Polygamy Is Outlawed in Every State, So How Is ‘Sister Wives’ Legal?

If you’re just tuning into the TLC hit show that has been following Kody Brown and his blended family for about 13 years, you may be wondering how Sister Wives is legal. Longtime viewers will tell you that it has been a matter of contention for Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn Brown — and their 18 kids — since the reality series premiered and up until the family parted ways.

The short answer is that Kody only has one legal wife. He was connected to the other wives in his plural marriage through a spiritual union. Meri, Kody’s first wife, was his legal wife until 2014 when she and Kody divorced so that he could legally marry Robyn and adopt the three children she had from a prior relationship. The couple also share two biological kids: Ariella and Solomon.

But the legality of their plural marriage has caused the Browns many a headache over the years.

By the time Sister Wives premiered in 2010, police in Lehi, Utah, had been investigating the family for weeks, since bigamy was a felony in the state at the time. “The show certainly shed light on the situation,” Lehi police Lt. Darren Paul said at the time, per KSL.com.

Because of the investigation, the Brown family decided to move to Las Vegas, Nev. “I can’t have my family live in fear,” Kody said on the show. “Every day that we’re here, our family goes deeper and deeper into the fear of what can happen.”

In 2013, two years after the Sister Wives stars sued Utah and the Utah County’s attorney’s office over the state’s bigamy law, a federal judge in Utah threw out the ban on “cohabitation” but kept the ban on bigamy “in the literal sense — the fraudulent or otherwise impermissible possession of two purportedly valid marriage licenses for the purpose of entering into more than one purportedly legal marriage,” as CNN reported at the time.

In 2016, however, a federal appeals court struck down that ruling, saying the Brown family’s lawsuit had no standing because they faced no credible threat of prosecution, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. That ruling restored third-degree felony penalties for the cohabitation part of Utah’s bigamy statute.

And the following year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Brown family’s appeal of that ruling. “Today is an injustice to not be heard by SCOTUS,” the Brown family tweeted at the time, per The Salt Lake Tribune. “We suspect there will be many people everywhere demanding to be heard for liberty.”

After several years in Vegas, the Browns moved to Flagstaff, Ariz., in 2018. But Radar Online reported the following year that the Browns could have legal trouble in that state, too.

“Polygamy is unlawful in Arizona,” legal expert Monica Lindstrom told the site. "Arizona’s constitution specifically addresses polygamy and states in Article 20, Section 2: ‘Polygamous or plural marriages, or polygamous co-habitation, are forever prohibited within this state.’ Under Arizona’s constitution, living with one wife and a spiritual wife or two or three … could meet the definition of ‘polygamous co-habitation,’ which is prohibited.”

Attorney Dwane Cates, meanwhile, told the site that bigamy is a Class 5 felony in Arizona, adding, “[Kody] could get half a year to two-and-a-half years. He could get probation up to three years and $150,000 in fines.”

While talk of legal troubles continued to stir after arriving in Flagstaff, the Brown family eventually began falling apart. In November 2021, Christine and Kody called it quits, and by December 2022, Janelle was out the door. January 2023 brought more unfortunate news for the Brown family as Cody and Meri announced they were ending their non-legally binding marriage.

In addition to learning how to navigate life after ending three of his marriages all within under a two-year span, Kody experienced a heartbreaking loss in March 2024: the passing of Garrison Brown, his son with Janelle.

While it's still unclear if Sister Wives will return for Season 19, there's certainly a lot of unpacking to do.