Can You Legally Marry Your First Cousin In New York?
All jokes aside, have you ever thought about just how many family members a person has that they might not even know and the possibility that a person might inadvertently fall in love with a family member – like a first cousin?
Sometimes riffs in relationships lead to entire branches of a family never meeting or even knowing about each other and it's not entirely unimaginable that two first cousins could meet each other, not know about their family relationship, fall in love, and want to get married.
Can First Cousins Get Married in New York?
But, can first cousins legally marry each other in New York whether they know their family relationship or not? The answer is, absolutely. A person can most definitely marry their first cousin in the state of New York but there is a tricky little caveat.
What's the Downside to Marrying Your Cousin?
While New York state allows first cousins to marry, some other states, ones that don’t legally allow first cousins to marry each other, will not recognize your union as legal.
Who Can't Get Married in New York?
New York is pretty cut and dry about whom a person cannot marry and under New York marriage law, those persons are an ancestor and a descendant such as a mother and a son or a father and a daughter; a brother and sister of either whole or half blood, and an uncle and his niece or an aunt and her nephew.
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Who Can Get Married in New York?
On the other side, these are the marriages that New York accepts as legal – first cousins which are those who share common grandparents; half-first cousins who are cousins who are cousins through a half-sibling of their parents; first cousins once removed which are children of first cousins; and second, third, and fourth cousins and beyond.