Florida Statute 826.01
“Bigamy; punishment”
What it means
The section is one sentence: whoever, having a husband or wife living, marries another person commits a felony of the third degree, except in the cases listed in §826.02 — the narrow excuses for a person whose prior marriage lawfully ended or who had solid reason to believe it had.
The felony is the criminal side. The probate side is why the section appears on this site: Florida treats a bigamous marriage as void, and a void marriage produces no surviving spouse — no intestate share, no elective share, no homestead rights. The voidness rule comes from Florida marriage law rather than from §826.01's own text, but the two travel together in estate disputes.
- Marrying while a husband or wife is living is a third-degree felony, punishable as provided in ss. 775.082-775.084.
- The exceptions live in §826.02 — a prior marriage dissolved or annulled, or facts supporting a genuine belief the prior spouse was dead.
- §826.01 itself says nothing about the marriage's validity — voidness of a bigamous marriage comes from Florida marriage law.
- In an estate, a void marriage means no spousal rights: no intestate share under §732.102 and no elective share under §732.201.
How it plays out
We meet bigamy in probate as a standing question: someone claims a spouse's share — the intestate share, the elective share, homestead — and a prior undissolved marriage would erase all of it. The real work is proof; marriage and divorce records scattered across states and decades decide these cases more often than testimony does. It is why our intake checklists put marital-history documents in the same folder as the will.
Questions people ask
