BIGAMY - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

BIGAMYAuthored

The Law Mind • 988 words

Definition

The criminal offense of willfully and knowingly contracting a second marriage — or going through the form of a second marriage — while the first marriage remains legally subsisting and undissolved. Both the fact of the prior marriage and the offender's knowledge that it continues must be established.

Bigamy applies symmetrically: a man who takes a second wife while his first wife is living, or a woman who takes a second husband while her first husband is living, commits the offense. The second "marriage" creates no valid marital relationship; the purported second spouse acquires no legal status as husband or wife.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The state of having two legal or illegal spouses simultaneously; also, occasionally, a second marriage contracted after the death of a spouse.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The offense of marrying one person when already legally married to another.

The legal definition is narrower than common usage on one side and broader on the other. Common usage sometimes treats bigamy as any situation of dual spouses, whether or not criminal intent is present. The legal offense requires willfulness and knowledge — an honest, reasonable belief that a prior marriage was dissolved may negate criminal liability in many jurisdictions. On the other side, the legal definition extends to going through the form of a marriage ceremony even when the second union would be void ab initio; the ceremonial act itself completes the offense. The second Wiktionary sense — a marriage after a spouse's death — has no criminal meaning whatsoever in modern law.

Common Confusion

Bigamy and polygamy are frequently conflated but are distinct. Polygamy describes the state or practice of having multiple spouses simultaneously, encompassing any number beyond one. Bigamy, in its strict legal sense, refers specifically to a second marriage during the subsistence of the first. In most American statutes, the offense is charged as bigamy regardless of whether a defendant has contracted two or five concurrent marriages; polygamy as a separate statutory term appears in some jurisdictions but is not universal. The key practical distinction: polygamy is the broader social and anthropological concept; bigamy is the operative criminal charge in most common-law systems.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers should watch for two persistent complications in historical sources.

First, the relationship between bigamy and polygamy in older authorities is genuinely unsettled. Bouvier draws an explicit line: when a party has more than two spouses living, the offense is properly called polygamy, reserving bigamy for the second-marriage-only case. Burrill picks up Blackstone's criticism on the etymological point — bis means "twice," not "many times" — and notes that the distinction is not merely semantic. Modern American statutes typically collapse this distinction, using bigamy as the operative charge regardless of the number of concurrent marriages. A researcher reading 19th-century treatises must be alert to whether the source is using bigamy in this strict etymological sense or in the broader statutory sense.

Second, the knowledge requirement is the live issue in most contested cases and in most jurisdictional variation. Historical sources tend to state the element flatly — the offender must know the first marriage is still subsisting — without fully working out the honest-belief defense. Modern case law substantially develops this, and researchers using older dictionary entries as a starting point for understanding the mens rea element will need to move quickly to statute and case law.

For corpus researchers: sources discussing marriage, divorce, and marital status intersect directly. The validity of foreign divorces, the legal effect of an absent spouse, and the statutory "Enoch Arden" exceptions (permitting remarriage after a spouse's long disappearance) all bear on when the first marriage is "still subsisting" for bigamy purposes. These exceptions are invisible in the core dictionary entries but are essential to understanding how the offense operated in practice.

Historical Dictionary Support

The major dictionaries agree on the core definition: willful, knowing contraction of a second marriage while the first subsists. Black's (both editions), Bouvier, and Burrill converge on this formulation without significant divergence.

The more interesting variation is the bigamy/polygamy boundary. Bouvier draws it explicitly and states that despite the technical distinction, "the name of bigamy is more frequently" used — acknowledging that common legal usage already overrode the etymological precision. Burrill engages with the criticism at greater length, noting that Blackstone's concern turns on something more than etymology, though the fragment preserved in the available text does not complete the argument. This suggests that the 19th-century authorities were aware the term was a loose fit for the conduct it described but accepted the usage as settled.

Anderson's Dictionary offers a useful clarification that the historical sources sometimes understate: the second spouse "is not a wife at all" — the second marriage is void, not merely voidable. This matters for property, inheritance, and legitimacy questions that arise downstream from a bigamous relationship.

What the historical dictionaries largely omit: the honest-belief or reasonable-mistake defense, the procedural question of how a prior marriage is proved (Anderson gestures at proof by admissions), and the statutory exceptions that most 19th-century American states had already begun to enact for cases of long spousal absence.

Jurisdictional Note

Most American states criminalize bigamy by statute, but the elements — particularly the knowledge requirement and available defenses — vary. Some jurisdictions provide an affirmative defense where the defendant reasonably believed the prior marriage had been dissolved; others require the defendant to prove this belief was based on a court judgment or official record. A small number of states have decriminalized bigamy or reduced it to a minor offense, though the civil nullity of the second marriage remains uniform.

BIGAMYmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

The criminal offense of will- fully and knowingly contracting a second marriage (or going through the form of a second marriage) while the first marriage, to the knowledge of the offender, is still sub- sisting and undissolved. The state of a man who has two wives, or of a woman who has two husbands, living at the same time.

BIGAMYmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

The wilfully contracting a second marriage when the contracting party knows that the first is still subsisting. The state of a man who has two wives, or of a woman who has two husbands, living at the same time. When the man has more than two wives, or the woman more than two husbands, living at the same time, then the party is said to have committed polygamy; but the name of bigamy is more fre- quently given to this offence in legal proceedings. 1 Russell, Cr. 187. According to the canonists, bigamy is threefold, viz.: (vera, interpretativa etsimilitudinaria) real, interpretative, and similitudinary. The first con- marrying two wives successively (virgins they may be), or in once marrying a widow; the second consisted, not in a repeated marriage, but in marrying v. g. meretricem vel ab alio corruptam) a harlot; the third arose from two marriages, indeed, but the one metaphorical or spiritual, the other car- nal. This last was confined to persons initiated in sacred orders, or under the vow o continence. De- ferriere's Tract. Juris Canon. tit. xxi. See also Bacon, Abr. Marriage. In England this crime is punishable by the stat. 24 & 25 Vict. c. 100, § 57, which makes the offence felony; but it exempts from punishment the party whose husband or wife shall continue to remain absent for seven years before the second marriage without being heard from, and persons who shall have been legally divorced. The statutory provisions in the United States against bigamy or polygamy are in general similar to, and copied from, the statute of 1 Jac. I. c. 11, which was supplied by the act of 24 & 25 Vict. c. 100, excepting as to the. punishment. The several exceptions to this statute are also nearly the same in the American statutes; but the punish- ment of the offence is different in many of the states; 2 Kent 69. Bigamy and polygamy are crimes by the laws of all civilized and Christian countries, and the First Amendment to the constitu- tion declaring that congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or forbidding the free exercise thereof, was never intended to be a protection against legislation for the punishment of such crimes; 133 U. S. 333. If a woman, who has a husband living, marries another person, she is punishable, though her husband has voluntarily with- drawn from her and remained absent and unheard of for any term of time less than seven years, and though she honestly be- lieves, at the time of her second marriage, that he is dead; 7 Metc. 472. See a discus- sion of this case by Mr. Bishop, in which he dissents from its ruling, in 4 So. L. J. (N. S). 153; Clark, Cr. L. 311. Also, 12 Am. L. Rev. 471. The same rule applies also to the marriage of the husband, where he believes the wife to be dead; 62 Ala. 141; 18 Bush 818. The same rule now obtains in England, after some conflict of opinion; 14 Cox C. C. 45; but quære, if her belief were founded on positive evidence; Steph. Dig. Cr. Law, art. 34, n. 9. On the trial of a woman for bigamy whose first husband had been absent from her for more than seven years, the jury found that they had no evidence that at the time of her second marriage she knew that he was alive, but that she had the means of acquiring knowl- edge of that fact had she chosen to make use of them. It was held that upon this finding the conviction could not be sup- ported; 1 Dearsl. & B. Cr. Cas. 98. If a man is prosecuted for bigamy, his first wife cannot be called to prove her marriage with the defendant; T. Raym. 1; 44 Ala. 24; 15.Low. Can. J. 21; nor it seems even to prove that the first marriage was in- valíd; 4 Up. Can. Q. B. 588; but see as to this last point, 2 Whart. Cr. L. § 1709. The first marriage may be proved by the admissions of the prisoner; 103 U. S. 304; 46 Ind. 175. And see 1 Park. Cr. Cas. 878. When the first marriage is proved to the satisfaction of the court, the second hus- band is admissible as a witness for or against the defendant; Whart. Cr. Ev. § 397; 8 Ired. 846; 12 Minn. 476; 4 Up. Can. (Q. B.) 588; 103 U. S. 304. Admissions of a prior marriage in a foreign country are sufficient without proof of cohabitation or other cor- roborating circumstances to establish the marriage; 110 N. C. 500. It is no defence that polygamy is a re-

BIGAMYmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

[L. Lat. bigamia, from bis, same time. This criticism of Blackstone twice, and Gr. yapos, marriage.] In crimiturns upon something more than a quesnal law. The crime of marrying a second tion of mere etymological propriety, (betime during the life of the first wife or tween bis, twice, and Todd, many times, or husband; or of having more wives or husmore than twice, in the composition of the bands than one at the same time. 4 Bl. respective terms,) and is fully borne out Com. 163. 4 Steph. Com. 300. There by the authority of Lord Coke, who exare several excepted cases, however, in pressly defines polygamy, in the very terms which a second marriage during the life of of the modern definition of bigamy, to be a former husband or wife, will not amount the having of several husbands or wives at to bigamy. See 4 Chitty's Bl. Com. 164, the same time; (polygamia est plurium 165, note. 4 Steph. Com. 301, 302. simul virorum uxorumve connubium ;) and Wharton's Am. Crim. Law, 552-555. goes on to show the difference between bigamy and polygamy, in the Latin passage given under bigamus, supra. 3 Inst. 88. The present improper use of the term bigamy seems to have grown up since the time of Coke, who makes no mention of bigamy in his very full enumeration of offences, recognised by the English criminal law. In Massachusetts, the term polygamy has been restored to its proper use and meaning, as contended for by Blackstone. Rev. Stat. (ed. 1836,) c. 130, § 2. In canon law. The offence of marrying two wives successively, one after the death of the other; or once marrying a widow. 4 Bl. Com. 163, note (b). 3 Inst. 88. See Bigamus. **The use of the word bigamy in its present sense, in criminal law, although well settled, is, as Blackstone observes, an obvious corruption of the meaning, polygamy being the proper name for the offence of having a plurality of wives [or husbands] at once. 4 Bl. Com. 163. 3 Inst. 88. Co. Litt. Hargr. & B. Note 48, lib. 2. 2 Kent's Com. 80, 81. See Polygamy. Bigamy was a term invented by the canonists to describe the offence, peculiar to their law, of being twice married. See Bigamus. Mr. Stephen, in his valuable. Commentaries, questions the correctness of Blackstone's criticism, on the following ground: that "whatever the number of marriages that may have taken place, the substance of the charge always is, that having a lawful wife still living, the offender married a second time, any intervening marriage being wholly immaterial, and out of the case, so far as the prosecution is concerned." 4 Steph. Com. 300, note (n). But the learned commentator seems to have overlooked the point of Blackstone's objection, which is not that bigamy is incorrectly applied to cases where marriage has been contracted more than twice, but is addressed to the essential and well-understood meaning of the term, and may be more specifically stated in the following form: that bigamy, a term always employed in the canon law to denote the offence of marrying a second wife after the death of the first, or of marrying two or more wives successively, was not properly applied to an offence, the essence of which consists in marrying a second time during the life of the first wife or husband, or of having two or more wives or husbands at the

BIGAMYn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

The offense of marrying one person when already legally married to another. Wharton.

bigamynoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

The state of having two (legal or illegal) spouses simultaneously. | A second marriage after the death of a spouse.

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