Why Did the 'Sister Wives' Family Leave Las Vegas? Sin City Was the Beginning of the End

Ever since the Sister Wives series first launched in 2010, the Brown family has been the subject of international fascination as they navigate the turbulent and often challenging world of a polygamous family unit. At one point, the family included five adults: husband Kody Brown, and sister wives Janelle, Christine, Meri, and Robyn Brown. They share 18 children between the five of them. Now, the core family is just made of Robyn and Kody after the other three splintered away.

Throughout the last decade and a half of public ups and downs, the family's location has changed. First, they moved to Las Vegas, which was a sore point among some family members. Then, they moved to Flagstaff. But why did they leave Las Vegas in the first place? Here's what we know about the decision to relocate to Flagstaff, and why one wife feels Las Vegas was the beginning of the end for the unconventional family.

The family's move to Flagstaff was the third major move in a decade. From Utah to Las Vegas, then to Flagstaff, they picked up their entire lives and moved multiple times. However, they lost family cohesion along the way. While in Las Vegas, rifts started to form in the family unity. Robyn, the only wife who remained married to Kody, mused in 2023 that Las Vegas started the cracks that later splintered the family into four pieces.

In an interview with People, she explained, "I think it started with when we were in Las Vegas." The family's adult children were beginning to move out of the house, Robyn shared, "So their focuses started to shift to kids that have left home to go live their life, instead of focusing on their relationship with Kody."

Kody initially claimed that the move to Flagstaff was going to save the family money. Yet it became clear that Flagstaff would actually be more expensive.

The family pushed back on Kody's plans to move, but ultimately he pushed them to make the big change. While there has not been any clear single explanation as for why they moved, fans have speculated that they did so because Kody could sense the family dynamics changing and wanted to shake things up.

On Reddit, one fan wrote that Kody, "Needs to keep his family 'on their toes' and 'disrupted' enough that they don’t get too independent."

Paedon, Christine and Kody's son, has explained that he believes that move happened because Robyn and Kody's son Dayton was leaving for college in Arizona and she wouldn't let him go alone, according to The List.

And Kody scrambling to keep Robyn happy would make sense since she is the only wife who did not ultimately leave him following Janelle, Christine, and Meri's departure from the unit.

Initially, the large family lived under a single roof in Lehi, Utah. They went public with their polygamous family in 2010 and immediately faced the threat of backlash. In an early series interview, Kody explained that they learned through the local papers that Utah state officials were investigating their family for the felony crime of polygamy. Shortly before they left for Las Vegas in 2011, the state turned the investigation over to county officials.

Kody and the wives were made nervous by the impending investigation, so they picked up the family and moved to Las Vegas, where people seem to care a little less about what you do behind closed doors.

Initially, the children weren't happy about the plans to move. In early series interviews, the older kids shared how devastated they were at having to leave friends and plans behind.

But then they had to do it again in 2018 after the family hopped states again to Flagstaff, Arizona. Robyn and Kody still live together in Arizona, and Janelle lives nearby. Meri and Christine have both returned separately to Utah.