52
Short Answer
SIMPLIFIED AND UPDATED BASED ON ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IN THE QUESTION:
The marriage is valid, but their marriage will not allow the girlfriend to refuse to testify as a witness in the case.
She can be compelled to testify against him under oath, but does not have to testify about the confidential communications that they have with each ...
28
There are only a few areas of law of which I am aware that U.S. law treats people who are engaged to be married differently (although perhaps with more thought I could expand the list).
Fiance(e)s come under a special immigration status when applying for a visa.
There is a body of law related to whether an engagement ring is an absolute gift or is ...
23
In england-and-wales this would fall within the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and depends on whether he lacks the mental not physical, capacity to make the decision for himself.
Can he:
Understand the information relevant to the decision
Retain that information
Use or weigh that information as part of the process of making the
decision
Communicate that decision (...
17
Sources
Florida Power of Attorney from the Florida Bar Association is a consumer pamphlet summarizing the laws in regard to a power of attorney. The actual laws are in the Florida Code sections 709.2100 thru 709.2402
Health Care Advance Directives from the Florida Health Care Administration is a consumer guide to Living wills, surrogate designations, and ...
12
In Washington state, a marriage could be challenged
because a party lacked capacity to consent to the marriage or
domestic partnership, either because of mental incapacity or because
of the influence of alcohol or other incapacitating substances, or
because a party was induced to enter into the marriage or domestic
partnership by force or duress, or by ...
12
According to South Carolina law:
SECTION 20-1-10. Persons who may contract matrimony.
(A) All persons, except mentally incompetent persons and persons whose marriage is prohibited by this section, may lawfully contract matrimony.
(The prohibited list includes close relatives, people who are already married, people under 16, and people of the same sex, ...
11
The legal term for premarital sex, as a crime, is fornication. I found a paper that gives an extensive and well-referenced history and analysis of such laws:
Sweeny, JoAnne. Undead Statutes: The Rise, Fall and Continuing Uses of Adultery and Fornication Criminal Laws. Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 46 (2014), 127–173. http://www.luc.edu/...
10
You can keep your name; this is the default. Source:
Your surname does not change automatically upon marriage unless you elect to change it.
Nothing in the law requires you to change your name when getting married; it is your personal choice.
You are not required to have the same surname as your spouse.
10
"Polyamory" is usually used to refer to having more than one romantic relationship at a time, which is pretty unobjectionable as far as the law is concerned. It might get you into trouble in a divorce proceeding, but the laws that still exist addressing it are largely dead letters.
I assume you're asking more about polygamy, or having more than one one ...
10
I was initially going to vote to close this as a political rather than a legal question, however, I think there is scope for separating out the two dimensions.
Our society makes a distinction between children and adults by giving them different legal rights, obligations and protections. If you think about it, there are a lot of things beyond sexual activity ...
10
According to https://www.baezlawfirm.com/can-your-spouse-be-forced-to-testify-against-you/ Section 90.504 of Florida’s Evidence Code includes the privilege to exclude "marital communications" from the testimony of a spouse, but does not include the "testimonial privilege" which Federal common law and the laws of many US states do include, that permits one ...
10
First, there is no prohibition against a Jewish man marrying an Eastern European woman in Israel. If they are both Jewish, the marriage can be performed in Israel. If they are not the same religion, then if they get married in Israel, the government will not recognize the marriage. However, Israel recognizes inter-faith marriages performed outside Israel. ...
10
Apparently "alienation of affection" is still a tort in Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.
The assumption originally behind alienation of affection this is that one spouse (most usually the wife) belongs to the other and a third party stole them from the other (husband). This is now archaic, sexist, thinking ...
10
In france, consent can be presumed from past actions and behavior. In this case, having a wedding planned for later the same week, rings bought, and so on would probably work.
The same principle allows marriage of a dead fiancee.
9
Not exactly,
There were limited instances of the institution of wife selling in Britain in the early modern period, but this practice was never transferred to the United States and received as part of its common law. The institution of wife selling had been abolished long, long ago in 1925 in Britain and had never existed in the U.S., and was quite rare ...
9
You haven't actually asked a question, but I presume that you want to know how the 11-year-old son could accompany his mother to the US if she moves to the US as the fiancée or spouse of a US citizen.
The US Department of State has a page about this on their site. It says:
Overview: What Is a K-1 Visa?
The fiancé(e) K-1 nonimmigrant visa is for the foreign-...
8
united-states
In the United States, divorce is a matter of state law, and each of the 50 states has slightly different laws. But in general, it is not true as a matter of law that divorced women are awarded everything but "a mattress and a TV".
A small number of states, of which the largest are California and Texas, are community property states. ...
7
You don't need to "report" it to anyone in the US or do anything else. The US doesn't have any national registry of marriage. Any marriage or divorce conducted anywhere in the world is automatically recognized anywhere in the US (with some exceptions like polygamous marriages); the same is true in many other countries.
How does the U.S. find out, for tax ...
7
The first thing to note is that your question is kind of the wrong way around. US states are sovereign and generally have the ability to make any kind of laws they want, unless they violate some specific tenet of federal law or the US Constitution.
You suggest, for instance, that arguments which are "culturally founded" have no place in the law, but that'...
7
Privilege May Be Irrelevant In Your Case
In a criminal case in the U.S., a criminal prosecution is moot and dismissed if the criminal defendant dies (or even if the criminal defendant is convicted and the case is still on appeal). (Pending divorce cases also abate upon the death of a spouse, but most other civil cases do not.)
Caveat: Your Mileage May Vary
...
7
Regardless of whether a defendant is a wife or husband in relation to
a potential witness, the latter can always refuse to say jack or just
go with the "I can't recall" thing. What, will they torture them?
What's the point of these "privileges" then?
There are actually two separate spousal privileges, the confidential communications ...
6
In this ruling, the Alabama Supreme Court dismissed a case seeking to halt same-sex weddings in Alabama, which had begun under Obergefell.
The text of the ruling is, in whole:
IT IS ORDERED that all pending motions and petitions are DISMISSED.
The remaining 169 pages are editorializing, nothing more.
The NBC characterization is, therefore, correct:
...
6
What could be the consequences of this wedding?
They would be married
For example, if they break up and end their PACS in France, would they still be officially married in the USA?
Yes, and also in France.
And if after that they marry other partners, could this be a problem for them when applying for an American visa?
Yes, bigamy is illegal in both ...
6
This happened despite the fact that the marriage and Bible verses requirement were almost surely illegal and similar things have happened on and off, mostly in rural courts with non-attorney judges, for pretty much as long as the U.S. has been a country (and earlier).
The trick is that the orders take effect unless someone appeals them, and since deals ...
6
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 ...
6
One place to look is the incest statute, 18-6602, which says:
Persons being within the degrees of consanguinity within which
marriages are declared by law to be incestuous and void, who
intermarry with each other, or who commit fornication or adultery with
each other, are punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for a
term not to exceed life....
6
Of course not. There may be legal systems in which wives were considered their husbands' property, but that was never the case in the US.
As in many legal systems, wives at times had little or no legal personality independent of their husbands, but that isn't the same as being the husband's property. An example illustrating the fact that a wife is not her ...
6
No
However, only the first wife is recognised as a wife under US law.
Please note that it is not illegal to live in a polygamous relationship in the US: only to marry in the US while still married to another person.
6
We set speed limits so we don't have to spend time fighting over whether you were driving too fast.
We put up fences so we don't have to spend time fighting over whose property you are on.
We set ages of consent so we don't have to spend time fighting over whether the child could consent to sex.
6
The legal solution is very simple. Under Philippine law (Title 1, Marriage, Article 2)
No marriage shall be valid, unless these essential requisites are present:
(1) Legal capacity of the contracting parties who must be a male and a
female; and
(2) Consent freely given in the presence of the solemnizing officer.
If you do not consent to the ...
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