Florida lacks checks to catch bigamists
(wtf story of the day from my state)
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20130602/NEWS01/306020045/Florida-lacks-checks-catch-bigamists
A signature and a lie are all it takes to have multiple wives, or husbands, at the same time in Florida.
It’s a criminal act, punishable by up to five years in prison, to lie on a marriage application. And if someone chooses to commit fraud and chance the consequences, they’ll most likely get away with it: There are no checks in place to verify if a person has other marriages.
“We don’t have any responsibility, it’s not part of the process to verify that, if a person was married in 2007 and now it’s 2013 ... that they’ve been divorced in that time,” said Laurie Rice, chief deputy at the Brevard County Clerk’s office.
In Brevard County in the past five years, there have been seven people charged with bigamy, a third-degree felony. In one of those cases, a man was sentenced to probation after police found out he was married to at least four women at the same time.
