Concurrent polygamy Polygamy, as explained by dictionaries, means "married to more than one person at the same time". In nations where polygamy is deemed illegal, laws often include terms preventing a person from running multiple marriages in parallel. However, there is a difference between parallelism and concurrency. And I'm wondering if people can legally run multiple marriages concurrently in these nations. For example, can someone have 7 spouses named Sunday, Monday, ..., Saturday and rotate (divorce and remarry) at midnight each day? Is this violating any laws governing monogamous relationships? (Clearly this once-per-day example is contrived and only meant to explore a technical possibility.)
Yes ... ... apart from the impracticality of it. Basically, the bureaucratic process of marriage and divorce doesn't fit within a 24-hour cycle. For example, in australia it is a requirement to notify the state one month before you intend to marry and divorce is a legal process that takes as long as it takes - typically years. But, assuming those obstacles did not exist, your scheme would not fall foul of the law. In general, you can remarry a person you previously divorced. kentucky [apparently]1 says enough is enough after the third time. Unless adultery is illegal (as it is in much of the Muslim world) there is no law against polyamory so long as no one person in the relationship is married to more than one other person. Your headline of "Concurrent Polygamy" is wrong - what you describe is "Consecutive Monogamy".
The specific venue requirement is ORC 3101.05 which says that Each of the persons seeking a marriage license shall personally appear in the probate court within the county where either resides, or, if neither is a resident of this state, where the marriage is expected to be solemnized. If neither party is a resident of this state, the marriage may be solemnized only in the county where the license is obtained. To possibly make things worse, An applicant for a marriage license who knowingly makes a false statement in an application or affidavit prescribed by this section is guilty of falsification under section 2921.13 of the Revised Code. If they lied on the application regarding the venue, that's a large problem. Otherwise, violating 3101.05 is a minor misdemeanor, which could be a fine up to $150. There is no provision that would invalidate the marriage, other than specified prohibited marriages (not nearer of kin than second cousin, already married).
There is no federal prohibition against sexual discrimination in public accomodations. Colorado has an applicable state law, which covers "any place of business engaged in any sales to the public", where "It is a discriminatory practice and unlawful ...to refuse, withhold from, or deny to an individual or a group, because of ...sexual orientation...the full and equal enjoyment of the goods...". No provision exempts lemonade stands. Churches etc. are specifically exempted: "'Place of public accommodation' shall not include a church, synagogue, mosque, or other place that is principally used for religious purposes". Sex discrimination is allowed "if such restriction has a bona fide relationship to the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of such place of public accommodation", an argument that can't reasonably be made in the described case. It is also not obvious that running a lemonade stand is a business (the courts will not admit unsubstantiated Wiki assertions as evidence). It would be relevant to wonder what constitutes a "business" under Colorado law. E.g. is a business license required? In Colorado (US) law, it has not been definitively decided whether there can be a religious exception to the anti-discrimination law. Masterpiece Cakeshop was decided without answering that (the state showed clear religious intolerance in its handling of the case). We do not know how a similar case will be decided: Arlene's Flowers was handed back to the state court with the instruction "do it again" (with nothing more than a mention of Masterpiece Cakeshop). The court cannot establish certain beliefs and practices as "valid religions" (Establishment Clause); the proxy expression that is used is "deeply held belief", which includes atheism. The relationship of the issue to the First Amendment is uncertain.
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.
In Texas, sex offenses are defined in Texas Penal Code § 21.01, et seq., and rape and kindred offenses are defined as sexual assault § 22.011 and aggravated sexual assault § 22.021. None of those laws prohibit the conduct described (assuming adults who are not in a teacher-student relationship with full mental capacity), nor do they prohibit the video as long as there is no intent or threat to disclose it. Of course, not recognizing that it is the same person both times in an in person meeting when they have sex is highly implausible.
germany Is there any act of husband or wife which can be considered as rape? The paragraph for sexual offences is §177 StGb. Obviously there are nuances between those offences, not everything is &quot;rape&quot;, but all of it is illegal. To answer your question, yes, the same acts that are considered rape when they are not husband and wife. While marriage had been an exception, this was considered archaic by many and this exception was removed in 1997: Vergewaltigung in der Ehe ist seit Juli 1997 strafbar. Mit dem 33. Strafrechtsänderungsgesetz wurde das Merkmal außerehelich aus dem Tatbestand der Vergewaltigung, § 177 StGB, gestrichen, sodass seitdem auch die eheliche Vergewaltigung als ein Verbrechen geahndet wird. Translation: Marital rape has been punishable since July 1997. With the 33rd Criminal Law Amendment Act, the characteristic &quot;extramarital&quot; was removed from the definition of rape, § Section 177 of the Criminal Code, so that since then marital rape has also been punished as a crime. There is no mention of how consent is to be expressed or even that it needs to be expressed explicitely.
You have misread the DMLP page. In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to record a conversation if you are a party and if the other party does not consent. The fact that federal law doesn't ban something doesn't mean that states can't ban it. There is generally a presumption that when both the feds and the states can legitimately regulate something, the feds weren't trying to preempt all state laws on the topic. While people often say "federal law takes precedence over state law," the normal rule is that both laws apply; the federal law only blocks the state law if the feds wanted to block said state laws. So far as I can tell, the federal law has never been held to preempt two-party consent laws; the point of the federal law was to restrict recording, not extend it. It's like how federal law doesn't prohibit taking hostages inside the US to coerce a private company into doing what you want (anti-terrorism laws might, I guess, but the federal hostage-taking law doesn't); while the federal law excludes most hostage-taking in the US, that doesn't mean that it's legal to take hostages. Congress sometimes wants to establish nationwide standards for something, but the presumption is that they didn't.
According to an article in Bride's &quot;Zoom Weddings Are Now Legal!&quot; dated April 2021,several states including California, New York, Ohio, and Colorado have made temporary arrangements to make it legal for weddings to take place over video conference in response to the pandemic. Several also permit remote applications for marriage licenses. According to the June 2021 article &quot;Is it legal to have a virtual wedding?&quot; from Wedfuly states permitting such weddings include New York, California, and Illinois. However, in Florida, Hawaii, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas the article says that both parties to the wedding, and the officiant must all be physically present in the same place, although the wedding may be displayed on video for people at other locations. According to the New York Times article &quot;Why Virtual Weddings Are No Longer Legal in New York&quot; dated July 16, 2021, on June 25, 2021 Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ended the executive order he originally issued in April 2020 allowing couples to be married online. According to that NYT article new legislation would be required for such weddings to be legal in New York again. Other states might cancel or change their temporary rules allowing &quot;virtual&quot; weddings at any time. The New York decision apparently came as a surprise, causing a number of scheduled weddings to be canceled or changed to in-person events. One planning such a wedding would do well to check current rules in the state involved. Citizenship or permanent residence should not matter to the validity of such weddings, as it does not matter for in-person weddings. However, it seems that both parties and the officiant must all be physically present within the same US state or other jurisdiction for the marriage to be valid. Not all countries recognize the validity of such &quot;virtual&quot; marriages. It is specifically mentioned that the UK does not. Also, it seems that while such weddings were lawful in New York, the temporary rules required that both members of the couple, and the officiant, be physically within the state of New York for the wedding to be legal. Other states seem to have similar rules. If the members of the couple are not in the same state, it seems that the wedding becomes a &quot;proxy wedding&quot;. This is a process where one person is not present at all, but is represented by a &quot;proxy&quot;. Proxy weddings have been lawful far back in history, at least as far as the middle ages in Europe, and perhaps farther. They are currently lawful in only a few US states. According to the Wikipedia article linked above these are: Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and Montana. Such weddings are invalid in all other states. Some of those states limit proxy marriages to active members of the US Military on deployment. The service Web Wed seems to claim that members of a couple may be located anywhere or the virtual wedding, but this appears incorrect. They also claim a patent on some forms of this process, and seem to say that they are the only legitimate provider of virtual weddings, but the articles linked above quote various officiants and services that have performed hundreds of such marriages. Under the &quot;full faith and credit&quot; clause of the US Constitution, marriages that are legal under the laws of any US state must be recognized by all other US states. Other countries may or may not recognize such marriages, depending on their own laws. I do not find any court case in which such a wedding was challenged and a court ruled on its validity, one way or the other. Additional info An answer by user Roberto says that Web Wed does this by having an officiant in Utah County, Utah. The Utah County Clerk's office page on Web Ceremonies does say that the counter permits weddings by video conference as long as the &quot;host location&quot; is in the state of Utah. However, it does not mention WebWed specifically, and some of the information does not match. WebWed's site says: Once you have the license, there is no rush to perform the ceremony. Once issued thru the courts the marriage licenses never expire, so once you have it you can get legally married whenever you wish. However, please note that each state expiration is different. You must adhere to that specific state policy. In most states, you have 30 days to get married after the license is issued. Utah marriage licenses are valid for only 30 days and are not issued by a court, so that does not seem to be what WebWed is talking about. The public pages of their site do not seem to mention Utah specifically. The WebWed site also says: A state issued marriage license is required to use this service. Please note that it is the registers/users responsibility to verify and abide by state, county, and armed forces marriage laws prior to using this service. WebWed's site advises government officials to reject any online marriage not preformed through their service. If such marriages are lawful and valid, they will be available to anyone that follows the proper rules. US states do not grant exclusive rights to specific commercial services in such cases. US Federal Law 8 U.S. Code § 1101 which is the Definitions section for CHAPTER 12— IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY, says that: (a) As used in this chapter— ... (a) (35) The term “spouse”, “wife”, or “husband” do not include a spouse, wife, or husband by reason of any marriage ceremony where the contracting parties thereto are not physically present in the presence of each other, unless the marriage shall have been consummated. &quot;consummated&quot; is not defined in this section, and so presumably has its normal meaning in regard to marriage, that is, that the parties have had sexual relations at least once after the marriage occurred. This section would apply to proxy marriages as well as to &quot;virtual&quot; marriages, but applies only in the context of immigration law. Normally US Federal law leaves the issue of marriages to the states, except where there is a claim that Federal constitutional rights are being infringed, such as in the cases of Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) which forbade states to prohibit interracial marriage, and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) which forbade states to prohibit same-sex marriage. Utah Law Section 30-1-6 of the Utah Code provides that: 30-1-7. Marriage licenses -- Use within state -- Expiration. (1) No marriage may be solemnized in this state without a license issued by the county clerk of any county of this state. (2) A license issued within this state by a county clerk may only be used within this state. (3) A license that is not used within 32 days after the day on which the licensed is issued is void. Note that 30-1-6(2) says that any such marriage shall take place &quot;within the state&quot;. Nothing in this section, or any other section of chapter 30, specifically authorizes a marriage by video conference where one or both parties are not within the state when the marriage occurs. It is not clear on what basis the Utah County clerk's office considers such marriages valid. Section 30-1-8 of the Utah Code provides that: (b) Each applicant and if an applicant is a minor, the minor's consenting parent or legal guardian, shall appear in person before the clerk and provide legal documentation to establish the following information ... However that may be relevant only when one or both parties to the marriage is a minor. I can find no other provisions of the Utah code which control applications for a license by web, or specifies where a marriage may or may not be held, or who is or is not required to be physically present at a valid marriage ceremony.