Bigamy :: Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

When most people think of the term "bigamy," they think of families where one guy has three or four wives and lives in a compound with about twenty kids. However, people very often engage in bigamous conduct by mistake, a circumstance that is recognized by Tennessee's codification of its bigamy laws.

The offense of bigamy in Tennessee is defined as follows:

(a) A person commits bigamy who:
(1) Is married and purports to marry a person other than the person's spouse in this state under circumstances that would, but for the person's existing marriage, constitute a marriage; or

(2) Knows that a person other than the person's spouse is married and purports to marry the person in this state under circumstances that would, but for the person's existing marriage, constitute a marriage.

Based on the definition alone, it would seem like Tennessee law imposes a sort of "strict liability," on individuals who marry someone while married to another. In subsection 1 of the statute, there is no knowledge requirement whatsoever that serves as an element of the offense. That is because the knowledge requirement with regard to bigamy actually serves as a defense under Tennessee law:

(

b) It is a defense to prosecution under subdivision (a)(1) that the person reasonably believed that the person's marriage had been dissolved by death, divorce or annulment.

Thus, an individual should only be charged with and convicted of bigamy if that person did not have reasonable grounds to believe that the person's first marriage had been dissolved by death, divorce, or annulment. For example, many Tennesseans believe that once a Marital Dissolution Agreement is signed in a divorce case that the parties are divorced automatically. This is actually untrue, because a divorce is not finalized until a final order of divorce has been entered with the court.

Individuals end up in bigamous relationships for a multitude of reasons, whether it be an honest mistake, intentional, or simply a matter of being too lazy or too cheap to divorce a "former" spouse officially. If you or someone you know has been charged with bigamy or any other criminal offense, contact an East Tennessee criminal defense attorney for assistance with your case.