How is ’Sister Wives’ legal? The stars of the TLC reality show simplest have one legal marriage between them, but they could still face legal issues.
If you’re simply tuning into one in every of TLC’s hit shows, you may be questioning how Sister Wives is legal. Longtime viewers will let you know that’s been a matter of rivalry for Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn Brown — and their kids — since the fact collection premiered.
The short resolution is that Kody most effective has one legal wife, and he’s hooked up to the different wives in his plural marriage thru a religious union. Meri, Kody’s first spouse, used to be his legal spouse until 2014, when she and Kody divorced in order that he could legally marry Robyn and undertake the children Robyn had from a previous courting.
But the legality in their plural marriage has brought about the Browns many a headache over the years.
The Browns moved from Utah to Nevada amid a police investigation.
By the time Sister Wives premiered in 2010, police in Lehi, Utah, had been investigating the family for weeks, since bigamy was once a felony in the state at the time. “The display undoubtedly make clear the scenario,” Lehi police Lt. Darren Paul said at the time, according to KSL.com.
Because of the investigation, the Brown family decided to move to Las Vegas, Nev. “I will be able to’t have my family reside in fear,” Kody said on the show. “Every day that we’re right here, our family goes deeper and deeper into the worry of what can occur.”
The family suffered a legal defeat in 2016.
In 2013, two years after the Sister Wives stars sued Utah and the Utah County’s attorney’s workplace over the state’s bigamy regulation, a federal judge in Utah threw out the ban on “cohabitation” but kept the ban on bigamy “in the literal sense — the fraudulent or another way impermissible ownership of two purportedly legitimate marriage licenses for the objective of entering into multiple purportedly legal marriage,” as CNN reported at the time.
In 2016, on the other hand, a federal appeals courtroom struck down that ruling, saying the Browns’ lawsuit had no status because they faced no credible danger of prosecution, consistent with The Salt Lake Tribune. That ruling restored third-degree-felony consequences for the cohabitation a part of Utah’s bigamy statute.
And the following year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to listen to the Brown family’s attraction of that ruling. “Today is an injustice to not be heard by way of SCOTUS,” the Brown family tweeted at the time, in keeping with The Salt Lake Tribune. “We suspect there will be many of us all over the place not easy to be heard for liberty.”
The family not too long ago moved to Arizona, the place they could face legal problems.
After several years in Vegas, the Browns moved to Flagstaff, Ariz., in 2018. But RadarOnline.com reported the following yr that the Browns could have legal trouble in that state, too.
“Polygamy is prohibited in Arizona,” legal expert Monica Lindstrom told the website. "Arizona’s charter specifically addresses polygamy and states in Article 20, Section 2: ‘Polygamous or plural marriages, or polygamous co-habitation, are without end prohibited inside this state.’ Under Arizona’s constitution, dwelling with one spouse and a religious wife or two or three … could meet the definition of ‘polygamous co-habitation,’ which is illegitimate.”
Attorney Dwane Cates, meanwhile, informed the web page that bigamy is a Class Five felony in Arizona, including, “[Kody] could get half a year to two-and-a-half years. He could get probation as much as three years and $150,000 in fines.”
In the current 15th season of Sister Wives, the Browns are weighing a go back to Utah. Tune into TLC on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET to peer how their family evolves!
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