Incest and Marraige Question

I got some questions pertaining to marriage and incest since i'm writing a few incest stories. If anyone can help me answer these questions I would really appreciate it.

First question: If a woman gives up her son for adoption and he gets a different last name and later on the woman and son meet and they want to marry is that illegal?

Second Question: If a woman gives up a son for adoption and then later in life has a daughter who meets the son her mother gave up which turns out to be her half brother and they wanna marry is that illegal?

And last question: Can two step siblings marry?

Must.....Bite...Tongue.....HARD.....

cyberski said:

Must.....Bite...Tongue.....HARD.....

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You and me both!!!

1. Assuming a sealed adoption, there is no reason for them to know they are related. This implies the marriage can not be show to be improper, therefore it's legal. *

2. Same for above. As long as a public records check (birth certificates, unsealed adoption papers, court orders, etc.) can not show there is an imporper relationship I do not belive the marriage could be voided. *

3. Yes, if the they are not half-siblings.


* -- do not trust the arm-chair lawyer.

im kinda getting into incest, what r some of your stories

couscous said:

im kinda getting into incest, what r some of your stories

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Take my advice and go to the playground and find the incest thread there. If you stay here and discuss it, you will be humiliated to death.......

k thanx

1. if they want to be sneaky and not disclose those relations, yes. if the mother and son meet, it doesn't matter what the last name is, they are still mother and son.

2. the same goes for this as number one. even though they were not raised as siblings, the half siblings still share the blood, so i'm assuming illegal.

3. i myself have wondered about the step-sibling situation, and since there's no real blood connection, i believe it would be legal.

jessy19 said:

I got some questions pertaining to marriage and incest since i'm writing a few incest stories. If anyone can help me answer these questions I would really appreciate it.

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Incest is a legal definition, and the particulars change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction -- in most jurisdictions the answers are yes, yes, and probably.

In every definition I've seen for Incest, knowledge of the relationship is not mentioned, just degrees of relationship -- usually specified as blood relationships, but not always.

Now this is probably going to piss people off, but I do not think incest between consenting adults is illegal.

A couple months ago I was trying to rebut some idiot on the general board and wanted to back my thoughts up with some cold hard facts. What I found to my surprise was that every law I could find in regard to incest, at either the state or federal level referred to one of the participants as being of a "minor" status.

So this begs the question of can two consenting adults of close blood relations have sex legally? I think the answer is yes, even if society frowns upon it and there is a good genetic reason why they shouldn't.

Let me go on to state that I come from an all boy family, and I am not trying to defend the viewpoint. All I am saying is I was unable to find any law which expressly prohibited sex between close blood relatives that are adults.

Bobmi, that makes perfect sense.

But what if those consenting adults choose to marry? Where is the line drawn so far as the law is concerned? And if there is not a law against incest between consenting adults, then how can any law be made against those adults getting married?

If those questions are a little muddy, I'm sorry. It is almost three in the morning, after all.

S.

Bobmi357 said:

What I found to my surprise was that every law I could find in regard to incest, at either the state or federal level referred to one of the participants as being of a "minor" status.

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You didn't look very hard:

NRS 201.180 Incest: Definition; penalty. Persons being within the degree of consanguinity within which marriages are declared by law to be incestuous and void, who intermarry with each other, or who commit fornication or adultery with each other, shall be punished for a category B felony by imprisonment in the state prison for a minimum term of not less than 2 years and a maximum term of not more than 10 years, and may be further punished by a fine of not more than $10,000.

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That's the current (/o Jan 2004) Nevada Revised Statute on Incest. (The degree of consanguiuty is in the "who may not marry" section of the NRS.)

It closely matches almost every other US statute on Incest I've looked at. There is NO mention of minor status in this law.

The differences between state laws are mostly in the wording of the consaguinuity limits.

Weird Harold said:

You didn't look very hard:

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Actually I did. I checked Idaho, which like Nevada is a backwater state and coming up blank there, I went directly to fedlaw and checked there as well as the US penal code listed at several government locations. You would think they would make that sort of thing a little easier to find. As much as I sometimes enjoy making someone eat their words on the GB, I wasn't about to do a state by state survey.

I also checked Texas btw considering the poster I was replying to was from that state.

I might also add that while the law is often black and white, there is other (generally case) law which require that the relationships be "officially" known.

If the parties acted in good faith and could not have reasonably known then there may not be any crime. This is subtle different than "ignorance of the law is no excuse".

Given that they knew the law, they had no way of knowing that they were subject to it. There was not even a hint or any question about them meeting some complex determinate (like you find in the tax code or administrative law) which would make their actions fall under the law..

Or they didn't have any way of knowing until advanced blood testing came along 50 years ago, and since DNA testing to determine degree of relationship is not something done before any marriage, I'd expect them to not be subject to the incest law.

Also, knowledge may not be "officially" known. For example, there is a juror in the Martha Stewart trial who is being challenged (indirectly) for not revealing that he was convicted of a crime. The record of his crime was sealed, meaning that it functionally did not exist as far as the law was concerned. His argument, which has prevailed in the past, is that once it's sealed he is not required to mention it. Thus he should escape a perjury conviction.

Finally, having a marriage voided due to incest seems to almost always be a civil matter which arises out of other difficulties such as a pending divorce or fiduciary or inheritance matter. Of course if someone pissed at you can prove it and gets the DA interested then the criminal side kicks in. But again, I'd expect that a marriage successfully voided due to incest would only affect the matters stemming from the marriage, especially if the marriage was in good faith.

(I've been wrong before, and risk being wrong here. If this were not a fictional situation, I'd pay some lawyer their $200/hour...)

My 2 cents

If it were me and I was going to write a story about this,
I would talk to a lawyer friend and tell them you are doing research for a book you are writting.
Also the step kids, as long as there is no blood between them, there is no problem with them getting married. That happens sometimes with so many mixed marriages.

In answer to the original questions:

In adoptions, if the records are sealed and the parents have no contact whatsoever with the child, then how would they know they are related to each other? It would depend on if the mother gave the child up for adoption and didn't know the family, if the child was a newborn and therefore she would not recognize him, etc. Lots of factors play into this. It is illegal if the two individuals know they are related by blood and marry.

As to the step-siblings? Well, it has been done already, so evidently it is not illegal. At least in some states. A little weird, perhaps, for some people, especially if the step-siblings were young when brought together. But not illegal. Of course, this might vary from state to state.

Bobmi - I would agree with you. Two consenting adults engaging in sexual activity who are related to each other is not necessarily a bad thing. The law might see that differently, however. Yet, there are still states that have laws on the books that prohibit such things as sodomy and oral sex, so I suppose it is a matter of whether one gets caught at it and whether the law wants to pursue the matter.

Here in California, a man shot 9 members of his own family (his children), and it came out that he had had children with two of his own daughters. The daughters, as far as I am able to determine and at least one, were adults. Yet, he in addition to murder charges, he is also being charge with child abuse and - I believe - incest laws. If this man impregnated his 20 year old daughter, then yes, it was incest. But was it illegal? Was it morally wrong? I may have been morally wrong, because there is doubt the young woman had the free will to refuse. But, all will come out in the trial, I'm sure.

Thanks everyone for your replies. I just ask these questions so I can get things right on my story.

see i'm working on a mom/son story where the son knows his mother gave him up when he was a newborn but there were adoption papers but son and mom have different last names. Anyway he goes to search for his mother and finds her. She falls in love with him not knowing he is her son. Story takes place in Nevada so if anyone knows the laws in NV that would help me a lot.

Also I'm going to skip the step sibling marriage thing but do want to work on a half bro and sis story where the girl goes to look for her biological father but instead finds her half brother. They too fal in love knowing they are half siblings. That story will take place in Florida.

Once again thanks for your awesome replies.

legality

I believe that blood relationships within an imediate family are illegal, if it is not a blood relationship such step relations then it is legal and you could marry. (not that your family would be crazy about it) The only state to my knowledge that doesn't blood test is NV. However I still believe that they ask if you are a blood relation.

That's just my take on things. I hope it helps.

Guess all those Jerry Springer shows I saw where fathers were getting married to their daughters, etc were phoney. Damn, whoda thought Jerry would put on a phoney show. *crestfallen*

Re: legality

Valcorie said:

The only state to my knowledge that doesn't blood test is NV. However I still believe that they ask if you are a blood relation.

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When I was married a decade ago, they didn't ask for a blood test in Kentucky. They did ask if we were related by blood, or if we were married to anyone else at the time of the marriage license being issued.

S.

Bobmi357 said:

You would think they would make that sort of thing a little easier to find.

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It took be all of thirty seconds, and most of that was waiting for the page to load -- If I'd had to search for the page, as I did for an Oregon Law I wanted to reference, it would have taken a bit longer: Maybe a whole minute using Google to find the Oregon Revised Statutes online.

Re: legality

Valcorie said:

I believe that blood relationships within an imediate family are illegal, if it is not a blood relationship such step relations then it is legal and you could marry. (not that your family would be crazy about it) The only state to my knowledge that doesn't blood test is NV. However I still believe that they ask if you are a blood relation.

That's just my take on things. I hope it helps.

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In Indiana the blood test is optional.

Re: legality

Valcorie said:

The only state to my knowledge that doesn't blood test is NV. However I still believe that they ask if you are a blood relation.

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WI didn't require a blood test or ask if we were related.

One of my wife's doctors did though....

Not really an answer but

I had a good friend, even dated her a few times, who got pregnant by a Marine jerk whom she didn't want to marry, wound up marrying a nice young wimpy guy so the boy could have a good home, then later, married her brother and moved to Hemet.
I had never met him and found out later that it was a step brother and no blood relation.

Most incest laws are left up to the individual state/county where you reside. Most will have bans on marriages between: ancestor/descendant, brother/sister, uncle/neice, and aunt/nephew. And of course in the same rulings, same sex marriages are included.