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Say Alice legally marries Bob & Charlie in a country where polygamous relationships are legal. They then (attempt to?) go to a country where polygamous relationships are not legal. What happens to their marriage?

  • Will they be denied entry?
  • Will only the first husband (assume it's Bob) be allowed entry?
  • If they are allowed entry, does the new country treat them all as married, e.g. when it comes to custody of children, power of attorney, etc.?
  • Does any of this change if they are seeking to immigrate?

A Bing search finds this source, which only says polygamous marriages "pose significant challenges", but doesn't give details.

Related: How does a country that doesn't recognize same-sex marriage deal with same-sex couples in situations where the couple make decisions for each other? which asks about same-sex couples.

Allure
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1 Answers1

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Rules are somewhat vague regarding short-stay visas and I am not sure it would necessarily come up on entry. There are however clear rules regarding long-stay visas. The visa should be refused and can even be rescinded (on or after entry) if it leads to someone living “in a state of polygamy” in France.

However, a court recently ruled that the mere fact that someone is married to several spouses is not a valid reason to refuse a visa to the first spouse who applies to join them. In other words, if the sponsor lives alone before their spouse joins them, they would not live with several spouses in France and can sponsor one of them for a family visa. It doesn't matter whether that's the first spouse they married but only that it is the first who applies to live in France. Any other spouse (and their children) should however be refused a visa.

There have also been cases of people losing their residence permit because they lived with several spouses in France. A few years back the government publicized their intent to enforce this more strictly, even if it's difficult in practice to make a sharp distinction between unrecognized polygamy and people having extramarital relationships or separated couples entering new relationships before dissolving their marriage. This actually led the cabinet minister in charge of this issue to state in a radio interview that “we are not going to ban threesomes, infidelity, polyamory, or throuples” because “France is the country of libertinism”!

Regarding the effect a polygamous marriage may have down the road, some court case from the 1980s established that inheritance is a matter of “personal law”, meaning that a polygamous marriage that was established abroad in a place where that's legal ought to be considered to decide who inherits property located in France. In other words, the other spouses, while they should not be allowed to join the polygamist in France (and definitely wouldn't get a family-based visa), still have a legal claim to their property after their death.

Regarding child custody, I am not aware of any precedent around polygamy but French law has followed a similar logic: It recognizes legal constructs from other cultures / countries for people who are citizens of that country. This has come up in different ways regarding the kafala system used in the Maghreb. For example, it is possible to get a visa to allow a child to join their kafala guardian in France. Conversely, France does not allow adopting children from Maghreb countries based on the fact that adoption is not possible in those countries.

Relaxed
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