How is polygamy legally practiced in the United States of America Let's say in this hypothetical scenario a man wanted to be married to multiple different women in the United States in the State of Tennessee. Would it be legal for the man to have a marriage license with his first wife and then have private religious wedding ceremonies for the other women but not have a marriage licenses with them? How is this situation handled when they all file taxes?
A person A who knows that he or she is lawfully married (to B), but conceals this and deceives a third person (C) into thinking that A is not married, and thus induces C to go through the form of marriage with A commits bigamy and in most states, fraud. C would be classed as a &quot;putative spouse&quot;, that is as a person who believed in good faith that s/he was lawfully married. A putative spouse gets some of the rights of marriage until the facts become known. The rest of this answer assumes that all parties know what is happening, and that no deception is involved. No US state currently allows a person to be legally married to more than one other person at the same time. States do not normally restrict what private religious ceremonies people may choose to have. Indeed under the First Amendment's &quot;Free Exercise&quot; clause the possible scope of any such regulation is very limited. However, as far as the government (state or federal) is concerned, a person has only one legal spouse at a time. A person should not describe himself or herself as being currently married to more than one other person to any government official or agency. No private religious ceremony will give the third person involved any of the legal rights of marriage. A person attempting to obtain a marriage license or go through a public marriage ceremony while already married to another person my be committing the crime of bigamy. Bigamy is not often prosecuted as a matter of policy, unless a deceived spouse complains. But that is a matter of prosecutorial discretion, not of law. Under § 39-15-301 of the Tennessee Code subsection (a)(1) or (a)(2), a person who &quot;purports to marry or be married to&quot; another person knowing that at least one of the parties is already lawfully married commits bigamy. This applies if the purported marriage would have been lawful had neither party been in an existing marriage. Going though a marriage to a second spouse with a (falsely obtained) license would violate 39-15-301. A private religious ceremony that did not claim to be a legal secular marriage probably would not, but I cannot be sure of that. For federal income tax purposes, two people who are legally married should choose either &quot;married, filing jointly&quot; or &quot;married, filing separately&quot; There is no option to file as a three-person marriage, and an attempt to so file will probably cause the return to be rejected, and may cause other problems. (Filing a &quot;frivolous return&quot; is subject to a significant monetary penalty.) A third person who is part of the same household would presumably file as &quot;single&quot;. Other tax filings will be handled similarly.
As cited by @xuhdev, discrimination on the basis of marital status is prohibited in Colorado. And, even though age is not on the list, the couple could claim that you discriminate them based on their marital status, whether current or would-be, and whether related to their age or not. Note that the reason why you discriminate is irrelevant: whether you do it by calling on your religious freedom or without giving any reasons at all does not make any difference. Holding religious beliefs is by no means a lawful excuse for discrimination, no matter how deeply they are held.
In many countries (for instance, the US), churches and mosques are private property. In general, the owner of private property can throw anyone off their property; claiming you're doing an extensive period of praying doesn't matter, because they are under no obligation to let people stay as long as needed to pray (they can kick someone off the property for just about any reason). If there's a contract in play things are different, but contracts aren't in play in this situation. That said, nothing stops the church or mosque from letting the homeless stay there; this is actually not that uncommon (charity being a fairly common religious virtue).
As someone with ties to the "foreign" community in the United States, I see these "marriages of convenience" from time to time. In their most "legitimate" form, the couple will move to the same address and "technically" live together, but without consummating the marriage so that it can later be legally annulled. American immigration authorities counter this by asking each spouse about the other's underwear (literally!). Some "marriages of convenience" are legal, insofar as they technically conform to the marriage documents, e.g. regarding "co habitation," even while violating the spirit of the law. Others don't. Your best chance of attacking such "marriages" is not regarding the marriage itself (basically only the couple can decide what constitutes a valid marriage), but rather "compliance" with the marriage documents. That's something any law enforcement officer can understand.
Let's look at what they say: Pennsylvania does not have any statutory laws governing assisted reproductive technology. True Pennsylvania’s laws regarding sperm donors come only from case law that are specific to the facts of the case being considered by the court. True and trivial given the previous sentence. Pennsylvania courts have found sperm donor contracts to be legally enforceable. True, that's what Ferguson v McKiernan says in the first paragraph of the decision. Your statement that "PA case law falls strongly on the side of not respecting donor contracts" is, at least as far as the case you cite, flatly wrong. In other cases, the contract may or may not be enforcable indeed the court agrees with this specifically: Although locating future cases on this spectrum may call upon courts to draw very fine lines, courts are no strangers to such tasks, and the instant case, which we must resolve, is not nearly so difficult. This also directly supports the previous sentence. Therefore, even if you go through a fertility clinic, a contract between the donor and the intended parents would need to be in place before the conception. True, this is exactly what Ferguson v McKiernan says. You assert that Ferguson v McKiernan says "donation through a clinic does not make a sperm donor the legal father", however, it doesn't say that at all. The status of the doner as the father was never an issue - both parties agreed that he was the biological father and the court accepted that. What was at issue is if he had the rights and obligations of a father that had been removed by the contract. The lower courts held that the contract was unenforcable as being contrary to public policy because it removed rights from the children who were not parties to the contract. However, the State Supreme Court held that the contract was enforcable. TL;DR What they say on their website is not misleading.
Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in the United Kingdom is a nineteenth-century innovation, based on the previous practice of keeping parish records of baptisms, marriages, and burials. The history is different but parallel in England (and Wales) and Scotland. What the churches were originally trying to do was to record information about their own ceremonies, because there are religious consequences to being baptized, married, etc. Civil law follows: you might have to prove in court that you were validly married to such-and-such a person, now deceased, and therefore had the right to live in his home as his widow. The parish system, because of its general utility, was regulated by legislation. In England, it was made mandatory in all parishes in the middle of the sixteenth century (although in practice, this happened at different rates in different places). Legislation in the following centuries covered the manner of keeping records, penalties for non-compliance, and fees for registration. For example, by the late seventeenth century you would have to pay sixpence to register the birth of each child, and a massive 40 shillings if you failed to do so within five days of the event. Registration also served as a device to give nonconformists an incentive to join the established churches, as there was no secular way to prove age, and few ways to marry. With liberalisation of religious strictures in the nineteenth century, the civil system began in England and Wales in 1837, and in Scotland in 1855. Under the Acts (6 Will 4 c.33, 17&amp;18 Vict c.80), records were kept by governmental authority, with no religious qualification required. This was helpful for non-Anglicans or non-Presbyterians wanting to live their lives, and helpful for the government for having a more complete set of records for the population in general. Currently, registration of births is free, but there are various penalties for not doing it in time, and it costs money to get copies of birth certificates. The fees are not based on any estimate of lifelong earning power or anything of the kind. There was a very brief period (1695 to 1706) where in order to fund a war with France, the government levied a variable rate tax on parish register entries. The rates depended on the degree of the person registered. It was abolished due to its considerable unpopularity, also resulting in low rates of compliance and therefore revenue gained. The law, An Act for granting to his Majesty certaine rates and duties upon Marriages Births and Burials and upon Batchelors and Widowers for the terme of Five yeares for carrying on the Warr against France with Vigour, 6&amp;7 Wm&amp;Mary c.6, now called the &quot;Duties on Marriages, etc. Act 1694&quot;, set out the following for births: Paupers: Free Most people: Two shillings Aristocrats: Between twelve and thirty pounds depending on rank, and with a surcharge for the eldest son, in addition to the two shillings. Baronets, knights, lawyers, academics, gentlemen and senior clergy: Between one and five pounds, plus the two shillings. Anyone not included in the above but who is rich: Twelve shillings. Similar fees were charged for marriages and so on. I believe this is the only time in UK law when there were differential fees for registration depending on the status of the parents. The scale was presumably based on the idea that wealthier people could afford to pay more. There were no legal consequences for the child as a result of the different fee paid, except insofar as they would be disadvantaged later in life if they were not properly registered. The law was repealed and the &quot;Warr against France&quot; has also been over for a long time. As usual, the &quot;sovereign citizen&quot; conception is completely bogus. There is not, and has never been, any notion of a birth certificate being a financial instrument. The confusion may be due to the word instrument being used for lots of different kinds of official documents, as well as a general boneheadedness about how the law works. A birth certificate is a convenient way to prove the circumstances of your birth, and for the government to collect statistics. Indeed, a paper copy of a certificate is just a way to make the management simpler - you can get many copies or none, at your option - since it saves effort compared to inspecting the centralised registers themselves.
There's nothing that makes it illegal to ask others to give you money to donate to a third party. But if you want to say you're fundraising on behalf of another organization, obviously you need its permission. And if you want contributions to be considered charitable for tax purposes, and you want to make sure you don't wind up paying taxes on contributions "sent to" you but then passed on, then you may need to start worrying about a separate entity. It would be more straightforward to offer to create, host and administer the website for the church, with it receiving the contributions directly.
If you cannot legally purchase a gun in Utah due to any restriction, such as residency, and you engage someone else to knowingly buy or gift you a gun (such as a "straw man" purchase from a dealer or private sale), that is illegal. From the same link you posted (my emphasis): Can I buy a firearm as a gift for someone? Yes, as long as the receiver is not a prohibited person and the gifting is not being used to circumvent a background check or other laws. Calling a purchase intended in place of another is a straw purchase.