A second marriage cannot be contracted before the dissolution of the first. But the first shall be regarded as dissolved, for this purpose, if either party has been absent five (5) years, and is not known to the other to be living.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 36-3-102
Second marriage before dissolution of first prohibited — Effect of absence for five years
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case United States v. Ali (2009)
Most recently applied in United States v. Ali (February 2009)
Code 1858, § 2438 (deriv
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: Tennessee Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Tennessee statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.