Marrying a second time before your first marriage ends is a felony in Georgia.
What the Statute Covers
OCGA 16-6-20(a) provides: “A person commits the offense of bigamy when he, being married and knowing that his lawful spouse is living, marries another person or carries on a bigamous cohabitation with another person.” Edwards v. State, 188 Ga. App. 667 (1988). OCGA 16-6-20(c) sets the punishment at one to ten years in prison.
Two things follow from that wording. There need not be a second ceremony at all, because carrying on a bigamous cohabitation is enough on its own. And because cohabiting is a continuing act, a Georgia court can hear the case even when the ceremony happened in another state.
An Example
In Edwards, the defendant married one woman in Texas on August 28, 1985 and another in South Carolina seven days later. His annulment from the first wife was not entered until October 7. Because he and the second wife lived in Carroll County, the Court of Appeals held the prosecution properly belonged in Georgia, and it rejected older cases placing venue where the ceremony occurred as no longer having “the force of law” under the 1968 statute.
The Missing-Spouse Defense
People sometimes assume that a spouse who disappears can simply be treated as gone. OCGA 16-6-20(b) is narrower than that. It is an affirmative defense that the prior spouse has been continually absent for seven years and the accused did not know that spouse to be alive during that time, or that the accused reasonably believed he or she was free to remarry.
The Second Spouse Can Be Charged Too
Under OCGA 16-6-21, an unmarried person who marries someone he or she knows to be already married commits a separate felony, carrying the same one-to-ten-year sentence. Knowledge is the whole of it, so a spouse who was deceived commits no crime.
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This post is a quick overview of the law and is not intended as legal advice. Please feel free to contact our office for a consultation if you have questions about this or any other legal aspects regarding your case!