courts database. Plus I can't contact them because I don't know the court.