Last fall, we blogged about a Texas pilot that for almost three years was splitting his time between two wives and two homes — each unaware of the other. The Fort Worth man’s second wife became suspicious when she realized that her husband was still paying bills for the woman she thought he already divorced. It turns out that the husband filed for divorce from his first wife, but then decided that he wanted to rectify the marital discord and never finalized the divorce. However, he did still proceed with a marriage to the second woman.
He was arrested and charged with bigamy last October, after his second wife reported the bigamy to authorities four months after she discovered that he was still married to his first wife. There is a certain amount of time within which such suspicions must be addressed. The second wife waited too long, meaning this man was cleared of the bigamy charge. A woman from the district attorney’s office says, “When it became clear that there was an issue with the statute of limitations on the bigamy charge, prosecutors worked diligently to find alternate charges to support the allegations.”
The husband of two was ordered to cover the divorce costs of his first wife — with whom he fathered a child. The man will also need to pay child support, including counseling for his son following this traumatic ordeal.
Because this man was cleared of the bigamy charge due to the statute of limitations and because his first wife divorced him, his marriage with his second wife is now legal. The second wife did immediately file for divorce upon learning that her husband had been living a double life. The status of those proceedings was not detailed in a local report.
It is critical that if an individual in Texas similarly suspects that their spouse is engaging in a bigamous affair, he or she contact an experienced family law attorney as soon as the individual has suspicions in order to pursue the best possible outcome.
Source: UPI.com, “Bigamist cleared by statute of limitations,” April 7, 2013
- Our firm has experience with related issues in the Houston area. For more information please refer to our page on family law.