Married to someone who&#39;s not american for 7 years without registration. Will I get charged of bigamy if I married somebody else later? I am a u.s citizen. I got married(We had a wedding with witness) and lived with my ex-wife who's non-u.s citizen for 7 years without registering our marriage in any country. We've never lived in the U.S together and she's not a GC holder. We are now separate. Can she sue me for bigamy if I married someone else later? And how can she do that outside of America? What happens if she reported this to the U.S embassy in her country? Our marriage is not legal under the laws of neither the place we got married in nor the place that we live now. We didn't register our marriage anywhere in the world. But we had a wedding, a ton of photos and witness who are friends and families.
Informal common-law marriages are recognised in a number of common-law jurisdiction, though not in Ireland, and not in Alabama (which recently un-recognized them), or Washington. In Montana, you would be married (which still doesn't resolve the bigamy question). In Texas, you might be. There are three relevant elements to legal marriages at least in the US: a solemnization (ceremony), a license (or document like the Declaration of Informal Marriage document signed in Texas), and filing the license. You claim that the marriage is not legal in the place you got married or where you are now, but that conclusion might be wrong (I assume that opinion is based on your understanding of local laws, but that understanding might be in error. If your lawyer told you so, then I don't know why you're asking here, so I assume you didn't ask a lawyer). The main issue of concern would be over whether that country requires a license of registration for a marriage to be valid, or does a church ceremony along suffice. Unregistered marriages are not legally recognized in Kenya, so it could matter what country this happened in. Assuming that you did not cross the threshold for "common law marriage" wherever you were when you "got married", then you are not married now. As pointed out by ohwilleke, an issue could arise if you visited one of the 10 US states that recognizes common law marriage, and accidentally satisfied the requirements for a common law marriage (without ceremony). Texas would not be a problem even if you were there and introduced yourselves as man and wife, because there is also a cohabitation requirement (FAM § 2.401: "the man and woman agreed to be married and after the agreement they lived together in this state as husband and wife and there represented to others that they were married"), but such a requirement might not exist in all states. Assuming also that you are currently in the US (hence subject to jurisdiction of some state), it is pretty much guaranteed that you have not committed bigamy. Bigamy laws can differ somewhat from state to state, but picking the Washington law as an example, one would have committed bigamy if one "intentionally marries or purports to marry another person when either person has a living spouse". However one can defend oneself against that charge if "the actor reasonably believed that he or she was legally eligible to marry". I cannot find a statutory definition of "spouse" in the relevant chapter of RCW, in which case the term takes its ordinary meaning (which means there considerable wiggle room if the matter hasn't been decided by some court). At any rate, bigamy charges in Washington are extremely unlikely. If your "ex" lived in a country which has a very expansive definition of bigamy (presumably by having a very expansive definition of marriage), then you might be subject to charges if you were ever in that country. But you could not be extradited from the US to that country for prosecution.
New Jersey has jurisdiction under N.J.S.A. 2A:34-10 provided that at the time the cause of action arose, either party was a bona fide resident of this State, and has continued so to be down to the time of the commencement of the action; except that no action for absolute divorce or dissolution of a civil union shall be commenced for any cause other than adultery, unless one of the parties has been for the 1 year next preceding the commencement of the action a bona fide resident of this State; (which if you undo the contorted writing, mean one of you must be a resident for a year, except if the cause is adultery). Under this scenario, the wife did not continue to be a resident of NJ, so it is crucial that the husband be a bona fide resident. The problem is that there is no general law defining residency for all legal purposes, instead, residency is defined on a law-by-law basis (or, not defined). 52:14-7 which imposes a residency requirement on state employees says that a person may have at most one principal residence, and the state of a person's principal residence means the state (1) where the person spends the majority of the person's nonworking time, and (2) which is most clearly the center of the person's domestic life, and (3) which is designated as the person's legal address and legal residence for voting. The husband is apparently an NJ resident under (1) and probably (2), and possibly (3). It would not matter whether he was living in that particular house, the question was whether he was living in the state (presumably yes since otherwise you would have said "he moved out of the state"). Voter registration, another measure of residency, requires 30 days living in NJ (and is itself proof of residency). Another way of determining residency is via state income tax. You are a full time resident if New Jersey was not your domicile, but you maintained a permanent home in New Jersey for the entire year and you spent more than 183 days in New Jersey or New Jersey was your domicile for the entire year, as long as it's not the case that You did not spend more than 30 days in New Jersey You did maintain a permanent home outside New Jersey You did not maintain a permanent home in New Jersey Under tax law, the husband is a resident. Failure to get an NJ license is itself against the law, so that would not be a valid argument that the husband is not a resident. Owning a business in another state also does not negate residency.
The first question would be whether those papers are indeed "legit", and we don't do product reviews. Assuming the company didn't mess up and she was legally served, the next question would be whether she responded (in the legal sense) or not. If she failed to respond at all within 21 days (add 9 days if she is out of state), then your next step would be to file default divorce paperwork (presumably that's covered in the service you paid for). If she agreed to the divorce and the courts knows that, then you file some more paperwork and she doesn't have to show up to anything. If she disagreed, there will be an "answer" and possibly a counterpetition. There is an exchange of paperwork w.r.t. assets, a mandatory mediation stage, more paperwork, disclosures etc. and a pre-trial conference, followed by a trial. If you are at this stage, attendance is mandatory. As long as you have proof of service, nobody requested a postponement, and there is some evidence to support your claim, a default judgment can be issued. It's not clear what "divorce proceeding" you are referring to that involves her attendance. However, you can file divorce paperwork yourself or using an online service, and using an online service does not render the paperwork illegitimate. It's not guaranteed that the service did what would be necessary for you to get the outcome you desire, but that's beyond the scope of what we can tell you.
Article 41.3.3 of the 1937 Irish Constitution said: No person whose marriage has been dissolved under the civil law of any other State but is a subsisting valid marriage under the law for the time being in force within the jurisdiction of the Government and Parliament established by this Constitution shall be capable of contracting a valid marriage within that jurisdiction during the lifetime of the other party to the marriage so dissolved. Until this section was changed by the 2019 amendment. I can find no source to show how &quot;but is a subsisting valid marriage under the law&quot; was interpreted, but it seems that a person divorced in or prior to 1940 under US law would not have been permitted to marry in Ireland after 1937 until 2019 under this provision. It should be noted that although Finnegans Wake by James Joyce was published in full in 1939, much of it had been written and published in sections by 1926. It is not at all clear just when it is set. In the 1920s, the constitutional provision quoted above was not yet in effect.
It is almost certainly illegal. I was unable to find UK provisions but the penalties for stealing an Australian passport are 10 years imprisonment or a fine of up to 1,000 penalty units (at time of writing a penalty unit was $170 so, $170,000) (Section 32(4) of the Australian Passports Act 2005). Under this law, the crime is knowingly having it in your possession when you know it isn't yours. Obviously, normal familial relationships would not be prosecuted (i.e. one member of the family carrying all the family's passports). Certainly, if the true owner asked for it and the possessor refused, that would trigger the crime. Furthermore, it is completely pointless - all the original owner has to do is report it stolen and apply for another one.
Immigration and naturalization is pretty far out of my comfort zone, but I'm confident that the answer is yes. Although people often believe that a foreign embassy is considered the territory of that country, I don't know of any law that supports that belief. Instead, through the Vienna Convention, the embassy grounds remain the territory of the host state but are provided a variety of protections and immunities because of their diplomatic status. With the embassy on U.S. soil, the child would therefore satisfy the "born ... in the United States" prong of the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause.* But that would not be the end of the analysis, as birthright citizenship also requires not just that the child is born in the United States, but also that the child be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." So if the child were born to an American citizen who had entered the Indian embassy to get a travel visa, the child would be both born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, making it eligible for birthright citizenship. But if the child were born to Indian ambassador or to diplomatic staff, who would generally be able to claim diplomatic immunity, that child would not be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and would not be able to claim birthright citizenship. Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36, 73, (1872) ("The phrase, ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States."). * I haven't been able to find any cases saying this explicitly, but all the cases involving children born in foreign embassies sort of skip over the question as though they just assume that the child was born in the United States. See, e.g., Raya v. Clinton, 703 F. Supp. 2d 569 (W.D. Va. 2010); Nikoi v. Attorney Gen. of U.S., 939 F.2d 1065 (D.C. Cir. 1991) These cases also go on to conclude that those children are not citizens of the United States, because they are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
In the USA, at least, it has never, to the best of my information, been legally mandated to add a name on marriage, or even for husband and wife have the same last name. It has long been customary in the US for a woman on marriage, to adopt her husband's surname. This is no not nearly as common as it once was -- it was once almost invariable, but some women did not do so, or kept a pre-marrige name for professional purposes, even many generations ago. When a woman married, in some social sub-groups it was common to simply drop her former surname and replace it with her new husband's surname. In others, the new surname was added to her existing name, potentially leading to the kind of long series of names mentions in the question. In the 1990s Judith Martin, writing as &quot;Miss Manners&quot;, wrote that the first of these was the more &quot;traditional&quot; but both were not uncommon. When I was married, the clerk asked my wife and I what name each of us would be known by after the marriage, and that constituted a legal change of name. But we were free to make any choice we wanted. I think this has been the usual procedure in the US for a long time now. On divorce, a woman in the US (and the UK and Canada) traditionally kept her former husband's last name, although some returned to a pre-marriage surname. On remarriage, some added a new husband's surname, others replaced the former husband's name. Some said that keeping the former husband's name was a statement that the woman had been without fault in the divorce, or want to remain associated in some way with her former husband's family. There were, of course, also women who remarried after a former husband's death, rather than a divorce. In any case, I do not think any of this was legally required, but custom can sometimes be as strong as law. Other cultures had and have different customs on marriage and divorce. But in most places these are not a matter of law. I do not know of any country that legally mandates a change or modification of name on marriage, but some may.
As user6726 notes in an answer, the page you link to derives from 26 USC 7701. However, it does not reproduce the text accurately. There, "United States person" is defined at section 7701(a)(30), and it notably lacks anything corresponding to "any other person that is not a foreign person." It's possible that that language is motivated by some court decision, but it's also possible that someone just added it for the sake of symmetry with the definition of "foreign person" without thinking about the logical paradox that it might create. Looking at section 7701, I don't see any explicit mention of US non-citizen nationals. It appears that such a person who does not live in one of the 50 states or the District of Columbia falls under the definition of nonresident alien at 7701(b)(1)(B) even though such a person is explicitly not an alien under the Immigration and Nationality Act. I do not see any regulations correcting this oversight, but I suppose that in practice such people are indeed treated as US citizens. I don't know enough about the classification of nonhuman legal persons as foreign or domestic to have any ideas about whether there are similar ambiguities there.