Is marital status from another country valid in the US? If someone with F-2 visa status comes to the US with his/her spouse then wants to get married a US citizen, or green card holder in the US, should he/she get divorced from his/her spouse? Or is it not necessary because the previous marriage was not conducted within the US?
TLDR: get a divorce. Basically, the US (as with most countries) recognizes valid marriages from other jurisdictions that would be valid if performed by the couple in the US. Which means that same sex marriages before Oberfell would not have been recognized but are now. Marriage with minors are not recognized. Multiple simultaneous marriages are not recognized (no second or third husbands or wives). Some common law marriages can have problems with this, as there is no record of the marriage.
The general answer is, no, it is not valid in the US, see this article. Exceptions to laws recognizing e-signatures abound which exclude wills from general laws recognizing electronic signatures. Nevada is the one current exception (conveniently located between Oregon and Arizona). There have been attempts to legalize electronic wills, including in Arizona (SB 1298). Although Tennessee does not recognize e-wills, a gentleman in Tennessee went ahead and did it, and in Taylor v. Holt, 134 S.W.3d 830 the court decided that the will was properly executed and witnessed. Electronic notarization is recognized in Arizona, though apparently for things you file with the government (not things that your heirs will eventually file), whereas in Oregon it is a general-purpose way of getting a document notarized. Since the courts are loathe to completely disregard a person's last will and testament because they didn't narrowly follow requirements, you might be able to "get away with it", but it would not make things easier for the executor.
You are courting seduction by the sovereign citizen doctrine. This is a crackpot legal theory that will get you nowhere. Run away as fast as you can. See, for example, Can a natural US person hold citizenship while remaining non-juridical?. See also "Mercedes-Benz Financial (DCFS Canada Corp.) v. Kovacevic, 2009", CanLII. This person fared particularly poorly because his argument relied in part on the UCC, which is a United States model code, but he was arguing in a Canadian court. Still, even in a US court, he would have lost. See What are &quot;freemen of the land&quot; or &quot;sovereign citizen&quot; theories and do they hold any water?.
The short answer is that yes, a couple can marry for the purpose of gaining access to the marital privilege in court actions, even if they are pending when the marriage occurs. There is basically no such thing as a sham marriage in this context. (There may be a handful of outlier cases as is the case in any legal rule, but this is the overwhelmingly uniform rule of law today.) In practice, outside the context of an annulment proceeding in the civil courts where one of the parties to the marriage or fiduciaries such as legal guardians for one of the parties to the marriage seek to have it invalidated, a legally entered into marriage is valid for all purposes without question. Even many marriages that can be annulled for religious purposes are not eligible to be annulled under non-religious civil law. Third-parties generally do not have standing to declare that a marriage be annulled. Usually marriage is conclusively established by the existence of a marriage license and the absence of a death or divorce by either party. Even the existence of a common law marriage, or the existence of some factor that prevents a marriage from being recognized as valid (e.g. one of the parties is already married or is underage) is often fairly easily proved (and is usually completely unrelated to the case in which a martial privilege is to be asserted and undisputed). Immigration law is the only context is which the status of a marriage as a sham is actively policed. Also, keep in mind that the marital privilege for evidentiary purposes is actually two separate privileges. One is the privilege not to testify against a current spouse in a legal proceeding. The other is the privilege not to testify as to confidential communications made to a spouse while the couple was married. Both have exceptions (e.g. for crimes in which one of the spouses is the victim). A confidential communication to a boyfriend/girlfriend prior to marriage is not protected by the confidential communications marital privilege even after the couple married. Only the testimonial privilege would be available with regard to those communications, and the testimonial privilege often has more exceptions than the confidential communications privilege (usually the exceptions are enumerated by statute that varies from state to state). A previous answer related to spousal privilege with quotations from a state statute to provide an example can be found here. In Colorado, which is fairly typical, the confidential communications privilege applies to all crimes (except those which are ongoing or are between the spouses), while the testimonial privilege does not apply to serious felonies.
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.
The US doesn't do exit immigration checks, so if your hypothetical Israeli overstayer can board a flight out of the US, they'll most likely be allowed to go without detention or other punishment. The US sees no value in spending government money to detain someone who is ready to leave of their own accord. I'm not sure why such a person should have &quot;no valid documentation&quot;. Maybe you're confused by the common term &quot;undocumented&quot; for people without legal immigration status, but it usually doesn't literally mean they have no documentation at all. Most such people would still have their passport and other identification from their home country, and the passport is enough to board a flight back home. You say your hypothetical Israeli overstayer had a visa; so they must have had an Israeli passport when they entered the US. Under normal circumstances, they've still got it. If it expired, they could have renewed it at an Israeli consulate within the US; the consulate will issue passports to all Israeli citizens without regard to their immigration status in the US. Even if somehow they lost their Israeli passport and all other identity documents, the consulate would have the ability to verify their identity from Israeli government records (e.g. the photo and biometrics from their previous passport, which would still be in the Israeli government's database), and process their application for a replacement passport.
Admissibility is one thing, enforcement is another. My observations, which are more detailed than casual, is that Family Courts are a different breed, and more than most any other court, "they do what they want." I have associates who had agreed to stipulations, detailing how a child might be handled, only to have a family court decide at some point to implement some completely different plan, and in doing so run against what both parents were interested in doing. Prenuptial agreements appear to be meaningless, as this is not about the assets of the couple, it is about the state's interest in the child. Even then, the courts seem to act in manners which appear to not be in the best interests of the child (and sometimes even say so.) Back to your question, would an agreement be admissible? Yes. Does it mean much? In my opinion, and based upon the preponderance of evidence, no. Do whatever you have to do to stay out of family court. Being married doesn't matter. Working together for 21 years does. In the future, you should state the jurisdiction you are in. It does change the answer, but in this case only subtlety.
Yes 15 USC 1501, which is part of the Lanham Act, the basic US trademark law, provides in subsection (a)(2) that: (2) The application [for registration of a trademark] shall include specification of the applicant’s domicile and citizenship, the date of the applicant’s first use of the mark, the date of the applicant’s first use of the mark in commerce, the goods in connection with which the mark is used, and a drawing of the mark. This clearly implies that the applicant may have a citizenship other than US, or else ther ewould be nbo point in specifying the citizenship in the application. subsection (e) of the same section provides, in relevant part: If the applicant is not domiciled in the United States the applicant may designate, by a document filed in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the name and address of a person resident in the United States on whom may be served notices or process in proceedings affecting the mark. This makes it cleat that an applicant need not be resident in the US., 15 USC 1141a provides that: (a) In general The owner of a basic application pending before the United States Patent and Trademark Office, or the owner of a basic registration granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office may file an international application by submitting to the United States Patent and Trademark Office a written application in such form, together with such fees, as may be prescribed by the Director. (b) Qualified owners: A qualified owner, under subsection (a), shall— (b)(1) be a national of the United States; (b)(2) be domiciled in the United States; or (b)(3) have a real and effective industrial or commercial establishment in the United States. 1141a (b2) and (b)(3) make it clear that an applicant need not be a national (citizen) of the US. The USPTO's page &quot;Trademark FAQs&quot; lists under the heading &quot;General - Trademark Help - Getting Started - Other&quot; the following Q&amp;A: Must I be a U.S. citizen to obtain a federal registration? No. However, your citizenship must be provided in the application. If you have dual citizenship, then you must indicate which citizenship will be printed on the certificate of registration.