Pen. Code, § 281 · Chapter 5. Bigamy, Incest, and the Crime Against Nature
Pen. Code, § 281
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) Every person having a spouse living, who marries or enters into a registered domestic partnership with any other person, except in the cases specified in Section 282, is guilty of bigamy.
(b) Upon a trial for bigamy, it is not necessary to prove either of the marriages or registered domestic partnerships by the register, certificate, or other record evidence thereof, but the marriages or registered domestic partnerships may be proved by evidence which is admissible to prove a marriage or registered domestic partnership in other cases; and when the second marriage or registered domestic partnership took place out of this state, proof of that fact, accompanied with proof of cohabitation thereafter in this state, is sufficient to sustain the charge.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2016, Ch. 50, Sec. 70. (SB 1005) Effective January 1, 2017.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN§ionNum=281.
- Text hash
- sha256 31e7c65d07360a5d5f4494cf82ae48933512ab0e5dbca1ab921422fbdb8d15da
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
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